If the Universe is the sum total of all things, does the idea of nothing exist? I'm not a religious person but when most people who say you experience nothing when dead isn't that just a unfalsifiable claim much like wether there is or isn't a god? The idea of nothing doesn't exist because we haven't experienced it, nothing is just a made up idea. For there to be nothing it cannot be described, can't have colour,shape,time, space and so on. So what is most likely to happen when you die? If not nothing?
>>893005
Consider that nothingness could potentially have been experienced by those who are dead.
Unfortunately, we can't talk to dead people.
>>893005
>If the Universe is the sum total of all things, does the idea of nothing exist
Only metaphorically. What you are saying has been put forth by the Greek Monosts thousands of years ago. Today we know empirically that true vacuums do not exist.
So you can say "there is nothing the pot" and it makes sense because by nothing you are just mean nothing visible the the naked eye. This has the interesting consequence of making it so the universe is eternal, since a universe that is not eternal would have to involve a "nothing" either at the start or end.
>>893027
Dead is a just a state of being where the material of the body is in decay. Or if you want to get into spirtual stuff their "soul" has moved to another realm. In either case there is no "nothing" because the matter still exists and the other realm would not be "nothing".
Death is ultimately a human word to describe the particular state of some items.
>>893027
That's why I'm asking if there is no way to prove it how can be be sure it exist or that we can experience it. It's about as convincing as heaven or hell.
>>893005
It might just be a lot of semantics, but isn't nothing just an abstraction for the lack of what you expected? Such as when you open a backpack and there aren't any objects you say there's "nothing" in it but there's air. Nothing as the abstraction of the lack of everything might instead just be that, an abstraction. It doesn't exist if all of the universe has "something" in it but it's a conceivable state.
I think Heidegger talks about this but I'm admittedly too stupid to understand Hiedie, maybe someone here who isn't so can explain.
I found this on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt-4hV6Rf1k
>>893005
you know the gaps of memory you have when you get wikki wasted after a night out
that's what death will be like
>>893044
What I mean by dead is not so much that the physical form is no longer in a state of operation as much as I mean that said body cannot be used by its conscious, thereby being unable to communicate to those who are living in a physical state whether or not nothingness truly exists.
If this realm you propose in where the consciousnesses/souls of the dead leave exists, who is not to say that this realm could be the void of nothingness we ponder?
>>893046
I sincerely doubt there is a way to find the truth about nothingness without dying, however I could be ignorant on what qualifies as nothingness, and if there are varieties of nothingness.
Is there anything at all with any credible argument/evidence to suggest death isn't just oblivion?
the idea of nothing certainly exists, just as the idea of 'blue' exists. Both must be seen through the human perspective.
Suppose you are told that your friend left a surprise for you in your house. You walk into your house, all is normal, and you think "There's nothing here." the "nothing" is not a complete, vacuous zone, it's just the fact that there is a notable absence. Where you would expect something to be, or where there is room for an object, it is not present.
You could say that "nothing" happens after death in that - in our entire life - we have been able to think, reason, and sense, so there would be an absence of sensation. The absence of sensation is what most people mean when they say nothing exists after death. Traces of influence or physical remains may exist in the same way as dust floats around an empty jar, but unless you're referring to the philosophical idea of absolute void, then it's not a dilemma to call such a state "nothingness"
absolute void, like some other posters have said, is probably only possible before or after matter, energy, time, etc. came into being, or in some higher or lower plane we cannot sense.
>>893086
Speculating about hypothetical dimensions where logic and physics work differently is just day dreaming.
Besides most religious and spirtual talk about "nothing" doesn't use it in the most literal meaning. They tend to use it to mean an absence of a particular thing in the same way I could say "this pot has nothing in it". Remember words have multiple meanings.
>>893117
I mean to use nothingness in the scenario of death as the absence of consciousness.
