Nothing

[@KaneB]

Quine's meaning skepticism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jWe0Ymx9rMt6i5I Kripke's meaning skepticism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rKupXq2caator68 Can we conceive the impossible? kzbin.info/www/bejne/eIrWhWR4oJaSbrM Moorean arguments: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2jdpWCqer6jpbc

[@silverharloe]

Please stop trying to convince me I don't have hands. I need them to leave comments which increase engagement on your videos.

[@TheKingWhoWins]

No one is typing. There is no comment

[@jonathangjertsen3450]

Westerhoff really said "I don't exactly think, therefore I ain't exactly"

[@evanliveshere]

😂😂😂

[@wenaolong]

Or "I don't think exactly, therefore I exactly ain't"

[@canti7951]

"nuh uh"

[@frncsp]

⠀

[@MrAdamo]

Still 1 byte, 8 bits of information

[@kyol420]

Too political

[@doctorinternet8695]

​@kyol420 everything is political

[@jonasjensen9305]

I became spiritually enlightened, when I read your comment. But of course, there was no comment to read, nor was there a reader, so "I" didn't really become enlightened, because there was no truth to be found, besides what is already here, which is nothing. Whoever liked this comment is in need of therapeutic intervention and the compassionate attention of a loving, non-judgmental supporting network. And yes, I liked it, myself.

[@jonasjensen9305]

@@doctorinternet8695Are farts political, then?

[@M0ONCommander]

Descartes' career in shambles

[@tzakman8697]

-Hey, what is this video you are watching? -Nothing.

[@italogiardina8183]

Neti Neti and Ontological Nihilism: A Connection The Vedic phrase "Neti Neti" (Not this, not this) encapsulates a process of relentless negation. At its core, it suggests that reality, or the ultimate truth (Brahman), cannot be defined by any conceptual category or worldly phenomenon (blue sky thinking if you like). This aligns strikingly with ontological nihilism, a philosophical stance asserting that nothing is foundational to this and this to being relative to any observer based on the thesis of illusionism of reality where appearances are real but if fact is nothing giving rise to cycles qua zero where zero immunises metaphorically one thing from another through connection of infinitesimals.

[@low3242]

what about pain and suffering, feeling loss of blood from your body? what about body?

[@italogiardina8183]

@@low3242 If the central nervous system negates the peripheral then pain is mitigated or obliterated as in the case if under general anaesthetic.

[@Just_Sara]

Based on the thumbnail I expected this video to have zero sound or visuals. Disappointed. 1/10.

[@James-ll3jb]

Good one😅

[@Aluminata]

It doesn't 😅

[@James-ll3jb]

@@Aluminata (?(

[@uninspired3583]

The sound, visuals, and your disappointment are only seemings, not real.

[@charles21137]

⁠@@uninspired3583Those things are only seemingly seemings, so they aren’t really seemings.

[@eshansingh1]

Good contrast to the video "ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING"

[@Moley1Moleo]

If nothing exists, then that might make quantification over everything a little easier.

[@henrikmunch8609]

I love it when this channel introduces wildly improbable positions like Ontological Nihilism or Trivialism, and by the end of the video I kinda end up subscribing to them.

[@jackkrell4238]

Why? Both views are metaphysically absurd and contradictory. Like, the very fact that you subscribe to ON would by itself refute the position.

[@low3242]

man im begging you to do an episode on the philosophy of disease and sickness. there's soooo much literature on mind and mental health but what about body and innumerable sicknesses? philosophers deal with death but what about sickness of the body? why there's is so little written about the greatest misfortune. i can go with a sick mind but NEVER with a sick body, i have to drag it. it's painful, eternally painful.

[@seanmuniz4651]

Carneades has two related vids: What is disease? kzbin.info/www/bejne/poCqqKmEo9mDmJo What is health? kzbin.info/www/bejne/i6DSXq2AnL-eadE

[@Daaako]

i would really love to talk to someone who actually holds this position. but they dont seem to exist.

[@JulioCSilvaPhilosophy]

😂

[@HerrEinzige]

Unfortunately for Jan, something does exist. And that is both the like button, and the comment section, of which I am partaking in both.

