What is nothing?

some thoughts on what the absence of something really means

The concept of ‘nothingness’?

You see, I was just chilling one day when some unimportant philosophical distinctions emerged from the top of my head– this isn’t the typical post planned this blog, but it’ll represent 50% of my total content once I publish this.

Pondering about ‘nothingness’ seems inevitable from the human perspective– we are surrounded by concepts that obviously fit into the framework of ‘something’, so where is the opposite of that framework– ‘nothing’? In this article I’ll be delving into some thoughts that you might find intriguing or intelligible.

Does ‘nothing’ truly exist?

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To answer my own question, yes, nothing exists– many would argue that everything is something, including concepts like ‘somethingness’ and nothingness since it’s easy to view it as simply ‘another thing’. This would mean that nothing defeats its own definition, x ≠ x in this case. But here’s where that fails– if nothing truly was nothing, then the idea of ‘everything has to be something’ can’t apply to it because, simply, it’s nothing. You can’t apply that rule to something that inherently doesn’t exist. If you assert a premise onto ‘nothing’, then it means it’s now something as you can engage with it using logical axioms that apply to ‘everything’. (not including nothing) Nothing as a concept cannot be disproven in that way– the moment we try to engage with it as if it were something, it automatically becomes something and not nothing anymore.

In this article, I do say at the start that engaging with the concept of nothing creates logical contradictions, as therefore a premise applied onto a theoretical state of ‘non-being’ can’t possibly make sense. Then I do go on to talk tons about how to pinpoint nothing in a conveniently made ‘taxonomy of existence’. Labeling or categorizing nothingness is not directly trying to disprove or prove its existence, most of the article already assumes the premise that nothing is not something yet existent, so please provide me with insight about whether nothing does exist or not in the comments. (if I even get any comments, that is) If something is ‘simply existing’, it just means that it’s a concept which lies within the bounds of human consciousness. Anything that lies outside of one of the categories lies outside of our mental scope, therefore we are unaware of it entirely. Nothingness cannot be treated as a ‘thing’ within existence. It functions instead as a boundary concept: the horizon that gives meaning to ‘something’ by marking its absence. In this sense, ‘nothing’ exists only as the necessary contrast against which being and thought are possible.

A taxonomy of existence.

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To help with the mental gymnastics involved with that, you can categorize things that ‘exist’, putting it simply, into a taxonomy of existence with 3 levels. A defining element of this taxonomy is that, if a certain level was true for object a, then all the levels above that (if there happens to be any) would also have to be true. The lowest level lies within being physically tangible and intractable– something like a cloud is tangible, and you could directly interact with something like a pepperoni pizza. The second level is being mentally conceivable– (more on that throughout the article) you may not be able to interact or perceive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles physically, but you can mentally. You can imagine them, understand what/who they are, even how they look like and act like.

The third, and last level, is pure existence: whatever concept or thing it is can be in a state of being. This just means that it most definitely exists, usually any idea/maybe object on this level is out of our scope of consciousness, let alone physical contact. (physically or abstractly) Now you can see why this (sort of) works– being physically interactable means mentally interactable, which means in a state of both physical and mental being or just the latter.

Here are two anecdotes to help you grasp the function of this taxonomy: tomorrow and ‘to the right of you’. These are two that exist, and are easily mentally conceivable, but never will be interacted with physically. (I do stretch definitions quite far across this whole article, the point is to just introduce some new ideas)

If I told you I’d give you something tomorrow, I’d never give it to you since tomorrow will never happen– it’s a relative concept of time. But, in terms of time, you could clearly pinpoint where tomorrow is: 12:00am on Monday, then 12:00am on Tuesday, etc. You can mentally interact with it. Tomorrow as a concept also definitely exists. If I told you that something is always to the right of you, (a concept of space) you’ll never reach it. But in terms of space, you can clearly see ‘to the right of you’, and you certainly know that it as a standalone concept exists. These check the second and third levels: it’s just something that you can’t get to physically, no matter how hard you try. Applying this to the concept of nothingness, when you use the term ‘nothing’ in a conversation, you can’t engage with it any further than hinting at the subject.

