The Problem with Nothingness (Revisited)

If I were to ask you to try to imagine nothing, how would you go about it?  In the syntax of this request, the word "nothing" negates the object and makes my challenge a rhetorical question.  For that reason, philosophers prefer the term "nothingness" to identify this void.  So I'll rephrase the question as: "How does one imagine nothingness?", and I'll attempt to demonstrate that, although nothingness is unimaginable, it nonetheless must be the starting premise for any ontology.

The dictionary defines the nominative of nothing as "something that does not exist"; as a pronoun, it means "not any thing."  Ironically, both definitions allude to thing, despite the fact that things are precisely what nothing is not.  Nothingness is defined as "the quality or state of being nothing," which eliminates the reference to "things" but replaces it with "state of being" which, again, nothingness is not.  The only acceptable definition from a metaphysical perspective is "NONEXISTENCE", which appears thus capitalized in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary following "state of being nothing."

Well, then, is it possible to imagine non-existence?  I submit that it is not possible, for reasons that are both epistemological and logical.  Consciousness requires awareness of an object; and, since nothingness (i.e., non-existence) is not an object, it cannot be made aware.  Logically, to imagine presupposes a subject to do the imagining.  Thus, in order to imagine non-existence, one would have to imagine not only the absence of things but the absence of one’s self as well.  Try imagining that there is no you to imagine!  For as a point of fact, given a state of pure nothingness, there would be no observer to question it.

Yet, we all start out in this world of being as nothing.  In a temporal sense, the individual self is a “nothing in process.”  It is the biological organism with which each of us identifies that makes us a “being-aware”.  Without the organic sensory receptors and a brain to integrate them, we would not possess proprietary awareness.  For this reason, most neuro-physicists have concluded that self-awareness is an evolutionary product of biological evolution which can be explained in terms of bio-chemical changes and energy-transmitting neurons.  This of course refutes the view that the psyche is a “different essence” that stands apart from physical matter.

There is a natural human tendency to reduce the complex to the simple, and the age-old conundrum of mind-versus-matter has always been a thorn in the objectivist’s side.  Indeed, it is far more convenient to regard the cognizant mind as a highly complex cellular phenomenon, thus avoiding the philosophical dualism.  But is this reduction of cognitive awareness to physiological dynamics a sound foundation on which to base experiential reality?    

In the Creation ontology for the Philosophy of Essence, I hypothesized the negate (nothingness) as the sensible agent of Value, which is the perceived connection of the negated self to its essential otherness.  I also stated that, while the negate is “conditionally separated from its essent” in existence, it is nonetheless essential as a being-aware of the value of Essence.  This concept has been a bone of contention in philosophical circles.  In recent discussions with a distinguished young philosophical researcher, it became clear to me that to claim potency for nothingness violates the ex nihilo principle, and that it is therefore illogical to posit nothingness as an “active agent” in the world.

If you have read my thesis, you know that, in addition to absolute potentiality, I maintain that Essence possesses absolute Sensibility and is "negational".  Bear in mind that, although we would normally view these attributes as "different" in the experienced world, they converge as one in the reality of Essence. The antithetical not-Essence may be likened to "the other side of the coin".  It is my theory that Essence denies or negates its metaphysical opposite to create an other (the negate) which becomes the sentient locus and differentiator of existential reality.  Actualization effects a contingency in which the negate is the subject of its denied essence (essent).  From the existential perspective the negate represents the "not-" of this actualized not-other.  From the perspective of absolute Essence, however, it remains not-other.

The negate is actualized as an infinite number of identities, each of which assumes a biological counterpart of its own. This affords the negate self-awareness—a reflective microcosm of Absolute Sensibility that might be considered analogous to the unitary cell of a living organism.  But while the negate has "proprietary awareness" of itself, it is only indirectly sensible of its essential source.  The philosophical significance of negation is that the created negate loses its essential identity in becoming aware, and can only experience Essence in its actualized or finite form—that is, as being in space/time existence.  The negate in my theory is not without Essence; it is still "essential".  But it is conditionally separated from its estranged essent.  Experience can be described as the existential process by which the negate is incrementally reunited with its own negated essence to become being-aware.

However, in deference to my esteemed colleagues who have rightly voiced objection to the concept of nothingness as a sensible entity and “active agent”, I shall no longer equate  the negate with “nothingness”.  Instead I shall henceforth posit the negate as a valuistic entity that represents a reciprocal property of negation.  The dichotomy I’m proposing as primary to experiential existence constitutes two contingencies: Sensibility and Otherness.  By Sensibility I mean specifically value-sensibility, and by Otherness I refer to the essent—the negated “object” of this sensibility.  The nothingness that conditionally actualizes these contingencies represents a negation of Essence—it is the “differentiating factor” of being-aware but not the “active agent’ of creation.  Although Value presupposes a sensible “subject” (even one that is not differentiated), it is not itself an existent, nor is it posited as nothingness.  However, since the locus of self-awareness is a result of the primary negation, I shall continue to refer to it as the “negate” of the self/other dichotomy.