[@philosophicsblog]

At 9:17, we see a fundamental weakness in Philosophy in that it is fundamentally rooted in language, which is an imprecise invention. This imprecision leaves it wide open to paradoxes such as this. Truth and by extension truth-aptness are necessarily inventions. As is nihilism, so goes non-cognitivism. Philosophers (and people more generally) are uncomfortable with concepts they can't heuristically wrap their heads around, so they uncritically dismiss these notions. They err on the side of Pragmatism. Do you have any thoughts on this? In the end, it seems we arrive at a place that leaves us in a positon where even if this is absolutely and universally (even multiversally) true, then so what?

[@scriabinismydog2439]

I don't get how language is an imprecise invention since it literally grants the only ground for rational comunication between human beings. No natural language, no exchange of ideas; which obviously leads to the absence of progress, be it social-technological or purely theoretical-conceptual. How would we come up with truth? That is: how can truth be invented? Sure, supposedly true propositions can be formulated arbitrarily: I can write or utter "2+2=4" and suppose this proposition to be true. We tend to pragmatism because that's the only plausible way to verify the truth-validity of claims without regressing in either dogmatism or skepticism; that is, the truth-validity of a proposition is determined once the implicit "functional" conceptual content in the proposition is either responsive or not to conceptual manipulation: these are simply processes of deduction, induction and abduction, the latter of which is both necessary for scientific inquiry and necessarily implies the existence of some form of mind-independent phenomena. I think that claiming that 'philosophers' are uncomfortable with grappling concepts non-heuristically is way too broad of a claim, but at the same time it indexes an interesting observation on philosophical speculation: can we do otherwise? A pragmatist would tell you no, of course we can't, because insofar as making linguistic inferences is a cognitive capacity it is specifically modelled (via biological evolution) to grant us ways of dealing - practically - with an external environment. Truth wasn't invented ad hoc, nor was it always already in the world (well, I guess if you're realist on universals and abstract objects you do believe that truth is always-already in the world... see the greek notion of aletheia), we constantly try to achieve it (or better, approximate _to_ it) to reach a better understanding of causal phenomena. The fact that linguistic/logical paradoxes arise when we come to things like self-reference, absolute claims etc. is more due to an incorrect application of rational norms (rules of inference, understanding of context, comunicability of notions...) than the fact that language is imprecise as such. You can have a precise language only by way of formalization, but a formal language is nothing more than a very narrow restriction of natural language, which anyway is required in order to explicate the terms and rules of any formal language. With this I don't mean to say that philosophy is merely conceptual heuristics, but it has certainly something to do with conceptual engineering. Understanding has something to do with manipulation; that's why many philosophers are compelled to think that the acquisition of knowledge is a dialectical process.

[@philosophicsblog]

@@scriabinismydog2439 Knowledge is a dialectical process. It happens to be asymptotic, as are abstract concepts (justice, freedom…), but these are also multidimensional and they fail or obfuscate on each dimension. Sure, I can try to be pragmatic, but this just means I'll accept the error in meaning and hope I'm correct often enough.

[@5driedgrams]

This channel is the best.

[@InventiveHarvest]

Bunny Lebowski: Uli doesn't care about anything. He's a Nihilist. The Dude: Ah, that must be exhausting.

[@tzakman8697]

The Nothing Noths.

[@sttthr]

I love to nothe.

[@charles21137]

9:58 I would say a better contradiction would be the fact that if ON were true, then you would be saying truth exist, which means ON is not true.

[@niche657]

Just stumbled upon your videos, love the format and how you explain things. Subbed and also will engage with videos in future.

[@sircamquat]

Sometimes I feel like I could permanently solve the field of ontology if only I had the opportunity to publish like one paper. I really think I could do it.

[@TheKingWhoWins]

Publish a blank page

[@Nijith45]

You guys should read On Non-Existence by the sophist Gorgias...

[@blankname1209]

I’m not really convinced by the idea that if, for all X, some sane arguments reject the existence of X, then ontological nihilism is in no worse a boat than that argument. Just because A is plausible and B is plausible does not mean that “A and B” is plausible, a la the lottery paradox. Showing that there is always a defensible view that denies the existence of something does not show that all such arguments are JOINTLY defensible.

[@mightyNosewings]

Obvious example: there are many claims A for which both "A" and "not A" are plausible, but "A and not A" is (on most views) actually impossible.

