Fascinating... Does zero exist, YES! But not as a material object, as a profound mystical experience! If we step outside of the mechanics of math, then we can ask, might there be a deeper meaning to numbers?
Now we want to ponder the deeper meaning of zero, and not just juggle thoughts, but utilize a method like Gendlin's Thinking at the Edge, or other similar methods. If we properly sit in a sort of meditative, even prayerful silence with the question, and we are truly completely open and receptive... if we have no preconceptions, and we allow an answer to arise, on its own, and it resonates... Well we might be surprised of the powerhouse of truth that is zero!
Zero both represents a state some call the Void, and we could even say it represents the openness of not-knowing that allows us to eventually experience the Void and ourselves as pure awareness.
You can't experience zero cause you still think the number 2 exists...
The recent reflection on “zero” and “nothingness” raises important questions about how concepts relate to reality. Zero, though indispensable in mathematics, is purely conceptual—it has no ontological extension, and its meaning depends entirely on contrast with what exists. In this light, “presence of absence” is a contradiction in terms—suggestive in sound, but collapsing on analysis.
If “nothingness” is a conceptual placeholder, it depends on the mind. Defining existence in terms of its negation then makes being a function of mind rather than that which mind identifies and describes—reversing the subject–object relationship.
Similarly, “outside the universe” names no location but simply “where everything isn’t.” The universe is the totality of all that is—finite, specific, and consisting of a plurality of entities with attributes, actions, and relationships. To exist is to be something, with specific attributes, in relation to other existents within the totality of existence; this is true of each part, and the totality itself is nothing over and above its parts.
The notion of “internal universes” confuses conception with ontology. Divergent conceptions do not create divergent realities; they reflect differing accuracy in conceptualizing the same reality. Such contradictory views (which are epistemological) certify error in thinking—all while the universe remains itself unaffected by our mental activity. Plato’s forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, and the cosmological multiverse are conceptual projections, not ontological discoveries.
By your own reasoning, if the “ground of being” has no attributes and is indistinguishable from nothingness, it exists only as a “conceptual placeholder,” just as zero exists. This conclusion follows not from dismissal, but from applying the same evidentiary and logical standards that rightly govern every other claim.
Your account places God outside existence, outside empirical verification, and then seeks to establish His reality through “absence of presence” arguments or appeals to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. This has the form of special pleading: the claim that the very thing in question must be exempt from the evidentiary and definitional standards applied to everything else. When a purportedly fundamental truth—one believed by countless illiterates in various forms—requires such mental gymnastics, the red flag is hard to ignore.
By contrast, my method begins with the direct perception of existence and the axiom of identity, yielding three corollaries: the necessity of attributes, difference, and relationship. From this foundation, existence itself is shown to make causality possible, rendering the notion of a “cause of existence” a metaphysical inversion. I trace how the mind forms concepts and expresses them in propositions, defining terms explicitly: existence as all that is, reality as all that is, as it is, ideas as epistemological, and the mind-independent as ontological. Anyone comparing the two approaches should immediately recognize the difference—not merely in conclusions, but in the axiomatic, systematic rigor of mine. Denying this framework is impossible without performing a contradiction, for language necessarily reflects the ontological reality identified by these axioms. This is not a matter of convenience or usage; it is the grounding of reality itself.
After some two decades of such discussions, I have seen a consistent pattern: once a theist realizes I ground all claims in the empirical and maintain a clear distinction between ideas and mind-independent objects, the conversation rarely continues. This, more than any argument, speaks to the real fault line between our approaches.
In short, my claim is that theologians conflate the object of their awareness—an idea—with something existing independently of their minds. This cognitive error doesn’t limit itself to theologians, however. Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, cosmology’s multiverse, your “ground of being”: are real as objects of thought, but existing only as ideas, not mind-independent entities. This relentless reification has not merely muddled metaphysics—it has systematically misled humanity into treating the contents of its imagination as reality.
But it is not merely an idea that existence precedes causality. It’s not merely an idea that to exist is to have attributes, to be distinct from all other existents in some respect, and to have relationships with all other existents. These are inescapable, undeniable fundamental ontological facts which are the basis of the concept “objectivity.”
