Nothing exists! Zero Ontology!

I know this title and posting may sound extremely bizarre and nonsensical, but for some reason it sits in the back of my head as somewhat rational for some strange reason.

I'm going to play around with it though and play the absurdist advocate ( for lack of better words). So I'm going to make the claim that the universe, i.e., the sum total of all energies, doesn't even really exist.

First, lets get into what it means for something to 'exist'. Whenever we talk about something existing, e.g., a chair, tree, person, etc, we refer to something existing within a context. The context is our sensual perception. For the chair, person, and tree that we say "exist", we refer to that which is in the context of our visual perception namely. We can never know of anything existing beyond our own personal sensual perceptions. So for something to be considered existing ( as we use the word commonly ), it must exist within a context.

Another thing that should be noted is the falsity of direct-realism. Some people think that human perceptions are the way the universe, really, is in some kind of objective sense. E.g., many people think that the color green is an inherent property of the grass - that the perceived greenness of grass continues to exist even when there are no points of consciousness to perceive. But this naive-realism is incorrect; greenness is a construct of minds. No minds= no greenness. Colors are a form of qualia just like the flavor of vanilla is. We don't say that the flavor of vanilla has some mind-independent existence, so we shouldn't believe as axiomatic that our other perceptions are the way ultimate reality is either. Our perceptions are just representations. My point is that the universe, as we know it, only exists within the context of our minds. Nothing exists absolutely. Existence is relative to a context(s).

Now here is where things start to get TwilightZonish...

The universe, i.e., the sum total of all energies...like in this picture below, doesn't exist in any objective sense whatsoever.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

If you are going to make the claim that the universe does exist objectively, then I will ask you: Where does it exist? What is the context of the universe? What is the universe contained in? For something to be considered existing, it must have a context.

You say that the universe is contained by nothing...

I say: welcome to no-thing-ness. That which contains is greater than that which is contained.

You say that the universe is infinite!

I say: Now the universe, definitely, doesn't exist; if the universe is infinite, then it is boundless. And if it is boundless, then it has no context. For something to be considered existing, it must exist within a context thus, the universe doesn't exist.

That which we call " the universe " is an illusion - a cosmic dream consisting of a bunch of co-dreamers that emanate from an unconscious, directly ineffable, eternal reality: No-thing-ness- dreamless sleep.

You are displaying your simplicity.

1) To be considered existant, by an observer, a phenomenon must be capable of interaction.

2) The universe is not contained. If the universe was contained you would need to descrivbe the nature of this border and what lies beyond it. The universe is infinite in extent.

"You are displaying your simplicity."

Still butt-hurt about the Ayn Rand comments?





"The universe is infinite in extent."

Have you ever experienced it as such?

Primal Rage wrote:

"You are displaying your simplicity."

Still butt-hurt about the Ayn Rand comments?

The emotional angle. Your quality is becoming clear.

Quote :

"The universe is infinite in extent."

Have you ever experienced it as such?

Have you experienced the universe's border? If you have, you will be able to describe it for me.

Lacking personal experience, one must infer from known principles.
To expand on an earlier point: what exists is what interacts and thus makes itself perceptible. Space is the region in which this interaction occurs. There are no examples of regions where interaction does not occur, therefore there is no precedent to assume such a region is possible.

If the universe is contained, this implies an edge where the universe ceases and the container begins. What is the nature of this edge and what constitutes the outside of this container?

I go into it a little here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] but only in the context of time.
It's old and badly written though. I should add more about the universe's edge.

"The emotional angle. Your quality is becoming clear.'

Yes, I'm foaming at the mouth right now, Apaosha. You hit me where it hurts. Please...no more insults...I can't take it anymore...

"Have you experienced the universe's border? If you have, you will be able to describe it for me."

I am a limited frame of reference, thus I experience the universe as limited ( finite ). That which is outside of my frame of reference is no-thing to me.

You need to define existence.

My definition: That which (inter)acts.
Existence as dynamic and inter-related.