[@charles21137]

If they don’t believe in the law of non contradiction, people who believe in ON should have no problem with believing that things exist. It might seem to contradict(making them seem to be illogical together) but they don’t believe that type of logic governs the universe.

[@BumbleTheBard]

I wouldn't take any notice of Jan Westerhoff's argument. I happen to know that he doesn't exist.

[@KaneB]

Luckily for Westerhoff's argument, there is no such thing as not taking notice of things.

[@helveticaneptune537]

Kane would you say The buddhist concept of anattā which pertains that there is no permanent changing "self" or the principle of "non self" is similar to the eliminist position of there being no fundamental substance an entity is made up of, as we get an infinite regress into subatomic particles, quarks, and maybe strings and so on

[@KaneB]

I'm not an expert on Buddhism but yeah, these seem like similar ideas. I suspect that anattā would be one motivation to accept premise 2 of the nihilist argument.

[@seanmuniz4651]

Did you mean "unchanging" instead of "changing" self?

[@wmpx34]

I guess I adopt the polar opposite stance: Not only do things exist, but something HAS to exist. True “nothing” is impossible. And the simple reason I believe that is that I can’t imagine the phase transition from nothing to something. Ergo, there was always something. It’s a bit like the strange claim that a god would have existed for eternity then randomly decided to create the universe at some arbitrary point in time. Why then, and not some other time? Just on a whim? We seem to run into that same problem with going from nothing to something.

[@KaneB]

I've never been troubled by the idea that something just popped into existence. It might be a little misleading to frame this as a "phase transition" because suggests a change from one type of state to a different type of state, but on the view that something pops into existence, there is no *state of nothingness* prior to it, at least not in the same sort of way that this melted ice cream was in a solid state prior to becoming liquid. With that in mind, don't we have an answer to the question, "why then, and not something other time?" There was no time prior to something's popping into existence. Though if you are troubled by the idea of something from nothing, the ontological nihilist also offers you a solution: nothing ever came into existence in the first place!

[@jackkrell4238]

@@KaneB Or there was never a nothing for something to pop up from. Since nothing would technically still be "something", the entire basis for this line of reasoning is just dumb. If there was no time before, then there couldn't be a phase transition to begin with. I'm not following you here, Kane. ON might be one of the few positions which I'm confident couldn't be metaphysically possible.

[@KaneB]

​@@jackkrell4238 I don't understand this comment. What you say in the first three sentences is exactly the point I was making. But then you say that you don't follow my reasoning.

[@jackkrell4238]

@@KaneB My point is that something must exist( a position antithetical to ON, something you were defending.)

[@KaneB]

@@jackkrell4238 I'd agree that if we treat nothing as a kind of state from which something might or might not arise, then we must be conceiving of nothingness in such a way that it is something, in a broader sense of the term "something". The answer is just to be careful not to reify nothingness in this fashion.

[@WackyConundrum]

It's curious that these modern analytical philosophers have so little knowledge about the problems they're discussing, which makes them think they discover something new, when in reality they just rehash some old positions, but in worse ways. Philosophers of the East have been discussing these matters for millenia. Most notably, Nāgārjuna and Chandrakirti with their Madhyamaka school of Buddhism.

[@KaneB]

Given that Westerhoff specializes in Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, I'm pretty sure he's well aware that he's not really putting forward any new ideas here. "Rehashing old positions" is precisely the point, I think. (I assume that the point is not to do it worse, but personally I vastly prefer reading the contemporary analytic work. So I don't find it worse.)

[@WackyConundrum]

@@KaneB Out of curiosity, what do you think is the "point" of rehashing these old ideas (especially, without getting to the conclusions the ancients have gotten to)?

[@KaneB]

@@WackyConundrum It's fun

[@casualmajestic9223]

I LOVE KANE B ❤

[@dominiks5068]

I'm always interested in weird views, but this one strikes me as very boring: both of the premises that Westerhoff gives strike me as independently extremely implausible and are by far and away minority positions in contemporary metaphysics. What would be interesting is an argument for the thesis that nothing exists from premises that most philosophers would independently accept.