Seems like some chicken and egg bullshit. I don’t see why someone couldn’t just reverse this argument back to you? You use a lot of words to state nothing new it seems. Of course what a person imagines is not automatically true. But what a person doesn’t know or is unaware of, is not automatically false. That is a fallacy…History has shown us time and time again about how there was a lot more out there and we humans were just ignorantly unaware. Your position is not one of superiority…instead it seems to just rest and rely on faith of another kind. And that faith is hypocritical because humans do not function like that in the day to day life. Conversely…I think you are too focused on your own beliefs to recognize what this writer is saying about stepping outside the limitations of our own universe/mind. The fact you call it difficult is a weak response. This is a fairly common consideration in all areas of innovative scientific discovery. One should try to think on stepping outside of one’s own biases because they are limiting. And that is what this article brought up to think on. They could be right or wrong, but the fact this conversation is so blankly dismissed is ridiculous. There is a whole other deep side and conversation here that this writer is bringing up, but you seem to be focused on the most rudimentary point made, which again, seems to indicate this very real issue of deep bias. You’re part of the problem. A bunch of words with nothing new to provide or gain.
To crystallize our exchange, I’d like to pose five direct questions. We can address each one at a time if you prefer:
1. Do you regard the issue of existence versus “nothing” as a chicken-and-egg conundrum with no objective means of resolution? If so, please explain why.
2. Do you hold that the direct perception of existence—the plurality of things, their attributes, their relations, and the fact that we ourselves are among them as subjects of consciousness—is faith-based? If so, what does the concept faith actually identify in this context vis-à-vis knowledge—and how do we objectively distinguish one from the other?
3. Do you maintain that ‘beliefs’ and ‘biases’ (always existing in propositional form) are irreducible fundamentals? If so, why? If not, then why take issue with my deeper analysis, which is more fundamental and forms the very precondition for beliefs and biases?
4. How do you define the terms universe and mind? What does the concept “universe” exclude, and by what means other than your mind do you know reality?
You claimed that I use many words without saying anything new. That implies you are already familiar with the issues underlying the questions above. If so, let’s engage them systematically.
Finally, I ask:
5. In what sense is the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” more fundamental than beginning with the fact of existence—its plurality, its all-encompassing scope, the identity and attributes of each existent, their differentiation and relations, the dependence of “nothing” on concept-formation rather than ontology, the independence of objects from the mind (excepting products of imagination), and the primacy of existence over causality (given that every “why” presupposes a prior existent)?
To leapfrog over these primaries by asking “Why is there something rather than nothing?”—or to treat Gödel’s incompleteness theorems as a given without first examining what a theory or formal system presupposes, how it differs from metaphysical reality, and the limits of its applicability—is to bypass an enormous body of knowledge and miss that the question or claim itself is invalid. Hence its author, (and Josh), retreat into silence rather than engage on objective first principles.
Primary philosophy, unlike questions that begin in medias res, leaves very little room for evasion. It demands attention to fundamental metaphysical facts: existence is, it is plural, each thing has identity and stands in relation to others, and life, consciousness, and mind are attributes of specific physical entities (e.g., man) and are what make objectivity possible.
These are the very foundations from which all concepts and arguments must be constructed. By starting here, inquiry is grounded, disciplined, and coherent, rather than built on unexamined assumptions or conceptual leaps. Every utterance is evaluated in light of what in reality our language identifies—whether it is a product of mind or exists independent of mind—whether it is an idea with ontological extension in reality or its referent is indistinguishable from the nothing of none existence.
In nearly two decades of discussion with PhD philosophers (mostly Catholic), I have yet to encounter one who stays in the dialogue. One and all feel epistemically trapped by the objective fundamental hierarchy of facts and the implications these facts have on their cherished beliefs. This is often experienced as being dialogically hamstrung, when in reality it is being factually and hierarchically cornered. It is my hope you are the exception and will stay in the exchange.
In point of fact, being has primacy over nothing both in the order of being and the order of knowledge. From nothing comes nothing. And since “nothing” doesn’t have ontological existence but is a concept identifying the absence of a delimited positive, it is parasitical on what is—and thus secondary in terms of epistemic priority.
>>I don’t see why someone couldn’t just reverse this argument back to you?<<
How so?
>>You use a lot of words to state nothing new it seems.<<
That’s a statement. What do you mean exactly?
>>Of course what a person imagines is not automatically true.<<
Exactly. That which we imagine exists and is real—it’s really imaginary.
>>But what a person doesn’t know or is unaware of, is not automatically false.<<
Correct—lack of awareness doesn’t make something false. But that cuts both ways: it also doesn’t make it real. The burden is on the one asserting existence to show a referent in reality. Without that, “ground of being” is just words about an imagined construct—precisely the definition of reification.
