Can you Fill a Box with Nothing? Bad Philosophy

[Culain]

A little argument I've ran into where someone is claiming that:

 

1) A box can be filled with nothing.

2) A box can contain nothing.

3) X Person can put nothing in the box.

 

This reminded me of the recent show where Stef-Isa gave some examples of bad philosophy.

 

Are all three of these self-contradictory statements?

 

 

1) Runs into the problem of "what is full?"

2)  Contain is a form of ownership, can it be measured?

3) Is one able to perform the action of "putting"?

[dsayers]

2)  Contain is a form of ownership, can one own nothing?

 

"Contain" is the denotation of a physical relationship between two objects. There is no connotation of ownership if the object doing the containing is not a moral actor.

 

A box cannot have nothing in it because there's no such thing as nothing. If you have an object in a box and you remove that object, the act of removal displaces atmosphere outside of the box into the box.

[WorBlux]

There is such a thing as a vacuum.

 

1. Filled with nothing is just another way of saying empty of anything. (they are necessary corollaries)

2. Contain is to enclose.

3. Is certainly true. If I walk by a suggestion box and don't put anything in the box, I've put nothing in the box.

 

It's only an issue if you reify "nothing" in an improper way.

[dsayers]

I don't understand the first thing about quantum mechanics, but this thread speaks about the concept of nothing, even in consideration of a vacuum.

[Honest]

1) A box can be filled with nothing.

2) A box can contain nothing.

3) X Person can put nothing in the box.

 

2 doesn't follow from 1, and certainly 3 doesn't follow so it's invalid, and based on false premises unless you have a very strange definition of "nothing" or "fullness"

 

1 Nothing is: not something

2 Boxes can only contain something

∴ a box cannot contain nothing

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

All three sentences depend on quantification of "nothing", where in reality the word nothing in these sentences is serving as a grammatical negative along with the noun "anything".

 

1. No it can't. "Filled with nothing" is just a phrase that means "anything is not in it".

2. No it can't. This phrase means "does not contain anything". Again, the "nothing" in this sentence simultaneously takes on the role of a noun ("anything") and a verbal negative ("not").

3. No he can't. "A person put nothing in a box" is the rewording of "A person did not put anything in a box".