[@KaneB]

Off the top of my head, I don't know of any contemporary philosopher in analytic metaphysics who endorses (P1) as Westerhoff interprets it -- that is, as ruling out the existence of anything that depends *in any sense* on anything else. The idea that a child does not exist, because the child was caused to exist by the activity of her parents, just seems ridiculous to me. I can understand the attraction of the mereological nihilist's elimination of composite objects such as chairs, because it seems like we can give a complete causal explanation of everything by appealing to simples; composite objects, if they exist, are arguably explanatorily redundant. (I'm not saying this is a convincing argument. Just that I *get* it.) But I don't at all get the idea that O1's being causally dependent on O2 would indicate the nonexistence of O1.

[@dominiks5068]

​​@@KaneBMaybe Westerhoff should formulate P1 in terms of grounding instead? i.e. O1 existentially depends on O2 iff O2 would, were O1 to exist, ground the fact that O1 exists That seems significantly less ridiculous (the existence of a child isn't grounded in its parents)

[@KaneB]

@@dominiks5068 Actually he does note briefly that the argument could be put in terms of grounding and yeah, I'd agree with you that this framing is more plausible.

[@Everywhere4]

52:08 But this convention seems rather questionable. For example, if I know that someone engages in motivated reasoning, then I might expect that he only explored pathways that lead to his favorite conclusion while ignoring or being unaware of the problems and pitfalls that comes with his path of reasoning. This might suggest that the person in question is unreliable when it comes to tracking the truth for a certain topic.

[@xiutecuhtli15]

To me it seems like the global nihilism should just be lumped with trivialism and global skepticism. All of these are unbeatable because they can keep saying "i agree with your counterargument and i can still be right" or "those sentences actually contain no counterargument" or "we can never be sure if that counterargument works". And nobody would ever live by this system. However supposed believers are navigating the world, it is better modeled by a different set of assumptions producing something other than these positions. These are only interesting to consider for like counterargument purposes, like "it turns out that X view leads to trivialism" or something.

[@xiutecuhtli15]

It reminds me of schmorals. Like, if someone says they beleive global nihilism, they schmelieve something else which they actually apply and use, and I would rather discuss their schmeliefs and schmilosophy. Let belief in global nihilism be completely ignored.

[@M0ONCommander]

gave this some time to marinate. I wonder how an ontological nihilist would account for the existence of the conscience that even concieves the ON notion. If they would go for the route of that thought is comprised of internal words/propositions and encompass the refutation of thought within the refutation of propositions. And perhaps I'm understanding wrong. But it begs the question of why would an Ontological Nihilist ever be bothered to defend their position from refutations which, proportedly, do not exist?

[@loryugan6574]

Its appearances all the way down.

[@ahumandoing6813]

philosophers make these types of claims and then wonder why no one takes them seriously

[@davib.franco7857]

As an enthusiastic of philosophy, I absolutely agree

[@kennythelenny6819]

I think it's simply to experience.

[@chaotickreg7024]

It's like aphilosophy and I love it

[@yyzzyysszznn]

thank god

[@horsymandias-ur]

I think those who prima facie deny the argument any value have not yet had realizations of their own forgetfulness. But of course there might also be people who find it conceptually interesting and then get hooked on it. Even worse for them

[@lbjvg]

Whether ON is True or False makes no difference. It seems rather Scholastic. Like ‘How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin?” That question has never been resolved, and yet no one cares anymore. Altho, the process of argumentation itself may have independent benefits.

[@henrikmunch8609]

Q: Why is there something rather than nothing? A: There is not something at all!

[@TheDnegDegen]

Comment for algorithm 👍👍to pump up this meaningless existence

[@Zagg777]

If the ontological nihilist is correct, them neither the ontological nihilist nor its argument exist. In which case, I shan’t pay any attention to it or its self-defeating argument.

[@KaneB]

But what if the ontological nihilist is incorrect? Then you may have an opponent and an argument to contend with!

[@bokramubokramu8834]

Savage

[@sync2597]

​@@KaneBResulting in a self refuting claim, if Ontological nihilism were true then there would be nothing to defend and no objections to refute yet they defend their position and refute objections

[@mikip3242]

1 hour talking about nothing

[@lorenzreiher1407]

Wow, nobody just sat down and recorded a non-existent video for nobody to see. I have a lot of sympathy for that kind of view but from another angle, being that if we take descartes' view that we cannot be sure that the outside world/anything beyond our self exists, and the churchlands' view that we cannot be sure that our mind/our 'self' exists, then we might end up with ontological nihilism, that just nothing exists (plus maybe arguments from mereological nihilism if they're also needed). Would that train of argument not also get us there or is that what the author of the paper was getting at? So, just combining all the other nihilisms? And is the authors main argument in the latter half that we can plausibly construct an infinite regress case for dependence/appearance, so therefore we are not justified in believing in the existence of anything that is 'grounding' any of the parts of the chain (in the way that the refraction of light 'grounds' the mirage)? So we would just have to drop the whole chain?

