Absence and Nothing

Nothing is not. Yet it seems that we invoke absences and nothings often in our philosophical explanations. Negative metaphysics is on the rise. It has been claimed that absences can be causes, there are negative properties, absences can be perceived, there are negative facts, and we can refer to and speak about nothing. Parmenides long ago ruled against such things. Here we consider how much of Parmenides’ view can survive. A soft Parmenidean methodology is adopted in which we aim to reject all supposed negative entities but are prepared to accept them, reluctantly, if they are indispensable and irreducible in our best theories. We then see whether there are any negative entities that survive this test. Some can be dismissed on metaphysical grounds, but other problems are explained only once we reject another strand in Parmenides and show how we can think and talk about nothing. Accounts of perception of absence, empty reference, and denial are gathered. With these, we can show how no truthmakers are required for negative truths since we can have negative beliefs, concerning what-is-not, without what-is-not being part of what is. This supports a soft ontological Parmenideanism, which accepts much though not all of Parmenides’ original position.

Nonentities

A diverse range of ‘things’ can be viewed as nonentities; that is, negative particulars. Some of the main candidates are considered to see whether anything about them threatens the soft Parmenidean project. Some think of holes as absences, for instance, since they are where something else isn’t. We can think of a hole instead as immaterial and dependent on their hosts, drawing a distinction between real holes and negative, non-existent holes. Similarly, negative facts, limits and boundaries, privations, shadows, omissions, negative norms, negative epistemic states, and logico-mathematical entities such as zero and the empty set are considered. None of them appears to pose a serious threat to soft Parmenideanism.

FROM BULLYING TO CYBERBULLYING IN THE CONTEXT OF ONLINE EDUCATION

The specialty literature is remarked by the presentation of negative facts and phenomena, some of which are particularly serious, such as bullying and cyberbullying. Authors such as Olweus (1993), Smith and Sharp (1994), Rigby (2007), Belsey (2005), Shariff (2009), etc. draw the attention to two categories of people, the ones who abuse and the ones who are victims of the aggression. The online school also brings along the extension of the cyberbullying phenomenon. In previous years, traditional bullying started in school and continued in the online environment, but now all the interaction has been transferred to the cyber environment. We note phenomena such as: cyberbullying, cybermobbing or cyberstalking etc., and we could say that they seem to occur in the online environment in a kind of avalanche that exceeds our imagination whereas the phenomenon is explained primarily by the impossibility to trace the perpetrator. The article presents ways to prevent the phenomenon of bullying and cyberbullying, as well as legislative and institutional aspects, intervention measures aimed at reducing the phenomenon of bullying, directly or virtually, especially at the national level.

Something from Nothing

It strikes many as obvious that negative facts—such as that Justin Trudeau is not a woman—are not fundamental: negative facts must ultimately be explained in terms of positive facts (for instance, that Justin Trudeau is a man). Amijee focuses on a particular class of negative facts: contingent negative existentials (such as that there are no 10ft tall humans). If contingent negative existentials are not fundamental, then they must be explained. But the intuition that contingent negative existentials are explained is in tension with the widely held view that any universal generalization can be explained by its instances together with a totality fact. This is because a totality fact is itself a negative existential, and equivalent to a universal generalization. If the explanation for any contingent negative existential must appeal to another contingent negative existential, then not all contingent negative existentials can be non-fundamental.

Scottish dentistry and broken promises: Woollard on presuppositions and substantial negative facts

Fiona Woollard claims that negative facts are parts of sequences leading to upshots when they are contrary to the presuppositions of the local community. There are three problems with Woollard’s use of presuppositions. The first is that it fails to capture an important part of our everyday understanding of doing and allowing. The second is that negative facts can be suitable to be parts of sequences even when they accord with presuppositions. The third is that even when negative facts are contrary to presuppositions, this need not be what makes them suitable to be parts of sequences of facts.

Information and financial technologies of hybrid wars: methodological approaches to the analysis of the content, occurrence, response and prevention

The article studies goals and application methods of information and financial technologies in the so-called hybrid wars, which recently have become actively used by many influential countries in the world. Authors of the article propose scientific and methodological guide and appropriate methods for hybrid wars prompt prevention, detection, analysis and development of responding methods. Authors emphasize that recently world is opted for new, less economically costly mode of warfare rather than wars traditional methods. One of these types of wars is the so-called hybrid wars. This type of war has many aspects, but the authors of this article have focused only on one of them, the interest of which has appeared recently, namely - information and financial technologies (IFT) of conducting this type of war. Based on this, the article discloses the content of the hybrid warfare IFT and main goals pursued by the so-called «aggressor country», and presents developed by the authors general scheme of the scientific and methodological guide for conducting hybrid warfare IFT manifestations research, which consists of the phase of identification of occurrence of the hybrid warfare IFT manifestations and three interrelated methods: methods of analysis of hybrid warfare IFT manifestations; methods of development of responding measures to the manifestations of hybrid warfare IFT; methods for developing and implementing measures to prevent the emergence of hybrid warfare IFT manifestations, etc. Article further outlines the schemes and the detailed content of these methods. The authors of the article emphasize that in order to counteract the manifestations of hybrid warfare IFT, should be developed the measures aimed to elimination of the consequences of established negative facts, as well as to prevention the occurrence of cases which lead or may lead to their occurrence in the "target country". For this purpose, they are offered purposely deducted methodology, scheme and general content of which are presented in the article. The main which they insist on is that no grounds should be created in the country to accuse country or its authority in financial fraud. That is the only way to prevent the use of hybrid warfare IFT towards the country.

