The Nothingness Paradox

[Androxine Vortex]

We have all heard the, "nothing is something so nothingness can't exist" phrase. I was talking with a co worker about paradoxes and he says that nothingness is a paradox because if there was nothing it would be black and since black is a color it would be something.

This is my argument : Black or darkness is the absence of light. That is a fact of reality. The only reason black is defined as a color is because we as humans gave it that name. That is a word or classification we invented. Blackness would still exist whether we had a name for it or not. So if there actually was nothing, there would be no light and there would be blackness but there wouldn't be anyone to call black a color and names would be meaningless.

Do you agree with my reasoning?

 

[Feo Takahari]

Here's how I'd put it:

Black, in and of itself, is not a thing that objectively exists. It's a way in which humans subjectively interpret a lack of reflected light. If there was nothing, there would be no light, which is subjectively "black." Objectively, however, "there is nothing, including light" does not conflict with "there is no reflected light."

BTW, does this remind anyone else of Anselm's ontological argument for why a perfect God must exist?

 

[Penpilot]

The first thing I'd say is give me a definition of what you mean by nothing.

For me, off the top of my head, I'd say a practical definition would be an area of space that contains zero particles of matter or energy.

Your co-worker's argument doesn't make sense. It seems like they're trying to use the word "Nothing" in two different ways, one as a concept about some phenomena and the phenomena itself, and trying to use the existence of the concept to disprove the phenomena, which is silly.

The way I'm reading what they're saying is as follows. "See this concept in which we use to represent complete emptiness? That concept exists therefore complete emptiness does not exist?" Which isn't correct.

It's nice hand waving using pseudo philosophy, and a bit of a play on words.

 

[buyjupiter]

KC Cole wrote a great book on the subject of nothingness: the Hole in the Universe. It's a general audience science/maths book, but the concepts are philosophical and TOUGH. Not light reading, but thoroughly necessary reading if you want to get a better grasp of modern physics and cosmology.

 

[Devor]

As Feo said, black is what you see when there's no light registering with your cornea. Presumably, nothingness would not emit light.

That said, our cosmological understanding of nothingness gets a little weird, and space and time (and often many more dimensions) are considered "things" in many of the scientific models. Trying to wrap our heads around this stuff at a high level can be a matter of guesswork and ignorance for most of us.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

If nothing is space, and space is a vacuum, then nothing is a vacuum, therefore nothing is a thing.

^This thing.​

(Sorry.)

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

(Sorry.)

No you're not.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

No you're not.

 

[Russ]

No you're not.

But he should be!

 

[wordwalker]

"Nothing," "black," and so on are ideas that we have about nothingness. The fact that we put names on them doesn't change what they are-- or is that what they aren't? Or if you think there's no perfect vacuum, would that be, "how there's no such nothing"?

And now I'm doing double negatives...

(It also reminds me of the quirk about calling something "real": we only use the word when we need to say one thing is more real than another-- but it's only worth saying because the other thing, even if it's just a dangerous fallacy, is too real to ignore. Which is a backhanded compliment.)