[@KaneB]

Yep, that's an interesting approach, and one that I find more intuitively compelling than the sort of argument that Westerhoff gives in the paper. I guess it's because I'm not attracted to the kind of metaphysical principles he's appealing to here, whereas I am attracted to the skeptical challenges to both the mind-independent world and the internal world. I suppose the limitation of this approach though is that it's more of an epistemological argument. So the conclusion would be that we can't know that anything exists, rather than that, in fact, nothing exists. But perhaps that in itself is enough to put ontological nihilism on the table; I think it would at least go some way towards dealing with the objection that ontological nihilism is just obviously false. And yeah, Westerhoff argues that there could be an infinite regress of mere appearance, with each appearance having its source in things that also turn out to be merely apparent.

[@tomripleyro]

If you say that there are no meanings you don t necessarily mean that words and sentences don t mean anything at all... To say that meanings aren t objects with magical powers does not mean that there are no meanings at all...

[@BenStowell]

Argument 1: We have Russellian acquaintance of some things, so ON is certainly false. Argument 2: We ought to explain things as far as we can. If there is nothing, then there is no explanation for why there is nothing. So ON is a theory with zero explanatory power, which makes it a worthless theory.

[@rath60]

If there is a finite regression then there is a base which contradicts the premise that there are no bases. I f there is an infinite regression of appearance then the infinite regression is a thing. Also this is basically trivialism.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

48:35: But useful manners os speaking don't exist either, or do they? Does this video exist? Do Westerhoff's arguments exist? Do his articles exist? Does his university job exist? Does the money and recognition he craves exist? Does he exist himself? To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, I think that if you don't exist, the very least you could do is shut up!

[@tomyn2]

Neither you nor me really exist

[@amAntidisestablishmentarianist]

Except by God.

[@tzakman8697]

@@amAntidisestablishmentarianist NOOOO it is the flying spaghetti monster!

[@Millathunmain]

@@tzakman8697 sHoW mE tHe EvIdEnCe sHoW mE tHe EvIdEnCe

[@sidarthur8706]

egos are made up, fine. but there has to be something there to make them up

[@amAntidisestablishmentarianist]

@@tzakman8697 Well everybody has his own understanding of God.

[@A3Kr0n]

Not first. Nothing

[@blankname1209]

Maybe I’m just confused here, but wouldn’t a false appearance of something still be something that exists? More specifically, the false appearance would exist, even if nothing underlies it.

[@blankname1209]

Oh it seems like that’s addressed later.

[@thethorninmyside4473]

You may be very interested in a few of the “radical non duality” channels here on KZbin, sometimes referred to as “neo-advaita”, there’s a lot of overlap with your topic and they are definitely exploring some of the same ideas The most prominent speaker would be Tony Parsons, followed by people like Jim Newman, Richard Sylvester, Kenneth Madden and Andreas Muller and others who talk with anyone who shows up at their meetings (The best search results would probably be found by searching for any of those names individually) I’ve been pretty fascinated for a few months now, it’s always difficult to find the words to describe what they’re talking about exactly… but if anyone wants to listen and share their thoughts, I’ll definitely be checking this comment every now and then and will probably add some more thoughts when they occur to me

[@jbone13131313]

I’ve been studying the topic for years. The best book I have found on it is Jed McKenna’s “Spiritual Enlightenment Is The Damndest Thing.” It cooks the mind and ego in the most brutal and delightful way. Runners up include: The Heart Sutra Avadhtua Gita Ribu Gita Yoga Vasishtha Sara I love Jim Newman too. The first time I heard him speak it sounded like garble. Then one day it all clicked or…melted.