>>History has shown us time and time again about how there was a lot more out there and we humans were just ignorantly unaware.<<
Indeed. Which is why the crucial question is: by what means has the author made such an ontological discovery? Can we distinguish it from what we may merely be imagining? If we can’t, then on what basis is it not imaginary?
>>Your position is not one of superiority…instead it seems to just rest and rely on faith of another kind.<<
The axiom of existence, that existence has ontological primacy over causality, the axiom of identity and its corollaries (necessity of attributes, difference, relationship), the subject–object relationship, etc., are not taken on faith. They are given in direct perception and cannot not be known. Any attempt to question them assumes their validity in the act of questioning.
>>And that faith is hypocritical because humans do not function like that in the day to day life.<<
I don’t know what this means. All humans acknowledge these axioms implicitly.
>>Conversely…I think you are too focused on your own beliefs to recognize what this writer is saying about stepping outside the limitations of our own universe/mind.<<
One cannot step outside the universe or one’s own mind. The universe is the totality of all that is—known or postulated. And the mind is the faculty by which you conceptually identify its entities and describe their attributes, actions, states, and relationships propositionally.
>>The fact you call it difficult is a weak response. This is a fairly common consideration in all areas of innovative scientific discovery. One should try to think on stepping outside of one’s own biases because they are limiting.<<
What I’ve presented are not “biases.” They are irreducible primaries—the metaphysical facts that make meaning and knowledge possible.
>>And that is what this article brought up to think on. They could be right or wrong, but the fact this conversation is so blankly dismissed is ridiculous.<<
It wasn’t dismissed—every argument was directly engaged, just as I’m directly interacting with your thoughts.
>>There is a whole other deep side and conversation here that this writer is bringing up, but you seem to be focused on the most rudimentary point made, which again, seems to indicate this very real issue of deep bias.<<
See above.
>>You’re part of the problem. A bunch of words with nothing new to provide or gain.<<
Thanks for reading my thoughts and taking the time to comment. I look forward to engaging you on these points.
Fascinating... Does zero exist, YES! But not as a material object, as a profound mystical experience! If we step outside of the mechanics of math, then we can ask, might there be a deeper meaning to numbers?
Now we want to ponder the deeper meaning of zero, and not just juggle thoughts, but utilize a method like Gendlin's Thinking at the Edge, or other similar methods. If we properly sit in a sort of meditative, even prayerful silence with the question, and we are truly completely open and receptive... if we have no preconceptions, and we allow an answer to arise, on its own, and it resonates... Well we might be surprised of the powerhouse of truth that is zero!
Zero both represents a state some call the Void, and we could even say it represents the openness of not-knowing that allows us to eventually experience the Void and ourselves as pure awareness.
You can't experience zero cause you still think the number 2 exists...
The recent reflection on “zero” and “nothingness” raises important questions about how concepts relate to reality. Zero, though indispensable in mathematics, is purely conceptual—it has no ontological extension, and its meaning depends entirely on contrast with what exists. In this light, “presence of absence” is a contradiction in terms—suggestive in sound, but collapsing on analysis.
If “nothingness” is a conceptual placeholder, it depends on the mind. Defining existence in terms of its negation then makes being a function of mind rather than that which mind identifies and describes—reversing the subject–object relationship.
Similarly, “outside the universe” names no location but simply “where everything isn’t.” The universe is the totality of all that is—finite, specific, and consisting of a plurality of entities with attributes, actions, and relationships. To exist is to be something, with specific attributes, in relation to other existents within the totality of existence; this is true of each part, and the totality itself is nothing over and above its parts.
The notion of “internal universes” confuses conception with ontology. Divergent conceptions do not create divergent realities; they reflect differing accuracy in conceptualizing the same reality. Such contradictory views (which are epistemological) certify error in thinking—all while the universe remains itself unaffected by our mental activity. Plato’s forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, and the cosmological multiverse are conceptual projections, not ontological discoveries.
By your own reasoning, if the “ground of being” has no attributes and is indistinguishable from nothingness, it exists only as a “conceptual placeholder,” just as zero exists. This conclusion follows not from dismissal, but from applying the same evidentiary and logical standards that rightly govern every other claim.