Most paradoxes concerning existence arise when the word, existence, is taken literally as a thing, or as a some-thing, a one.
That's how we get the antithesis, based on human conceptual limitations, binary logic, and the no-thing.
In both cases the "thing" is implied and taken for granted.

In fact there is no thing, no static singularity, no being.
All is flux, fluidity, becoming.

Given this, there can be no border, as inflation implies a continuous growth with no boundaries, and deflation the same thing.
Even a God would have trouble, as the moment He saw every-thing, it would have altered, ever-so-slightly. The idea raises the image of a deity outside space time, seeing it as a "thing" an object, which is both a contradiction, as to be outside existence is to be non-existent, and to see everything implies a thingness which is static, a singularity, an absolute, which is nowhere in evidence, therefore the image contradicts experience.

I am on the side of the pre-Socratics, like Heraclitus, who used metaphors such as water or fire to describe reality. The perceived intangible, the dynamic conceptualized by the human brain, by simplifying and generalizing it ...in other words by reducing its dimensions to a level where the brain can process and abstract into an image, then represented by a symbol.

Existence is not a something, it is a process.

Saying 'existence exists' is a tautology and it pretend to say something yet says nothing.
It's like saying 'life is living' or 'self is ego' or 'self is selfish'.

The mind cannot wrap itself around the notion of just activity. it must reduce it down to a thing. This creates the paradoxes of thinking that there is a "thing" which just happens to exist or to live ...or that there is a thing which looks this way or that way, making appearance something the thing wears, like a facade.

Because of human limitations, and our obsession in our time with nihilistic world-views, creating either/or dualities, the attempt to negate these falsehoods leads to verbal paradoxes, like Zeno's or the ones I've faced often like :"Truth is there is no truth" or "There is absolutely no absolute".

In fact the paradox is produced because, first, the brain thinks in absolutes, resulting in dualities, and second  the insinuation that there is an absolute truth or an absolute anything, is itself nonsensical, and a  mental fabrication.
To contradict it one then must accept it as a given and offer a negating nullifying antithesis ...so to the absurdity of an absolute one is forced to use an opposite absolute.
This leads to confusion.

The only response is to ask for evidence of an absolute, so that its opposite would then merit consideration.
One cannot negate the non-existent, no more than one can prove a negative.

Reality, existence, the world, is flux. Not a no-thing, or a some-thing, not a thing at all.  

In theoretical physics the Superstring vibrating is no string at all. It is only vibration.
The question "What then is vibrating?" presupposes the very thing which is not present.

Nihilism is this insistence on the antithesis of all which is perceived and experienced.

-------------

These ideas are counter-intuitive, because the brain evolved to simplify and generalize in order to aid the organism is survival.
It did not evolve to question its own existence.
This has been a byproduct of the success of intelligence, in relation to all other survival traits and tools.
It has been the brain's superiority that has freed it from survival needs, and placed in a position of self-questioning, and ennui.
This may also result in self-destructive psychologies, making religion vital for their survival, their sanity.
The brain, if powerful enough, turns on itself, we might say, and becomes counter-survival.
This is the epitome of nihilism.
When the brain has reached a certain level of understanding has been given leisure to think beyond survival needs, and satisfying desires, it may go insane, if along with this there is no psychological fortitude. This is why the distance between genius and madness is small.
Few minds have proven to be both powerful enough and in possession of a strong psychological constitution to contemplate reality beyond the mundane and the trivial, avoiding the temptation to settle for the easy, the comforting or surrendering to nihilistic hopes.
If you think about it all that nihilism is, no matter what ideological form it might take, is a need to ignore, to overturn, to escape to see a world other than the one pretense dot you through your senses.
What you see is to terrifying, so dissatisfying, that you must believe that the opposite of what you see is true.
This seduction of the ideal, in opposition to the real, is also governed by psychological tendencies, such as feminine and masculine dispositions.
The feminine tends to surrender to some-thingness ...the masculine surrenders to no-thingness.
Each is attracted to the nihilism corresponding to the opposite sex: no-thingnes is increasing chaos, the absolute end of randomness - the feminine - some-thingness is the absolute order, absolute Being, and it attracts the feminine mind.

