What Does It Mean To Think About Nothing?

NOTHING is not a physical thing; it does not exist, unlike a donkey which does exist in a real world.

SOOOO what exactly does it mean to think about NOTHING, well, before we can answer that question.

I would like to share what I believe is the relationship between our thought and that thing we are thinking about:

1. A thinking process is to think of a word in a language

2. Thinking about a donkey simply means thinking about a word “donkey” not the donkey itself.

3. There is no direct relationship between the thought and the donkey, but a relationship between a thought and a word that happens to represent a donkey.

So to think about nothing, simply means to think about the word “nothing”, and since the word nothing represents “nothingness” . we do not think about nothing, instead we actually think about the word “Nothing”. So it seems to me that it is possible to think about nothing. (Or is it?)

Back to the donkey, here an example to further illustrate the idea

In a movie called ‘What women want” the main male character has the power to read women’s minds, and know what woman are thinking. When he reads a woman’s mind, he does not see a picture of what she is thinking, but words in the language that she is thinking in.

Here is what happen, if a female character thinks about a donkey when she is near the main character. The main character will not see a picture of a donkey, but instead hear the word Donkey; he hears language.

To sum up: there is no direct relationship between the thought and the physical donkey, but only a relationship between a thought and a word that happens to represent a donkey.

SO when you say you think about NOTHING, you are actually thinking about something which is the word "nothing"

…

Nevertheless, I also came up with two possible arguments against the above idea (I hope someone will further develop an argument to support or against them)

1. Young baby thinks about their parent without knowing the word ‘parent'.

2. How about deaf people and sign language?

What do you think?

Sakxay

#philosophy #thoughts #theheck #insanity #Fun