This means that not only is ‘nothing’ a concept that can’t be interacted with physically, it also is inaccessible from a mental standpoint– the fact is that nothing’s existence can’t be disproven since applying any axiom to it forces you to stray away from the concept itself. This is why the taxonomy comes in handy for understanding, well, ‘nothing’ specifically.

Arguments against perceivability

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I’ll be discussing some arguments against this interpretation, all within the mental ‘layer’ of existence. Imagine if I told you to imagine a 3d figure with 9,000 faces. Can you picture it in your head? Of course not. But does it exist? Of course. This brings me to an extremely important argument against the second layer or classification– that a) you can’t conceive some things that exist visually and b) you can’t conceive tons of things, especially concepts, accurately. These serve as main points of conflict: the 9,000-faced figure exists, but we can doubt its mental interaction– so what purpose does this ‘conception’ layer serve, exactly?

Starting with point a, I’d say that you don’t have to visually or tangentially imagine something in order for you to be able to ‘imagine’ it. Returning to our 9,000-faced figure, we know that it falls within our scope of knowledge– you can easily understand how the concept works, what faces of a 3d figure look like, and how they can be interacted with, it’s just the sheer amount of sides that give you an inability to ‘imagine’ them. In this case, concepts you wouldn’t be able to grasp at, such as ‘nothing’, are on a completely different level of unimaginable. Your brain can’t understand our 9,000-faced figure in its entirety– but I think that doesn’t serve as a contradiction to our ‘understanding’ of the figure. You can understand the fact that it’s in a 3-dimensional space, has faces plastered around it, and the faces are geometric figures that adjoin to create a massive solid. Any visualization of that is all you’ll need to actually and cognitively interact with the figure. But isn’t this visualization completely misleading, false, and most importantly not representative of the shape itself? This brings us to my next point.

‘Correctness’ of perceivability

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Does the accuracy of a perception affect the ‘interactability’ of a concept? Sure, imagining an orange would provide more mental substance and understanding than attempting to imagine a 9,000-faced figure. But it remains on the same level– whether or not the representation of it is 100% or 0% accurate. Let’s try a thought experiment. What if I told you to imagine ‘something’? A bottle of Mountain Dew, a house, or a car are all correct. Anything that lies within the bounds of ‘something’ technically serves as a correct representation of the concept ‘something’ that we can mentally interact with, even if they’re completely different things.

This obviously just provides precedent that multiple interpretations can all be considered correct– or rather just ‘not wrong’, but that’s just when all of them fall, definitively, within the scope of the same concept. Or does it?

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If I told you to imagine ‘the answer to 1+1’, you would obviously think 2. It’s our mathematically proven standard for representing that simple equation. Now, let’s say that a person thinks it’s 3, and not 2. In this case, both 2 and 3 are numbers that represent different conceptions of the exact same concept– the answer to ‘one plus one’. Yet one is considered to be completely inaccurate– but that doesn’t mean 1+1 is now an equation that they cannot conceive of. If they happened to understand the proof for this concept then their representation would change, but it doesn’t change the fact that they both serve as interactable ‘things’, conceivable mathematically and visually, for the same concept. In this rare case, a mathematical convention disproves 1+1 being equal to 3, but it’s still able to be interacted with as they point to the same concept: adding a unit to a unit.

What that example aims to do, (I think it could use a little bit of improvement) is to illustrate that representations of a concept/object can never be right or wrong– as long as they represent the same concept/object. For the sake of argument, let’s bank on the premise that aliens exist: what would come to mind at the thought of ‘an alien’? Most humans all believe in a certain sci-fi caricature that almost certainly isn’t their actual form, or the ‘correct’ representation. But the accessibility, interactability, and therefore existence of the idea remains nonetheless.

In the end, nothingness cannot be denied, because even if we try to refute it, we are forced to invoke it as the contrast that makes ‘something’ intelligible; therefore, within the taxonomy of existence, it necessarily occupies the third tier as a boundary-concept that exists precisely by enabling the possibility of all else.

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Anyways, I ran out of patience for this article. If you like it, leave a like and smash that subscribe button! If you dislike it, leave a hateful comment! Any interaction is appreciated. (Have a nice day) –Alex Liu

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