In no-thingness the disillusioned with reality masculine mind sees hope. A feminine openness for his ordering interventionist spirit.
In some-thingness the disillusioned female psyche sees hope, as well. A masculine order, an absolute, a God to give herself to, and become a part of.

For the sake of playing the absurdist advocate, my definition of existence is consciousness and the content within its context. So the universe is, ultimately, a dream - a construct of mind. Think of Berkely's subjective-idealism minus Jehova.

Playing this hypothetical role of an anti-realist/ zero ontologist, I hold that ultimate ' reality ' is no-thing, i.e., not material or tangible in any way shape or form. This ultimate reality is directly ineffable as it can't be experienced directly. This reality is equivalent to dreamless sleep - the divine ZERO. The universe is an illusion of the mind; it is a dream just like so called " sleeping dreams" but it is the polar aspect of it, i.e., an ordered dream as opposed to a chaotic dream ( "sleeping dreams").

How very Solipsistic.
Also world-denouncing.
A sleeper who dreams, but the sleeper is outside the dream.
A god, and we His dream-scapes.

You might find modernity appealing. It too is deeply self-referential ...art imitating art ...the abstraction replacing the world ....the noumenon replacing the phenomenon, the word more real than the reality it is symbolizing ...the painting/photograph of a tree replacing the tree itself.
A world of code - a fake world covering the real one, but taken as a more real reality.
The Matrix.

A comforting thought.
A brain in a vat.

I don't, really, hold to this anti-realist position. I'm just experimenting and putting myself in another philosophy's shoes to try to understand how they think and feel.

But anyways, to remain in character, It seems like you are making an appeal to motive fallacy with the psychological feminine and masculine nihilism tendencies. And I don't believe in any " real world". There are no real worlds as there are no-things. The world is just an illusion - it has no substance. The net total energies of the universe = 0.



skip to 3:30 of the video to understand what I mean.

A net total energy of zero doesn't mean that no-thing is, now. A lot of systems have a net total energy of zero if you look at a particular aspect of it. The idea that there is a beginning of the universe is an idea - what we see happening is that there are theories being constructed which support that idea while still trying to explain the observable phenomenas.

Take Dark matter. Nobody has seen dark matter - or measured it in any way. The only reason why there is a hypothesis about it is because it's needed to explain existing theories, explain inconsistencies within them. And yet it's broadcasted that dark matter and energy does exist.

Motive is essential in this case because an absolute beginning isn't something which is deduced from anything observable in reality. It's a projection of thoughts into something which is ultimately infinitely away from our experience and thus becomes something which is infinitely uncertain. So the mind comes up with something which makes sense, something which is in some form within our powers of imagination. What remains is the motive.

Like nihilism, realism (or its antithesis, anti-realism), is a rather ambiguous term in the sense that different people effectively attach differing, even contradictory, ideas to it.

Depending on who you ask, nihilism can either mean a descriptive recognition of the absence of any real, intrinsic teleos, morality, or realm of abstract noumena; or, nihilism could be used (as Nietzsche and most here on KTS do) as a term to denote a general psychological tendency to despair in the face of this aforementioned abyss, and thus delude itself by means of constructing conceptions of "objective" or "transcendent" moral and teleological realities.

Now, as far as realism is concerned, one can't be a total "realist" or "anti-realist", to an extent, as realism is a necessarily relative description. To be a realist towards the existence of abstract Platonic noumena is to hold a theory of ontology that negates the reality of process and interaction, and vice versa.

Concerning the principle of zero ontology, I find that, although it correctly contextualizes process and general phenomena, it still holds on to a conception of staticity as a sort of qualifier for "true" reality, thus leading it to paradoxically conclude that what is ultimately "real" is no-thing.

Oh, and Primal Rage, this is DeathMetalSorcerer.  

Nihilism is psychological, as is everything man thinks.

