Nothingness And The Illusion Of Opposites

I don't know who made this or when but it is very close to my own opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPqJrJ6Vd_c

That looks like Alan Watts. Very cool.

Tao Te Ching Chapter 25
There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.



Chapter 42
The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things.

All things have their backs to the female
and stand facing the male.
When male and female combine,
all things achieve harmony.

Ordinary men hate solitude.
But the Master makes use of it,
embracing his aloneness, realizing
he is one with the whole universe.

This is Alan Watts.

He has had a great impact on my own personal philosophy as well.

This is from a reply I made over at PD on the same topic:

Aaron wrote:

cclendenen wrote:

He speaks throughout of everything being contrasts, but then he states that we should not contrast existence with non-existence. He doesn't say why.

Let me try and take a stab at that one. I think it has to do with the way he defines non-existence. For most of us non-existence would be defined as a negative state. It's essentially the opposite of existence. However Watts (and many others from his philosophical tradition) define non-existence as simply a neutral state. Non-existence is neither positive nor negative. It is like the "number" zero and zero has no contrast.

I don't know if that helps.

I essentially agree with Aaron that nothingness is best defined as a neutral state.

There are only two ways we can derive definitions; induction (experience), and deduction (the syllogism). Since we see "something" when we look around us we cannot experience nothingness so we the only way we can define it is by deduction.

You can strip away all the permutations of existence simply by putting a form of the words "is not" in front of "being as a whole". But you are still left with the idea of nothingness (you're thinking about it right now after all). So it is not a void "without property". It is a completely neutral concept. This is consistent with the type of empirical evidence that suggested the laws of mass/energy conservation. So how can the world emerge from that?

Imagine a straight line that extends outward in both directions (see links) http://personal.inet.fi/private/ilkka/truerta/after_calibration.png . Such a one dimensional line is analogous to nothingness because it has but one property- it is a concept. There are an infinite number of waveforms that exist in potential in such a line http://plus.maths.org/issue38/interview/sine.gif . As long as the probability of an event does not equal zero (which is what happens when two identical but opposite waves try to emerge at the same time http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may00/images/synth.fig1.l.gif ) it may occur therefore any of these waveforms may emerge spontaneously by themselves or in combination by simple addition http://blog.pandora.com/archives/tour/MPI-HarmonicDistortion.JPG . By themselves the most basic waveforms (sine waves) have no meaning but merged with others they can create radically different patterns which are analogous to universes with different physics. Compare this (orange) square wave with the previous waveform http://sub.allaboutcircuits.com/images/22017.png .

However concepts must be observed. But that is not a problem because all it has to do is bend back on itself http://sermononthemountsociety.com/sitebuilder/images/CircleArrow2-132x126.jpg . That makes it self referential. And as there is only one kind of self referential concept, I am, it must be conscious (it also stops an infinite regression). I call this foundational state the Prime Observer because it is literally observing itself. The circle is perfectly smooth and therefore in equilibrium but contains within it an infinite number of potential worlds which may emerge spontaneously as an epiphenomenon or side effect.

Because it is a concept we can say nothingness is not nothing. That is a contradiction thus such a state cannot exist. But an unobserved concept is also paradoxical and therefore unstable. It must collapse into a state that is stable but in order to do that it must have something in common with that state. Since the only property nothingness has is that of a concept it can only be reduced to something else that is also a concept to avoid a non sequitur and all it has to do to accomplish that is bend back on itself, nothing more. Therefore if this argument is correct "God" must exist necessarily. But even though all being is contingent on it the world is not a purposeful creation. And that is why I am an Atheistic Deist and not an pure Atheist.