Negative facts

If propositions are made true in virtue of corresponding to facts, then what are the truth-makers of true negative propositions such as ‘The apple is not red’? Russell argued that there must be negative facts to account for what makes true negative propositions true and false positive propositions false. Others, more parsimonious in their ontological commitments, have attempted to avoid them. Wittgenstein rejected them since he was loath to think that the sign for negation referred to a negative element in a fact. A contemporary of Russell’s, Raphael Demos, attempted to eliminate them by appealing to ‘incompatibility’ facts. More recently, Armstrong has appealed to the totality of positive facts as the ground of the truth of true negative propositions. Oaklander and Miracchi have suggested that the absence or non-existence of the positive fact (which is not itself a further fact) is the basis of a positive proposition being false and therefore of the truth of its negation.

Truth, correspondence theory of

The correspondence theory in its simplest form says that truth is a connection to reality. To be true is to accurately describe – in other words, match, picture, depict, express, conform to, agree with or correspond to – the real world or parts of it. For example, the proposition that a cat is on a mat is true if a real cat is on a real mat. Otherwise, that proposition fails to be true. In general, the truth of a proposition is sensitive to how real things are. In short, truth connects to reality. There are different ways to articulate the connection between true things and the reality they describe. Some theories, for example, treat the connection as a structural relation that ties constituents of a true thing to constituents of the world. Other theories treat the connection as a nonstructural correlation between true things and the world. This difference between structural and correlation theories depends on one’s theories of three components: true things, real things described by the true things, and the correspondence between true things and real things. All versions of the correspondence theory arise from theories of these components. A principle advantage of a correspondence theory is that it accounts for the apparent correlation between the aspects of reality and the truth-value of a proposition. When the cat is on the mat, the proposition that the cat is on the mat is true. If the cat gets off the mat, that proposition is not true. Therefore, a change in the cat correlates with a change in the proposition. Why? The correspondence theory predicts this correlation by analysing truth as a connection to reality. A principle challenge, on the other hand, is to understand the nature of the connection. There are metaphysical and epistemological worries. On the metaphysical side, there is the worry that a correspondence relation is intolerably mysterious. Correspondence is not analysable in terms of familiar physical relations, like distance or force. So what is correspondence? Some philosophers worry that by analysing truth as correspondence you exchange the mystery of truth for a greater mystery. On the epistemology side, there is the worry that you could never know whether a proposition corresponds with things beyond your head, since you can’t get outside your head to see things as they are. The worry here is that you cannot know whether any proposition is true if truth requires correspondence. Another challenge arises from alleged counterexamples. It is true that there are no hobbits. Yet, it is unclear how a true proposition about what is not real could correspond to something that is real. A common response to the challenges involves developing theories of the components involved. For example, there are structural accounts of correspondence designed to remove the metaphysical and epistemological mysteries. Moreover, there are accounts of negative facts, which serve as correspondents for negative truths.

Negative facts in classical Indian philosophy

Like their European counterparts, the philosophers of classical India were interested in the problem of negative facts. A negative fact may be thought of, at the outset at least, as a state of affairs that corresponds to a negative statement, such as ‘Mr Smith is not in this room.’ The question that perplexed the philosophers of India was: How does someone, say Ms Jones, know that Mr Smith is not in the room? There are essentially four possible metaphysical positions to account for what it is that Ms Jones knows when, after entering a room, she comes to know that her friend is not present there. Each of the positions has been adopted and defended by certain classical Indian philosophers. On the one hand, some take the absence of the friend from the room as a brute, negative fact. Of these, some hold knowledge of this fact to be perceptual, while others hold it to be inferential. On the other hand, some hold that the absence of the friend from the room has no real ontic status at all, and believe that what there really is in the situation is just the sum of all the things present in the office. These latter philosophers hold that knowledge of one’s friend’s absence is just knowledge of what is present, though some believe the knowledge results from perception, while others believe it to result from inference. These four positions were maintained by, respectively, the Nyāya philosopher Jayanta, the Mīmāṃsā philosophers Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhākara, and the Buddhist Dharmakīrti.