Out of Nothing

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy (2):132-138 (2018)
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Abstract

Graham Priest proposed an argument for the conclusion that ‘nothing’ occurs as a singular term and not as a quantifier in a sentence like (1) ‘The cosmos came into existence out of nothing’. Priest's point is that, intuitively, (1) entails (C) ‘The cosmos came into existence at some time’, but this entailment relation is left unexplained if ‘nothing’ is treated as a quantifier. If Priest is right, the paradoxical notion of an object that is nothing plays a role in our very understanding of reality. In this note, we argue that Priest's argument is unsound: the intuitive entailment relation between (1) and (C) does not offer convincing evidence that ‘nothing’ occurs as a term in (1). Moreover, we provide an explanation of why (1) is naturally taken to entail (C), which is both plausible and consistent with the standard, quantificational treatment of ‘nothing’.

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Citations of this work

Nothingness.Roy Sorensen - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Extending Everything with Nothing.Filippo Costantini - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (4):1413-1436.

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References found in this work

The logical form of action sentences.Donald Davidson - 1966 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 81--95.
Zilch.Alex Oliver & Timothy Smiley - 2013 - Analysis 73 (4):601-613.
Logic: A Very Short Introduction.Graham Priest & Julia Annas - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (205):540-541.
Beyond the Limits of Thought, by Graham Priest. [REVIEW]Diego Marconi - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (4):620-622.

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