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Non-existence is impossible?

Thanks for an awesome post SS! :) It made me realise that we were saying quite similar things in many respects. Perhaps we've chosen to perceive the same question, albeit from different angles.

-=SS=- said:
But language is just one method.. art is another for example. There are many ways to communicate understanding but most are indirect and can be misleading or misconstrued (like with language). The only direct ways are either doing it yourself by becoming or having someone reach into your mind directly through transmission.
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I would argue here that Art (if you're talking particularly of visual art) is its own language. It presents us with a system of signs to interpret. The cool thing about Art, or a walk in a beautiful park, for example is that it can cross sociolinguistic boundaries and illicit the same effect in persons from different parts of the world whose language is unintelligible to each other. The world is a language that surrounds all of us and it speaks to everyone from the second we're born to the second we die - perceiving the world is a form of interpretation of this language, that's why different people witnessing a certain event can recount the occurrence in completely distinct ways. It's also the reason that while there are many different languages in the world, they all function in the same manner, which is the interpretation of signs.

This is why linguistic philosophy interests me - I want to see what's behind the language(s) without the approximation of meaning, which is the best language can do.

I do have a strong belief in my viewpoint, yes indeed, but deconstructing language threatening... no, just an inefficient use of ones time if one is searching for the truth that's all. Language is secondary.. you could spend your entire life playing with it and not get close to the truth. Like the Rabbi playing with Kabbalah or the astrologist, you get lost in symbols and end up chasing your own tail.
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There is a lot of Nietzsche's Zarathustra here, and what you write is quite beautiful. But I'm confused by what you mean by "truth". Is this a subjective truth? Or are you proposing that the "truth" is the same for everyone?

But there is something to get, something to become (the truth). The meaning of life? What ever you assign to it. In and of itself it is pointless/it doesn't matter.. it just is, a hall of mirrors, an unresolvable mathematical equation. There is no point trying to explain it with language because people will always get the wrong idea.. history shows this to be the case, with Jesus, Buddha, and many others. The only way is to go there yourself.
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I entirely agree that language is not a sufficient vehicle to transpose any information, and for this reason it is even more important to understand how it functions and be able to deconstruct it. For me, it's not about an intellectual wank at all - its also a deconstruction of the thought processes that tie us to the world in a way that allows us to go our own ways.

Much better to just examine the Mind instead of the language that arises out of the Mind.. why bother to investigate something that is secondary when you can be more direct? Language is inherently deceptive. Just look at the way people function and use it to their own end.. hell, look at the way our society is constructed! The Establishment uses it to manipulate billions of people, convincing them into willful slavery for dreams and hopes that lead no-where. The whole idea of "law" is just a clever way of manipulating people with language for the selfish desires of a small group right at the top.
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If you look at semiotics it will allow you to see an entirely logical explanation for exactly what you're writing here. The mind interprets the world, the world is made up of a system of signs. Language is an approximation of the meaning of those signs, and in essence, is deceptive as you say. What interests me is not the process of deconstruction for its own sake, but deconstruction that offers one the possibility to enter the mysterious world without the layers of confusion that language creates.

The very (non)philosophy that you're criticising could actually assist you in the points that you're making here.

:)
 
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I had this thought last night. Think about life right now. It's something. You never had a choice but to experience something. Can you ever remember a time nothing was experienced? Does the mystery of universe hold a something for everything? Does the nature of the universe value something over nothing? Are there gaps and voids, or does everything just exchange places? My mind is blown.
 
I had the same thought again, when walking through the desert on mescaline two nights ago. It was a lot clearer this time.

Existence implies non-existence just as life implies death; being alive means not being dead, being dead means not being alive.

Non-existence is in the past and the future; the past and future versions of me are not experiencing.

Only the present version of me is.

The experience appears continuous because that's how my brain works, constantly processing memory.

Thus at death, what happens? There can't only be non-existence because where is its dualistic opposite?
 
Most of the universe consists of empty space, or nothing. There are infinitely many points in space in which nothing exists, otherwise there would be an ether, or medium in which things exist, and that ether would provide an absolute frame of reference against which the position of everything in the universe could be mapped. There would be a definite point in space from which the universe began, and the vector of all moving galaxies and super clusters would have originated from a singularity. If there were an ether, the speed of light would be variable, not constant, and relativistic effects, such as aberrations in the orbit of Mercury, or gravity lensing, would not happen. Within nothing, particles and anti-particles spontaneously emerge then anihilate.
 
