2012•MetaphysicsRequires access
9. Is nothing something?
Stephen Mumford
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Abstract
‘Is nothing something?’ considers nothingness. Philosophers have been deeply divided on the subject of nothings and absences. Some have allowed them some degree of reality of being. Do things have negative properties as well as their positive ones? Is nothing just a word? Bertrand Russell could see no option but to accept that the world contained negative facts as well as positive ones, for only the former, he thought, could explain negative truths. Another view is that nothingness is all in our heads, that there is one reality and everything that exists is ‘positive’.