Before I begin, a disclaimer. I have never had formal training in philosophy. Absolutely everything I understand about logic, reasoning, and philosophy, is self taught. I’ve read a great many authors on the subject and adopted what I determined made sense, and discarded what I determined didn’t make sense. It is entirely possible that I have an absolutely false interpretation of the topics. Given this, the reader must determine if I make sense, or I don’t.

What is in the box? Someone gives me a sealed box. I am then asked to “guess” what is in the box. What is the best method for guessing what is in the box? I have have studied logically fallacies. So I understand that if I presuppose anything about the contents of the box, I may then be doomed and locked into a logical fallacy because of my presupposition. However, we must have a beginning place. There is always a starting place. So what should it be?

Nothing. It appears to me that nothing is the logical beginning place. Meaning that I should assume, because we all make assumptions, that nothing is in the box. It is true that the likelihood of something being in the box has the same likelihood as nothing. However, by assuming nothing rather than something, gives me fewer variables to contend with. This is not to say that I am claiming that there is nothing. I am simply starting from the assumption of nothing. In this way I can free myself to begin my deductions with a clean slate.

At this point we can begin to define methods by which I can determine if there is more likely something rather than nothing. If I determine that there is something, by whatever method, I must then constrain the definition of the “something” to only that which I can observe and test. For example, I pick the box up. It has weight. If I can conclude that the box itself is not the weight I feel, then I can conclude that the “something” has weight. But nothing more. If I shake the box and the something shifts within it, I can conclude that the something is not the same size as the interior of the box. So now I have weight and that it is not the same size as the interior of the box. Nothing more. The point is that I can not attribute anything to the something until I have evidence to give it the attribute. This of course is assuming that I found any evidence to determine that it was something rather than nothing in the first place.

Understanding this, if it is determined that something is in the box, could it not be said that the something came from nothing? Nothing of course being the default presumption until something is demonstrated.

Go to the comments section and tell me what you think.

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