What is "nothing"?

Question

when someone says what do you have, and you say "nothing", you have something, you have "nothing", or els you wouldn't have responded to the question. So what exactly is "nothing", its obviously something or it wouldn't exist.

Answer 1

Nothing does not exist, because nothing is the absence of anything, which in itself is something.  Therefore, nothing is nothing.

Answer 2

"Nothing" is the absence of "something."

The best I can do.

Answer 3

nothing is just a concept...

Nothing is emptyness, a void, the abscence of life.

Hope this answers your question. Good luck =)

Answer 4

The given situation above is only a glitch in the communication of people. It is something like the Y2K in the computer world during the year 2000 and it is because of the overfamilarity of communications. We do not care anymore of our dictions and grammar. Supposedly when we ask questions, we should qualify and define our terms i.e. What money do you have? What education do you have? etc.,etc..

If we have to put a number to nothing, it must be zero (0).

Answer 5

A vulgar variant of concept stealing, prevalent among avowed mystics and irrationalists, is a fallacy I call the Reification of the Zero. It consists of regarding “nothing” as a thing, as a special, different kind of existent. (For example, see Existentialism.) This fallacy breeds such symptoms as the notion that presence and absence, or being and non-being, are metaphysical forces of equal power, and that being is the absence of non-being. E.g., “Nothingness is prior to being.” (Sartre)—“Human finitude is the presence of the not in the being of man.” (William Barrett)—“Nothing is more real than nothing.” (Samuel Beckett)—”Das Nichts nichtet” or “Nothing noughts.” (Heidegger). “Consciousness, then, is not a stuff, but a negation. The subject is not a thing, but a non-thing. The subject carves its own world out of Being by means of negative determinations. Sartre describes consciousness as a ‘noughting nought’ (néant néantisant). It is a form of being other than its own: a mode ‘which has yet to be what it is, that is to say, which is what it is, that is to say, which is what it is not and which is not what it is.’” (Hector Hawton, The Feast of Unreason, London: Watts & Co., 1952, p. 162.)

(The motive? “Genuine utterances about the nothing must always remain unusual. It cannot be made common. It dissolves when it is placed in the cheap acid of mere logical acumen.” Heidegger.)

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 80 - Ayn Rand

Answer 6

"Nothing" is the absence of God...

Answer 7

Nothing, as people regard it, is the absence of what we EXPECT to find.

Answer 8

it doesn't exist. it is the lack of stuff. there is no nothing. when somebody says they have nothing, technically they would be wrong. like if you say the bowl is empty, technically it is full of air and all sorts of stuff. all the universe is energy that's what e=mc^2 means. there is no nothing in the universe only energy.

there can only be nothing outside the universe, but that means no space, no length, no time, nothing. there is no nothing outside the universe but there is a lack of universe which is everything, energy.

Answer 9

.

Answer 10

It is when I offend verbally someone .. almost inaudibly .. and she asks ..  "what did you say?" .. and I answer ..  "nothing" .

Answer 11

Nothing is relative. If you know physics you know relativity. Nothing can mean a whole slew of things. For example a game of poker. You all show hands and you say you have nothing, even though its evident you HAVE something. You HAVE cards in your hand. But in terms of the game, you dont have a hand that qualifies you to win the match.

For example you have an empty cup. Someone asks whats in the cup, you say nothing. Even though there is SOMETHINg in the cup (oxygen) you refer to a drink that should be there but its not so you have nothing.

Answer 12

true nothingness transcends language; it can't be conceptualized; it doesn't exist. but in context of normal communications of ideas, saying nothing is very adequate. a question already presuppose something, so nothing is lack of that something.

Answer 13

Nothing is a concept in my head, so it is something that I can think of. I thought most human beings think like me so they would have thought about "nothing" ;D

Answer 14

In the absence of "anything", "Nothing" remains.