Topics Existence

Question Is there a such thing as nothing? If you say "I'm not doing anything" you are always doing something: sitting, standing, floating, breathing, laying; and if you say you can't see anything that's a lie also because you can see black, white. So what is your opinion?? Panku Zina -14

Accepted:
October 14, 2005

Comments

There is no thing that is nothing. To say that nothing is in the room is not after all to say that something is in the room, namely nothing. That's a confusion: see Question 49 for some discussion. You're right to observe that when someone says "I'm doing nothing", they're always doing something. But the right lesson to draw from that is not that "nothing" is actually a thing or an activity, but rather that what someone intends to communicate by saying "I'm doing nothing" is that they're not doing anything that you'd care to know about. Likewise, when you're shipwrecked on an island and looking out to the horizon and your friend asks you what you see and you say "I see nothing", you shouldn't think that "nothing" really refers to the water, the sky, the puffins, etc. Rather, you're trying to get across that you see nothing that your friend would care to know about at that moment (like an approaching ship).