Your account places God outside existence, outside empirical verification, and then seeks to establish His reality through “absence of presence” arguments or appeals to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. This has the form of special pleading: the claim that the very thing in question must be exempt from the evidentiary and definitional standards applied to everything else. When a purportedly fundamental truth—one believed by countless illiterates in various forms—requires such mental gymnastics, the red flag is hard to ignore.
By contrast, my method begins with the direct perception of existence and the axiom of identity, yielding three corollaries: the necessity of attributes, difference, and relationship. From this foundation, existence itself is shown to make causality possible, rendering the notion of a “cause of existence” a metaphysical inversion. I trace how the mind forms concepts and expresses them in propositions, defining terms explicitly: existence as all that is, reality as all that is, as it is, ideas as epistemological, and the mind-independent as ontological. Anyone comparing the two approaches should immediately recognize the difference—not merely in conclusions, but in the axiomatic, systematic rigor of mine. Denying this framework is impossible without performing a contradiction, for language necessarily reflects the ontological reality identified by these axioms. This is not a matter of convenience or usage; it is the grounding of reality itself.
After some two decades of such discussions, I have seen a consistent pattern: once a theist realizes I ground all claims in the empirical and maintain a clear distinction between ideas and mind-independent objects, the conversation rarely continues. This, more than any argument, speaks to the real fault line between our approaches.
In short, my claim is that theologians conflate the object of their awareness—an idea—with something existing independently of their minds. This cognitive error doesn’t limit itself to theologians, however. Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s unmoved mover, cosmology’s multiverse, your “ground of being”: are real as objects of thought, but existing only as ideas, not mind-independent entities. This relentless reification has not merely muddled metaphysics—it has systematically misled humanity into treating the contents of its imagination as reality.
But it is not merely an idea that existence precedes causality. It’s not merely an idea that to exist is to have attributes, to be distinct from all other existents in some respect, and to have relationships with all other existents. These are inescapable, undeniable fundamental ontological facts which are the basis of the concept “objectivity.”
Seems like some chicken and egg bullshit. I don’t see why someone couldn’t just reverse this argument back to you? You use a lot of words to state nothing new it seems. Of course what a person imagines is not automatically true. But what a person doesn’t know or is unaware of, is not automatically false. That is a fallacy…History has shown us time and time again about how there was a lot more out there and we humans were just ignorantly unaware. Your position is not one of superiority…instead it seems to just rest and rely on faith of another kind. And that faith is hypocritical because humans do not function like that in the day to day life. Conversely…I think you are too focused on your own beliefs to recognize what this writer is saying about stepping outside the limitations of our own universe/mind. The fact you call it difficult is a weak response. This is a fairly common consideration in all areas of innovative scientific discovery. One should try to think on stepping outside of one’s own biases because they are limiting. And that is what this article brought up to think on. They could be right or wrong, but the fact this conversation is so blankly dismissed is ridiculous. There is a whole other deep side and conversation here that this writer is bringing up, but you seem to be focused on the most rudimentary point made, which again, seems to indicate this very real issue of deep bias. You’re part of the problem. A bunch of words with nothing new to provide or gain.
To crystallize our exchange, I’d like to pose five direct questions. We can address each one at a time if you prefer:
1. Do you regard the issue of existence versus “nothing” as a chicken-and-egg conundrum with no objective means of resolution? If so, please explain why.
2. Do you hold that the direct perception of existence—the plurality of things, their attributes, their relations, and the fact that we ourselves are among them as subjects of consciousness—is faith-based? If so, what does the concept faith actually identify in this context vis-à-vis knowledge—and how do we objectively distinguish one from the other?
3. Do you maintain that ‘beliefs’ and ‘biases’ (always existing in propositional form) are irreducible fundamentals? If so, why? If not, then why take issue with my deeper analysis, which is more fundamental and forms the very precondition for beliefs and biases?
4. How do you define the terms universe and mind? What does the concept “universe” exclude, and by what means other than your mind do you know reality?
You claimed that I use many words without saying anything new. That implies you are already familiar with the issues underlying the questions above. If so, let’s engage them systematically.
Finally, I ask:
5. In what sense is the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” more fundamental than beginning with the fact of existence—its plurality, its all-encompassing scope, the identity and attributes of each existent, their differentiation and relations, the dependence of “nothing” on concept-formation rather than ontology, the independence of objects from the mind (excepting products of imagination), and the primacy of existence over causality (given that every “why” presupposes a prior existent)?
