Hey, I like the rock eater. "These look like good, strong hands, don't they?"

As Morla (the turtle) said, "We don't even care whether or not we care."

To borrow the syntax from Lao Tzu, the nothingness that can be spoken of is not the true nothingness.

Nothing, once labeled, is not truly nothing; it is something and that something is the concept of nothing. So long as there is a thinker thinking of nothing, nothing is a thought. We could say that nothing does not exist because existence would make it something - but so long as we are pointing to it even by claiming its nonexistence, it does exist as the object to which we point.

In other words, "I think, therefore everything else is?"

good reply, don.

Nothing may just be an absence of existence.

the romans had no concept of zero, although they did have "nihil" which means "nothing". but this is an interesting topic

I remember seeing a documentary a while back. I think it was the indians (as in India) who "invented" the number 0 and brought it to the romans.
The docu was at least 4 years ago so don't bet a dime on my memory.

Uniglet, (since you are allergic to twiglets), if your definition holds, how can I exitst? A thing is not a body, a person; and vice versa. At least according some usage in the language and English thinking that lies behind this usage. So if the presence of Andrew (me) is not in violation of the absence of anything; but Andrew is, to say the least, consisting of molecules, which are things; then how can I exist as nothing?

One way to circumvent this, of course, is declaring the inseparable nature of Andrew and the molecules that make him up. But then the 'absence of anything' will necessarily include the 'absence of anybody', and that's an extension required by the logic of the definition.

In effect, you are saying that 'nothing' is the absence of anything and the absence of anybody.

I accept that, but it's not very elegant to my liking.

"Nothing, once labeled, is not truly nothing;"

Wanda; I am sorry, but I have to disagree.

The concept of anything in man's mind does not equate the thing; and furthermore, most words in a symbolic language such as English have nothing to do with the things they mean, other than a convention by a social group that agree first what any symbol.

The labeling does not destroy the quality of nothingness, just like the utterance "Wanda is dead" does not destroy you.

The later statement, with the addition "nothing does not exist, other than a lingual concept", is true, despite the premise being wrong that this conclusion was based on. Nothing is the absence of anything. The absence of anything is a total void, with no spacial dimensions (otherwise 'nothing' would not be nothing, it would be 'empty space'. Since nothing has no describable quality that exists, it itself must be not existing.

I think "existence would make it into something" is not a cause from which 'nothing' is effected as a concept, but the other way around. Once you know what nothing is and have a clear idea what its nature is, particularly its non-existence, only then you could say "therefore existence would make it something" and not "because existence would make it something".

For me it's disheartening to see how many very smart people get mixed up with the language and reality and how strong the bond is between the two, and what the nature and the particular characteristics of the bond are.