It is the absence of teleos, of a completeness, of the absolute, which is the 'positive' for it leaves room for a will to function and to have a sense, otherwise consciousness sis reduced to a sham or some for of testing, by some presumed external will.
It is the absence of the absolute which makes reality a positive, not a 0 nor a 1, neither some-thing, nor no-thing, but a towards, a process, an activity with possibilities (spatial dimensions, measured by time).
The presumed teleos, the meaning, purpose,e God, the particle, the impending, immanent omniscience and/or omnipotence, is the nullification of existence because ti makes activity nil.
For example: once omniscience has been attained, let us pretend that it's possible, then what is left to know, or to seek out as the knowable?
Once omnipotence has been attain, the absolute projection of power, the end, teleos, of power, then what else is there to attain, and to give value to existing, as a weakness seeking strength?

The way I use it is in regards to the perceived, not to the hoped the preferred, the imagined hiding beneath, behind, above, the perceived.
The perceived, no matter how simplified, is the positive. it offers potential, possibilities.
Since this perceived is dynamic, ever-changing, then these possibilities, whether they are positive or negative in regards to my own desires, continue. Existence continues and has no beginning and no end - whether I or any consciousness is there to appreciate it, or hope to take advantage of it, as an opportunity.

A no-thing, simply states the obvious: there is no-thing.
But reality is not a thing. A thing is an abstraction of a part of the real, and a human fabrication: a metaphor, a symbol, an abstraction referring to reality, and always a step behind it, always unable to fully grasp it, represent it.
Some-thing, uses the ambiguity of "some" to imply precision where there is only ambiguity concerning the then taken for granted 'thing'.

In both cases the reference is to a mental construct, not to reality. Since a mental construct may or may not be referring to the sensual, the aesthetic, the world outside the brain, not all mental constructs are equally valid, or useful.
Detachment form reality is part of our cultural dis-ease of nihilism.

In our sheltered haste to save ourselves from a world that cares not for our abstractions, and our desires, we call it "negative" and all who remind us of this we call them nihilists, in a reversal, using linguistics and emotions, of terms.
The real world is the "negative," because it is missing what we need, and our conceptions, fabricating what we need, becomes the "positive".
But reality is neither positive not negative, it just is.
Our relationship with it is the negative positive, and so psychology is vital.

Our relationship with reality is always antagonistic, because life, consciousness, is an organizing in the disorganizing.
Therefore, like is agon, struggle, experienced by a living, conscious, becoming, as need/suffering

But only a self-serving, a self-hating, coward would turn this awareness, this relationship, on its head, and claim that because reality lacks what we are so desperate for that it is nil, a negative, when it makes us, as an evaluator of it, possible.
Possibility is ensured BECAUSE there is no teleos, and no meaning, and no purpose.
If this were not the case existence would be authoritarian, totalitarian, a christian conception, a secular humanistic lie, cowering in the other's embrace to escape.

Welcome, Death Metal Sorcerer! I had a feeling for some reason that it is was you.


Yes, zero ontology can seem paradoxical depending upon the language and understanding of certain words. When I say, " no-thing is the ultimate reality" I don't mean it in some figurative sense, but rather a literal one, i.e., that unconsciousness/deep sleep is the ultimate - zero. Since in this context I'm arguing from an idealistic ( of the mind ) point of view, pure unconsciousness is the Alpha and Omega. In the beginning we were no-thing ( unconscious ) and in the end, we shall return to no-thing ( unconsciousness ). Unconsciousness is the great Absolute as it can't be experienced directly.

No-THING, exists, Some-THING exists, same shit.
Thing is what contradicts the concept "exists".

Put anything before or after it, (every-THING, any-THING) and if you take it literally, rather than figuratively, you are saying the same nihilistic bull.
Replace "thing" with another WORD, with no reference to anything experienced, and same shit, different name.

Baptize a retard and give him the name Genius, put a diploma in his hand, a nice gown and cap to make it seem legit, make him ride a nice car and give him the corner office, and he is still a retard.