If you have not read the thesis on this site, you can be expected to ask how nothingness arises from Essence and why it is perceived as relational in the physical world.  Since the present discussion focuses on the nothingness perspective, I shall deal with this question in a somewhat different fashion than I did in the thesis.  What I hope to demonstrate here is a "principle of reciprocity" that involves both negation and affirmation in the realization of value, the former serving to separate and define an objective source of value, the latter identifying the value perceived as the essential subjective complement.

Of course any relational expression of Essence is inadequate for the reason that Essence itself is absolute and non-relational.  However, it is possible to define existence as we experience it—a dichotomy comprising two mutually exclusive but co-dependent contingencies: Awareness and Otherness.  Awareness refers to "conscious sensibility" which is the proprietary subject of Otherness, and I regard it as a "negate” in the sense that it is the direct product of negation and has no existential properties that would qualify it as an essent.  I define objective Otherness as "the differentiated perspective of Essence", since it is not possible for nothingness to possess the Essence from which it is negated nor to have the absolute sensibility needed to perceive Essence directly.

I submit that the negation of Essence is not simply a logical proposition but the metaphysical principle by which Essence gives rise to cosmic contrariety and difference—in other words, creating or actualizing existence.  What enables existence to be delineated and separated into finite beingness—individual subjective beings and their experienced things and events—is that it is grounded in nothingness.  If it were not for the boundary of nothingness surrounding each thing, it could not be distinguished from any other thing or made cognizant as a particular object.  It is only by the negate's negation (double negation) of otherness that things can be objectivized.  Double negation is a function of the intellect working in conjunction with sensory awareness: it extracts the value of otherness, leaving its representative being as the objective product.  By this principle, otherness is reduced to existential beingness—a relational system in which each and every phenomenon is valued in relation to some preferential standard.

What I have outlined here will of course be seen as a subject/object duality in the Cartesian sense, except that the mutual dependency of its primary constituents makes it a working dichotomy, for neither subjective awareness nor objective otherness can exist without its correlate.  The otherness perceived by awareness is not Essence itself but its value to the subject.  What this suggests is that subjectivity is the potential to sense Value, and that pre-intellectual sensibility is, in fact, the realization of essential value.  That value-sensibility is autonomous and estranged from its object (the essent) is moralistically significant, because it ensures that moral and aesthetic judgments are unbiased and freely made.  Indeed, it is this epistemology that distinguishes Essentialism from other philosophies.

Like other creatures, man can be described as living on borrowed being with a propensity for value at his core; but man's realization of value is exquisite and wide-ranging.  Blessed with a sense of self-identity and intellectual cognizance, man is the choicemaker  of his world.  Unlike other animals whose behavior is limited by instinct, man is empowered with the innate ability to manipulate nature for his comfort and convenience, to build dwellings and infrastructure of his own design, and to probe the universe for knowledge that he can pass along to his progeny in documentary form.  Above all, man is a "being-aware-of-value", a unique creature who, by seeking his estranged essence in beingness, plays the pivotal role in making Value aware.

Essence negates its antithetical nothingness to create a sense of value which, when differentiated by the intellect and neuro-sensory system, reduces Otherness to finite beingness (i.e., existence) for every individual.  The process is continuous throughout one's lifetime, and the dynamics are that negation is a differentiator or divider, whereas the acquisition of value is an integrator or synthesizer.  From the temporal perspective of finite experience, negation is primary to value realization, leading from cosmic instability and diversity to coherence and harmony, and ultimately annulling the affects of the primary negation.  Like the old aphorism "What goes around comes around," the self perceives its estranged Essence in the value of otherness and, by abstracting that value for itself, fills the actualized nothingness to make being-aware.

Inasmuch as value-realization is the inverse of negation, one can say that the value of the source is affirmed by the autonomous subject to maintain the absolute integrity of Essence.  Thus, as man gains value from his experience in the world, he integrates this experience into a personal weltanschauung  that codifies his value complement.  Thus, affirmation of value is the counter-principle to negation which divides the self and its secondary negations relative to the primary source.

Just as negation differentiates subject from object so that value can be realized, so does the realization of value serve to reverse the affects of negation and annul the primary division.  The reciprocity of this transaction provides the means by which a free agent incrementally reclaims the value of its negated essence, ultimately redeeming its valuistic identity in the unity of the source.  At the end of the scenario, the autonomous subject comes full circle to vindicate Value over beingness, Immanence over otherness, and Absolute Essence over differentiated existence.

--HP