Topics Existence

Question I was thinking, Is "absolutely nothing" logically possible? And I would just like to know what you would think of this argument. IF it is accepted that 1) "X is true if X corresponds to reality" then it would be logically impossible for "absolutely nothing" to exist. "Absolutely Nothing" implies no reality. If there is no reality then one can never say that "absolutely nothing" can exist, since "absolutely nothing" does not correspond to reality. But I ask you, if "absolutely nothing" is even possible. And if it is not possible, then what logical proofs are there. Thank you!

Accepted:
November 28, 2006

Comments

If someone asks me what's in the refrigerator and I answer "Absolutely nothing", what am I saying? I'm not saying that there's something in the refrigerator after all, namely absolutely-nothing. What I'm doing is denying that there is something in the refrigerator. Although the sentences "The milk is in the refrigerator" and "Absolutely nothing is in the refrigerator" are grammatically comparable, their logical structures are different. In order for the first claim to be true, there must be something that "The milk" refers to and that something needs to be in the refrigerator. But that's not the case for the second claim. In order for the second to be true, the claim that there is at least one thing in the refrigerator needs to be false. It is not the case that in order for the second to be true "Absolutely nothing" must refer to something and that something is in the refrigerator.

People have, for thousands of years, been misled by the superficial grammatical similarities of these two claims and have, for as long, been battling the philosophical conundrums (of the kind you formulate) that this false assimilation leads to. Complete clarity about all this was only achieved towards the end of the 19th Century, in large part due to the work of the German mathematician-philosopher Gottlob Frege. For a related issue, see Question 49.

Assuming that in some sense no statement can be true unless it corresponds to reality or to how things are, which is not that bad a principle, the possibly true statement in question, note, is not, say, that absolutely nothing exists (which, as the other respondent suggests, has a tricky logical grammar), but most likely, that there being absolutely nothing is possible, or a possible state of affairs. Well, that might indeed be true, but then it does also correspond to reality, in the sense that reality, as we understand it, indeed contains or admits of that possibility.

I'd like to take this question in a slightly different direction. I accept the point made by Prof. George: we don't need to think of the phrase "absolutely nothing" as referring to something; the logic of "There's milk in the fridge" isn't the same as the logic of "There's absolutely nothing in the fridge." But I'd like to pick up on a point in my colleague Prof. Levinson's reply: that if there being absolutely nothing is a possible state of affairs, then reality contains that possibility.

Start by mulling over the idea that there being absolutely nothing is a possible state of affairs. A person might wonder: is a state of affairs something? Are there such things as states of affairs? How about possible states of affairs? If so, then so long as there is at least one possible states of affairs, there's not absolutely nothing. Now suppose -- as at least some philosophers seem to -- that for it to be possible that X, there must be a possible state of affairs in which X is true. This brings us to a conundrum. Suppose we think: there could have been absolutely nothing. On the line we've been following, that means that there must be a possible state of affairs in which it's true that there's absolutely nothing. But if there is, then there's at least one thing: that possible state of affairs. And so the supposed possibility that there might have been absolutely nothing turns out to be incoherent after all.

Anyone who's bothered to read this far might be wondering: was writing all that a good use of a grown man's time? But perhaps we can use it to point to a slightly less seedy line of inquiry. Philosophers have sometimes thought of existing things as falling into one of two categories: contingently existing or necessarily existing. The stuff around us -- my computer, me, you, the Empire State Building... are in the first category. But is there anything in the second? If there is, then for reasons that don't call on my sleazy paradox, it's not possible that there might have been nothing. Some things -- the necessary ones -- exist no matter what.

What might count? The Ontological Argument claimed that God is a necessary being. It's a fascinating argument, but for my own part, I don't think it works. But some abstract entities might fit into the category of necessary beings. One interesting candidate, amusingly enough, is the empty set: the set with no members at all, denoted as Ø. If there's really such a thing as the empty set, it's hard to see how it might have failed to exist. So perhaps it's a necessary entity. And if it is, it brings an infinity in its wake: we get the set whose only member is the empty set, usually written {Ø}, the set whose members are Ø and {Ø}, written {Ø,{Ø}}, and a dizzying infinity beyond that.

Not everyone agrees, needless to say. But maybe, just maybe, the empty set is the ultimate stopgap against existential emptiness.