Why is there something rather than nothing? (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, April 08, 2011, 03:47 (4775 days ago) @ David Turell

MATT: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing
> > 
> > Check the "Language and logic" portion. For both you and david, a pronoun is not a noun, and therefore it is still just as fallacious to compare them.
> > 
> > Time for you to take a grammatical sabbatical. 'Something' is also a pronoun.
> 
> Whoopee! Now things make real sense. Matt's statements did not.-It's clear neither of you read the relevant article, fine, pronoun they both are, I don't care--at its core you're both wrong! Colors are my preference.-"Grammatically, the word "nothing" is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. One might argue that "nothing" is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of "nothing" itself is a thing. This logical fallacy is neatly demonstrated by the joke syllogism that contains a fallacy of four terms:- 1. Nothing is beyond the Universe.
 2. Average Joe is beyond nothing .
 3. Therefore Average Joe is beyond the Universe.-The four terms in this example are- * Average Joe,
 * The Universe,
 * Nothing-as-a-thing, which a Average Joe is beyond than, and
 * Nothing-as-an-absence-of-a-thing: 'no-thing' or 'not-some-thing', i.e., no entity exists that is beyond The Universe.-The error in the conclusion stems from equating nothing-as-a-thing with nothing-as-absence-of-a-thing, which is invalid logic.-Clauses can often be restated to avoid the appearance that "nothing" possesses an attribute. For example, the sentence "There is nothing in the basement" can be restated as "There is not one thing in the basement". "Nothing is missing" can be restated as "everything is present". Conversely, many fallacious conclusions follow from treating "nothing" as a noun.-Modern logic made it possible to articulate these points coherently as intended, and many philosophers hold that the word "nothing" does not function as a noun, as there is no object to which it refers. There remain various opposing views, however—for example, that our understanding of the world rests essentially on noticing absences and lacks as well as presences, and that "nothing" and related words serve to indicate these."

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"