Exactly. By definition, there can't be 'nothing' within the universe (or in existence at all). Unless you subscribe to Michael Ende's Neverending Story version of reality.
 
I'm writing what is going through my head, seeking reflection on the sorts of conversations I normally have with myself, no doubt there are errors. I am confusing a zero sum with nothing, the entire universe is probably a zero sum and it's not nothing. Is the space within the event horizon of a black hole part of our universe? It has gravitational pull, so to that extent, it must be part of our universe, also there is Hawkings radiation, but in most other respects it is not part of our universe. Entropy is one of the problems of a black hole, it must not have a net effect of decreasing the entropy of the universe. One model that Hawkings proposed is that information essentially smears on the event horizon of the black hole so entropy is preserved. I think gravity is a property of space and that there is no force particle associated with gravity. If there is a graviton, it would have to have 0 mass, or would somehow have to stay outside the event horizon. Could nothing have a volume? I think it is the divide by zero type of infinity, so in some sense, it could have infinite volume as well as 0 volume.

Duality, or parity, is an anthropocentric expectation, it used to be thought an inherent property of the universe, but special cases have been found to lack parity e.g. 1956 experiments with beta-emitting cobalt nuclei at NBS by Chien-Shiung Wu et. al.

If nothing or non-existence is possible, it would be unknowable and impossible to experience, if you were to experience it, it has no end nor beginning, so you would not be able to perceive when it started and when it ended, because it has no time. Possibly it could happen during a near-death experience when you were brain-dead, but you would have no knowledge of it because by definition, you could not experience it, but unfortunately, that is a tautological argument.
 
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I wonder if you could measure the gravitational field of a black hole with extreme precision if you could indirectly "see" inside a black hole in a sense, possibly it could show up in the x-ray spectrum as well, think of it as looking at a shadow of an object. I highly recommend Morgan Freeman's Through The Wormhole under the influence.
 
0=/=0 and
2+2=5

Start with: -20 = -20
Which is the same as: 16-36 = 25-45
Which can also be expressed as: (2+2) 2 (9 X (2+2) = 52) 9 X 5
Add 81/4 to both sides: (2+2) 2 (9 X (2+2) + 81/4 = 52) 9 X 5 + 81/4
Rearrange the terms: ({2+2}) 9/2) 2 = (5-9/2) 2
Ergo: 2+2 - 9/2 = 5
Hence: 2 + 2 = 5
 
When you die, the universe ends. Hence, non-existence cannot exist, so to speak, as there is nowhere for it to not-exist.
 
existence = any given possible event from the combinations of the laws of the universe within infinity.
non-existence = everything outside of that realm, possibly in another universe with different laws.
uniqueness = there exists only one possible combination of a given event
nothing = 0 = change in an event where a given law is held constant, or a combination of laws are independent of each other (they are unrelated)
infinity = an uncountable value given to the number of events in a sequence of the combinations of the laws of the universe.
eternity = the set of all infinities

the past is perfect and does not exists because the events are unique, the present uniquely exists, and the future is random.
 
fridgebuzz said:
I had this thought last night. Think about life right now. It's something. You never had a choice but to experience something. Can you ever remember a time nothing was experienced? Does the mystery of universe hold a something for everything? Does the nature of the universe value something over nothing? Are there gaps and voids, or does everything just exchange places? My mind is blown.
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I can't say that I remember times when I experienced nothing, because awareness of memory would be something, wouldn't it? I can only figure, by process of elimination, that there was a brief time in my life, about 10 minutes, in which I experienced nothing, because of my memory of before and after the non-existence event, in which case there was nothing to experience for that time, but by a miracle of modern science I was brought back to life and can relay said event to you all now. I don't know if the limits of possibility are subject to the rules of logic, it seems close minded to suppose that they are. It's just a gut feeling I get about the issue.
 
I've wondered if a black hole could project an object to a point in space beyond it like an optical lens projects the image of an object. I was pretty high when I thought of that it seemed like a revolutionary idea at the time.
 
sazed said:
I've wondered if a black hole could project an object to a point in space beyond it like an optical lens projects the image of an object. I was pretty high when I thought of that it seemed like a revolutionary idea at the time.
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It's called a wormhole. Unless you had that thought before the 1935 then no, it wasn't revolutionary.
If you seriously mean project, then no it can't.
 
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