
Angst and the Empty Set (2014) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/76/language/angst-and-the-empty-set-rp
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tempguy9999
It does seem a bit crap: "Science, too, seems to suggest that there exist many
“nothings” that have a positive existence: the vacuum, the number zero"

Pretty sure that's confusing the positive existence of a label eg. the word
'vacuum' with the thing itself.

He sort of addresses that: "But according to quantum mechanics, a vacuum
contains quantum fluctuations and has non-zero energy."

But this sounds crap too - prior to discovering quantum fluctuations (QF), was
space empty or not? No it wasn't in reality because QF must have existed
already, but did we consider it empty? Yes because we didn't know about QF.

he goes on

"And in any case, if a vacuum is a region of space, it contains space"

And WTF is space? How can it contain it? It is space.

more

"And just like an empty plastic shopping bag is not nothing, an abstract empty
shopping bag is not nothing, either."

Actually it may or may not be depending on what you want. It is a _concept_ ,
purely a concept, so it can represent utter void if you wish.

This seems a sloppy, un-rigorous use of anything. I'm not impressed.

and he winds up with this

"All of this still leaves us with our original question: Are absences
fundamental in perception?"

Always questions. Some 'philosophers' seem to be just engines to turn
questions into more questions. I'd prefer answers if you don't mind, and if
you can't provide them then at least frame the questions such that some
testable hypotheses can be made.

~~~
wruza
>All of this still leaves us with our original question: Are absences
fundamental in perception?

If my memory doesn’t cheat on me, this question is long answered. Expectations
are fundamental in our perception. We (and advanced animals) ignore/stay calm
at expected and react to unexpected. I read a book of Vladimir Levi (russian
poppsy author, iirc) where he described an experiment with a sleeping cat. It
was disturbed by knocks at regular intervals, but then fell asleep according
to neural activity, since no threat was posed. After some time knocking
suddenly stopped and the cat woke immediately. Even in a sleep its brain
expected the sound and when expectations failed, it ringed an alarm.

It is really hard to justify this sort of philosophy which cannot even do its
homework.

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wruza
>Take any number x, and do not multiply it by any number. Then you get the
number x back. Now take x, and multiply it by one. The result is the same (x).
Therefore one is nothing. No one would agree with the conclusion of that
argument!

One is nothing under multiplication. You just got that “no one” here. JK, this
entire argument has a false premise in it.

Take a number x and multiply it by zero. Then you get zero. Divide it back by
zero... Therefore zero is anything including nothing, and anything is zero by
the rule of identity commutativity. Now wrap your wounds and go on without
math analogies.

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jandek
One relevant philosopher not mentioned here is [Henri
Bergson]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson)),
whose critique of the concept of nonbeing distinguished him from the
existentialists he spawned. I believe his argument was that nonbeing is a
complication of the idea of being (nonbeing = being + negation), rather than a
truly distinct and opposed concept, and that philosophical questions having to
do with nonbeing were just poorly stated problems.

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wruza
>According to the scientific picture of the world, absences do not seem to be
fundamental building blocks of either the concrete (physical) world or of the
abstract (mathematical) realm.

Sorry for nitpicking again, but aren’t holes in concrete, along tear-tension
lines and in pipes there for exactly physical reasons?

~~~
andrepd
>According to the scientific picture of the world, absences do not seem to be
fundamental building blocks of either the concrete (physical) world or of the
abstract (mathematical) realm.

Not only is this assertion vague and devoid of actual meaning beyond a flimsy
analogy, but it's also wrong. In a lattice an absence of an electron
(literally, a hole) is a physical quasiparticle object which obeys the same
rules as a particle.

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tus88
Surprised he didn't mention negative numbers which I always thought of as the
mathematical concept of a "hole".

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mathemagics
The more I read articles like this, the more I am convinced that philosophy,
when it turns its eye towards mathematics and the sciences, is complete and
utter nonsense, and a total waste of everyone's time.

Philosophical ramblings on scientific notions are akin to how GPT-2 models
string together sensible sounding passages, but which upon closer inspection
are actually devoid of any useful insight or meaning. Of course, in the act of
stringing together esoteric words to make ourselves sound smart, by the rules
of brownian motion, once in a blue moon, these ramblings accidentally cross
over into formal logic proofs. That is, to put it plainly: we've blindly, or
perhaps drunkenly, stumbled our way into the domain of mathematics and the
sciences -- behold: Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The shining beacon in a
sea of utter and complete nonsense.

~~~
jonsen
You might be interested in “Antiphilosophical Dictionary”.

Downloadable PDF from this page: [http://www.naur.com/](http://www.naur.com/)

~~~
mathemagics
Thanks, that was an interesting read. Too bad my parent comment was shadow
banned. I think discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of philosophy applied
to the sciences would have been far more interesting than what this post's
article had to offer.

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amos19870630
What a delightful little article.

