Can 'nothing' exist?

We are certainly into ontology and epistemology....but also "interelationship" between ourselves. (or as MA calls it "the human condition") When we talk about "solar furnaces" and "selves" we forget such concepts involve a complex evolving semantic web of shared experience and "education" such that even the "self" of "egocentricity" is a socially acquired/understood aspect of relationships. Thus the "existence" of "solar furnaces" is always contextual whether that context is part of a rhetorical discussion on this forum, or whether it is the focus of attention of "scientists". Existence cannot be divorced from such context, whether that existence be of "solar furnaces" or the "selves" which conceptualize them.

The concept of "n0thing" cannot exist without "a conceiver", but that means the essential presence of the conceiver negates the ontologological status of nothingness.

typo
ontological

Very well put, indeed.

A designer is required for everything else, so the elusive nothingness is just one more to add to the list. He, she or it would be designing that nothingness from their own state of nothingness. Mind dumbing, er, I mean numbing.

Ah, but you see, I'm yet to be cured of my objectivism. If anything, I think it's getting worse!

You might turn into Ayn Rand right before our eyes.

What existed before the big bang?

The Big Bong

Perhaps I should audition for her part in the Musical.

I just have a hard time being convinced that the planet Neptune didn't exist 1000 years ago, since no-one had seen it.

...but once again, YOU have just put yourself "there" in your mind's eye and taken your existential relationship with "Neptune" with you. 1000 years ago "planetary Neptuneness" had no more ontological status than "the USA" did. The error is to equate the relative persistance of "physicality" with the persitance of concepts with physical features. ( Consider also the recent conceptual re-negotiation of the "planetary status" of Pluto.)

Well if 'nothing' else at least my mind has been opened wider by all these excellent posts.
I wonder now if there are 3 possibilities for or against the existence of 'nothing'.
First, you leave the earth and travel in a straight line in any direction:
1. You arrive back at the point where you started, therefore 'nothing' does not exist.
2. You keep on going ad infinitum, and assuming there is no end, therefore 'nothing' does not exist.
3. You reach a barrier of some description beyond which you can't go, and speculate that beyond this barrier there is 'nothing', therefore 'nothing' might exist.

Along comes a being with the answer.
"What's beyond this barrier" you ask
"Nothing" says the being
"Can you describe it"
"No, 'nothing' can't be described as it doesn't exist"
"So if it doesn't exist, how do you know it's not there"
"You'll have to take my word for it as the concept is beyond human imagination"

I understand it (I think) but still reject it for now. The universe existed before I did. Not for me, but that's not relevant to it's objective existence.

Well I could have stated "Entertainment Tonight," but that would infer that the entire Universe including Earth came to be exclusively as entertainment for the human race. It's just that the designer has a very warped sense of entertainment in his dark comedy.

Your difficulty is that you cannot see that "existence" is never objective.

A consideration of comparative physiology of "perceptual systems" is one way into that point. A second point is that "time" is a psychological construct, hence your concept of "before" is socio-contextually embedded. (Note that some languages do not have a "past tense"...only a "now" and a "not now".)

Correct -- the randomness of existence is swirling with subjectiveness and objectivism is a major cause of headaches and depression.

very true lightwizard. objectivism seems to cause the most problems for people, especially when someone unwittingly objectifies their own subjective feelings onto the world, as being meaningless for example, which then in turn reduces them to depressive misanthropes.

this is such a significant mistake that we, as humans, make; unconsciously giving reality to "things" to don't actually have a reality, at least externally.

Purely on the headline topic...depends on your definition of 'exist'.

What is to say we have to be able to conceptualise a state so that state can exist? Everything exists independent of our brains. If humans didn't exist, would the world suddenly cease to exist?

Still, 'nothing' is just a concept for absence of something. It's relative meaning differs by circumstance.

vikorr, I don't remember sharing my disease with you....

...unless...wait...after the Ayn Rand auditions...was that you !?

All semantics aside, the only way to describe what you are saying is that nothing and everything are the same thing. The Vedanta aspect of Hindu belief suggests (my own interpretation) that God became bored with being "one" (or so to speak "looking at himself in the mirror") thus became 2 (yin and yang, up and down, left and right, etc.) in order to play "peek-a-boo" with himself. To become consumed within the plane of duality in order to "forget" that he is alone and at the same time allow himself to be filled with the awe and wonder of "reality". To experience "I" as opposed to "oneness". To experience the creation through the eyes of the conscious. To become embedded in space, time, matter and energy. The beauty and the fallacy being the same thing.

To me, it makes no sense to distinguish between nothing and everything. They are the same thing!

Enjoy the wonderful display of reality before your eyes every waking hour. You are the eyes of God!

Peace

I think you are missing the point. You are limiting your understanding of this idea by assuming ultimately that these two terms are mutually exclusive.