[@WackyConundrum]

The response against representationalism was very poor. All the responses merely retold representations in other terms and then proclaimed that representations don't "exist". For example, "it only appears that representations exist" - here, the "it appears" is exactly the representation that is at stake, "there are no representations, we just see a horse" - here, the "we see X" is the representation that is at stake.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

There exist no arguments for ontological nihilism!

[@furkanekkiz7611]

or against

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

@@furkanekkiz7611 Well, if the universal nihilists were right, we wouldn't have been having this discussion.

[@EdgarQer]

Ни меня ни тебя нет на самом деле

[@jackkrell4238]

Why?

[@schizotypical]

KING NOTHINGG

[@YasserMohammadElmorsy]

Cannot an ON denier just rephrase P2 as: “nothing fundamental can be know to exist” (I.e. treating non-foundationalism is as an epistemic thesis)? This will make the argument invalid. Also, cannot she just claim that the sense of “exists” in elimitativism is different from that in non-foundationalism because in the former it means “exists independently” while in the later it means “exists stationarily”. Of course both elomitavism and non-foundationalism (as an ontic thesis) can be attacked directly on several grounds. I think the ONist can successfully argue that ON is on the table (same as the solipsist) but it is much harder to argue that the argument given is sound.

[@justus4684]

Great

[@seanmuniz4651]

I think what is missing from this video to make it more self-contained is what is even meant by "exists." Some interesting Kane videos related to the topic of existence: What is Reality? kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKnOoKmrr9mCh7s Are There Nonexistent Objects? kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJWWmHWGrN1qjKc

[@brucemarvonek4856]

You might want to join the Procrastinators Society. You send them an application. You are rejected. Because a "true" procrastinator would never get around to applying to the Club

[@Judas.G0J]

This is just Nagarjuna and Buddhism.

[@rickybloss8537]

If nothing exists and there is no A == A. Then if i say A is equivalent to nothing and b is equivalent to a hand. I could say nothing == hand and therefore something exists, all within their framework. If this is all within the so called rules of philosophy and everything is sound doesn't this break everything? I'm honestly so confused or not guess lol

[@KaneB]

@@rickybloss8537 Yep, I suspect that this view ends up being functionally equivalent to trivialism.

[@real_pattern]

i have nothing to say

[@TheKingWhoWins]

The dad joke essential

[@real_pattern]

@@TheKingWhoWins and i'm nothing like a dad

[@Millathunmain]

Had fun sorry nothing watching nothing 😌

[@szefszefow7562]

didnt like GE Moore settle this

[@dillawell]

nothing

[@eoghan.5003]

Nothing to see here

[@wenaolong]

