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Does NOTHING really exist? Thomas Baldwin has constructed a detailed formal argument to show that there is a possible world where nothing exists, and thus he makes use of a different conception of worlds. It is based upon the idea that it is always possible to "subtract" a concrete object from a given possible world and thus to find another possible world, accessible to the first, which has exactly one less object in it. He begins with the premises that a world with a finite number of concrete objects is possible, that each of these objects might not exist, and that their nonexistence does not entail the existence of anything else. He then shows that there is an iterative procedure for "subtracting" objects from worlds, and the end result, given a finite number of objects, is that there is a possible world where all concrete objects have been subtracted. This is the empty world. The subtraction argument, as Baldwin calls it, probably represents the most natural way of thinking about the possibility that nothing exists. As in this Thread....

Does NOTHING really exist? Thomas Baldwin has constructed a detailed formal argument to show that there is a possible world where nothing exists, and thus he makes use of a different conception of worlds. It is based upon the idea that it is always possible to "subtract" a concrete object from a given possible world and thus to find another possible world, accessible to the first, which has exactly one less object in it. He begins with the premises that a world with a finite number of concrete objects is possible, that each of these objects might not exist, and that their nonexistence does not entail the existence of anything else. He then shows that there is an iterative procedure for "subtracting" objects from worlds, and the end result, given a finite number of objects, is that there is a possible world where all concrete objects have been subtracted. This is the empty world. The subtraction argument, as Baldwin calls it, probably represents the most natural way of thinking about the possibility that nothing exists. As in this Thread....