To leapfrog over these primaries by asking “Why is there something rather than nothing?”—or to treat Gödel’s incompleteness theorems as a given without first examining what a theory or formal system presupposes, how it differs from metaphysical reality, and the limits of its applicability—is to bypass an enormous body of knowledge and miss that the question or claim itself is invalid. Hence its author, (and Josh), retreat into silence rather than engage on objective first principles.
Primary philosophy, unlike questions that begin in medias res, leaves very little room for evasion. It demands attention to fundamental metaphysical facts: existence is, it is plural, each thing has identity and stands in relation to others, and life, consciousness, and mind are attributes of specific physical entities (e.g., man) and are what make objectivity possible.
These are the very foundations from which all concepts and arguments must be constructed. By starting here, inquiry is grounded, disciplined, and coherent, rather than built on unexamined assumptions or conceptual leaps. Every utterance is evaluated in light of what in reality our language identifies—whether it is a product of mind or exists independent of mind—whether it is an idea with ontological extension in reality or its referent is indistinguishable from the nothing of none existence.
In nearly two decades of discussion with PhD philosophers (mostly Catholic), I have yet to encounter one who stays in the dialogue. One and all feel epistemically trapped by the objective fundamental hierarchy of facts and the implications these facts have on their cherished beliefs. This is often experienced as being dialogically hamstrung, when in reality it is being factually and hierarchically cornered. It is my hope you are the exception and will stay in the exchange.
James
I’ll respond to your thoughts as I read them.
>>Seems like some chicken and egg bullshit.<<
In point of fact, being has primacy over nothing both in the order of being and the order of knowledge. From nothing comes nothing. And since “nothing” doesn’t have ontological existence but is a concept identifying the absence of a delimited positive, it is parasitical on what is—and thus secondary in terms of epistemic priority.
>>I don’t see why someone couldn’t just reverse this argument back to you?<<
How so?
>>You use a lot of words to state nothing new it seems.<<
That’s a statement. What do you mean exactly?
>>Of course what a person imagines is not automatically true.<<
Exactly. That which we imagine exists and is real—it’s really imaginary.
>>But what a person doesn’t know or is unaware of, is not automatically false.<<
Correct—lack of awareness doesn’t make something false. But that cuts both ways: it also doesn’t make it real. The burden is on the one asserting existence to show a referent in reality. Without that, “ground of being” is just words about an imagined construct—precisely the definition of reification.
>>History has shown us time and time again about how there was a lot more out there and we humans were just ignorantly unaware.<<
Indeed. Which is why the crucial question is: by what means has the author made such an ontological discovery? Can we distinguish it from what we may merely be imagining? If we can’t, then on what basis is it not imaginary?
>>Your position is not one of superiority…instead it seems to just rest and rely on faith of another kind.<<
The axiom of existence, that existence has ontological primacy over causality, the axiom of identity and its corollaries (necessity of attributes, difference, relationship), the subject–object relationship, etc., are not taken on faith. They are given in direct perception and cannot not be known. Any attempt to question them assumes their validity in the act of questioning.
>>And that faith is hypocritical because humans do not function like that in the day to day life.<<
I don’t know what this means. All humans acknowledge these axioms implicitly.
>>Conversely…I think you are too focused on your own beliefs to recognize what this writer is saying about stepping outside the limitations of our own universe/mind.<<
One cannot step outside the universe or one’s own mind. The universe is the totality of all that is—known or postulated. And the mind is the faculty by which you conceptually identify its entities and describe their attributes, actions, states, and relationships propositionally.
>>The fact you call it difficult is a weak response. This is a fairly common consideration in all areas of innovative scientific discovery. One should try to think on stepping outside of one’s own biases because they are limiting.<<
What I’ve presented are not “biases.” They are irreducible primaries—the metaphysical facts that make meaning and knowledge possible.
>>And that is what this article brought up to think on. They could be right or wrong, but the fact this conversation is so blankly dismissed is ridiculous.<<
It wasn’t dismissed—every argument was directly engaged, just as I’m directly interacting with your thoughts.
>>There is a whole other deep side and conversation here that this writer is bringing up, but you seem to be focused on the most rudimentary point made, which again, seems to indicate this very real issue of deep bias.<<
See above.
>>You’re part of the problem. A bunch of words with nothing new to provide or gain.<<
Thanks for reading my thoughts and taking the time to comment. I look forward to engaging you on these points.