It sounds like a position someone can validly take only when they don't exist, which would preclude them taking that position. But they have no positive assurance that even that will happen. It's not so profound that "nothing may exist" or that "not anything may exist" or that "everything does not exist" or any of that. It is much more profound that existence exists, and that it may be inescapable. Better would be that it took a form to ensure that the consequences of your actions and decisions were inescapable by your self, and everyone else could exile you from their existences if they wanted, and that this would work out over time for the best, but that is wishful thinking. Does wishful thinking not exist? Oh, well then never mind. But seriously, since it has a valid logical form, and because it does fit the right ideas into the structure of that argument such that the result is a sort of "metaphysical analogue" of the back and forth between a tautology and a self-contradiction, it has an enjoyable structure and raising many interesting notions and ideas. Regardless of merit, isn't the idea of "modal defensibility" to ON at least an interesting move in the game? It's borderline parlor trick metaphysics, but that still would count as relevant and possibly significant. I could think of it as formally filling a role in philosophy similar to what a boundary condition in logic might. And logic doesn't escape the gravity of concerns that, even at its most basic form, threaten it with collapse. Yet it manages. The null set "exists" for us so that we may set up a logical structure that profits our investment of thought in a particular way that leads us to continue thinking about logic, mathematics (or metaphysics) in these ways. It seems at least as worthy of philosophy as zero is worthy of mathematics. And all this, worthily presented by Kane B. himself. I think it is right to put ON on the table. Just look at in how many ways, and for how long it can be kept on the table through a concise and coherent summary of it! It leads into structures of our thoughtful consideration that exceed the original concerns of the thesis. It's as if pure form is being extracted from the most abstract content. That's not nothing for our consideration, ironically. A propositional something, arranged in a substantive enough way to appear valid, vanishes into nothing. Yet keeps us fascinated with it like some sort of Cheshire cat. Of course the Moorean move is perfectly responsive to ON, even though... perfect responses only appear to exist. Oh, but appearances are "only apparent"? How is that meaningfully different than the "mere appearance" of something that exists? ON can't clarify that, but just ignores any clarifications you put forth. Like a child's play, or a cute one-liner, it wears off over time. Like the appearance of ON's plausibility, which was only ever merely apparent. But mere appearances only get their "mereness" from a distinction from something "more than" merely apparent. But since ON denies that there is such a something, then it cannot consistently rely on that distinction to deny the existence of appearances. In essence, it simply denies existence. That's as sure a bet as denying an abstract formula. Yet it denies denial, since there is literally "nothing to deny"... so the immunization is clearly complete. I think this argues for it being a voluntarily entered status of nullification of thought by will, through a mechanism of cleverly jamming the gears of cognition, which you indicate shows a streak of meditation technique somehow crashing the philosophical party. The meditationalist may be keen on philosophy, but he has "literally nothing to say", as good old Wittgenstein pointed out. Alas, this is pure phenomenality without ontology, or perhaps "ontologically unequipped phenomenal experience"? Meditation trying to keep its floating clouds as abstract and metaphysical as possible? It does seem so. Substantively, the attempt to distinguish appearances from one another does not eliminate the source of their significance qua appearances of something existing because the "XYZ" configuration cannot "appear tigerly" so to speak, if there was no ontological notion of the tiger, or something sufficiently tiger-like (regardless of appearances, surely topology could be applied here, as in donut and coffee mug) to inspire the "idea" of tiger, projected (however falsely) onto (this) XYZ appearing tigerly. Tigerish appearances are ALL echoes of at least one "tiger appearing tigerly". To wit, the tiger on the screen was inspired by, or even an indirect but existential echo (appearance) of the tiger which was filmed. More indirectly, it may have been presented by AI driven CGI that couldn't be distinguished from "the real thing", but had to be trained on the real thing, just as our "meat-apparatus" had to have its occipital/occular parts in contact with the "mere appearance of the appearance". It's amazing how interesting and stimulating ON is, especially ironic also, in that it is literally "about nothing". It's like the Seinfeld of metaphysics, like the Buddha of philosophical discourse, or like the annoying teenager that plays devil's advocate but is also amusingly clever. It's like the philosophical muse that throws a jarring pick up line, but becomes more attractive the longer you look at her, and then leaves you well-exercised for your trouble. That's a lot of involvement in nothing, and that's "nothing to sneeze at"... (yoink)

[@jackrowland4629]

The Beatles win again!

[@natsumenatsume8708]

Are you ever planning on Hegel? I understand you might not be a continental philsopshor but all thats the more reason a neutral take on it could be interesting.

[@honoraryjew]

nothing?

[@ExistenceUniversity]

Love that I recently made the COMPLETE opposite video a week ago, basically titled EVERYTHING.

[@MarcoServetto]

please please can you talk about mathematical hyper realism? the stand that all things that can be mathematically modeled exists?

[@jamescareyyatesIII]

Why should I give a shit if anything exists or not ?

[@raktimamchiforthe4thtime445]

Nobody asked you to

[@luszczi]

Fun idea, a modern Parmenides in a way. Though I already reject the first premise...

[@KaneB]

I think Michael Della Rocca has defended a conclusion along these lines in his book "The Parmenidean Ascent", though I haven't read it. As far as I understand, he starts out by providing an argument against the possibility of relations, which leads him to deny the possibility of distinctions, so there are no distinct things; nor is there is even one thing that could be conceptually differentiated from anything else.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

Also, why should I listen to non-existent arguments from non-existent philosophers? Why does that pseudo-entity, Westerhoff, work so hard to convince me that he's right, if I don't even exist?

[@Hazaroth]

People like you ruined my life

[@dk1685]

No.

[@uwayn9829]

I wonder how this idea came to fruition when it leads most of its believers to suicide considering how depressing it is😅😬

[@KlPop-x1o]

Existence nihilism is just a thesis that there are no property bearers, only properties.

[@LordMarcus]

The more we talk little about it, the less gargantuan its reality became. Or won't haven't. Something in that range, you know, from ∅ to ∅.

[@GeekGawk]

nothing