Can there be absence without existence?

For example:
There is no war. There was no war. There never will be war.
Is there peace? Yes, there is absence of war, but without war, there could be no peace.

There is no war. There is no peace. So, are we left in a void, with no knowledge, existence, or conception of what will never be?

Philosophy!

Hardly. Even if the words "war" and "peace" were rendered meaningless by a lack of context, the idea of "peace" would still exist. To put it another way, just because another language may not have a word for "peace" doesn't mean that peace as an idea doesn't exist.

Yes, but I'm talking about more than words.

Ah, I see. In that case I'd have to say the question's meaningless, because to a society that has no context of war the very ideas would be useless. An outside observer may call them a "peaceful" society and they would have no clue what the outsider meant- like explaining color to a blind man.

Good point. Still, these thoughts still keep me thinking...

Finite:

Time was created so that everything doesn't happen at once.

Space was created so that everything doesn't happen in the same place.

Infinite:

On the other side, everything happens in the same place at once.
__________

So I don't know if absence exists!

Ah, but time is relative!

Yes. There can still be the postitive without the actualization of the negative, thought we may not know it is there. There is a distiniction between what is and what we can know.

To UbuntuniX

If I remember correctly in Aristotel´s Metephysic you have definition of absence.I don´t have book right now,and if I have it it will be of little help( I don´t belive I will translate it correctly to engish).

It's a good question! I've wondered the same thing.

I like Bentrand Russel's approach to language: With a statement like 'there is peace', it really describes a *three* place relation between an observer, a language, and some state affairs in the world. One looks at a situation, and selects a particular word that fits.... it's the observer that makes the judgment.

It might be impossible that the jugdment could be made, or that the word itself could even be defined, without some positive and negative examples from which to base our judgments.

Although, if there was always peace for millions of years, and then war, we could look back at history and make the judgement that there was peace during this time. Otherwise, we would be confined to the stranger view that peace didn't really exist during this time, even though the state of affairs met the definition in all regards.

So IMO, peace can exist without war ever existing, but understanding or using a word like 'peace' would be difficult without a variety of experiences.

a la Wittgensteins's Private Language argument . . . An American dude called Avrum Stroll wrote a book comparing Wittgenstein's epistemology and that of G.E.Moore, a fellow philosopher at Cambridge. It is a fantastic introduction to Wittgenstein, and shows Wittgenstein's thinking about language, knowledge and certainty. Thoroughly recommended, although ignore the last chapter when Stroll seems to lose the plot. Obviously far to profound for me to fully understand so I couldn't possibly paraphrase it here . . .

For a culture that never knew war, there would be no concept of peace, as they see it as their natural state. BUT... there is always the concept of conflict, as they would know no war with other cultures, but chances are few they never had a conflict, so they could understand a concept of peace in terms of the absence of conflict. By this means, even if there is no real concept of war, imperfection of society would keep alive the concept of peace... Even though, peace still would need a contrast in order to be recognized. Even when a state exists, it requires some contrast in order to be visible to people affected by it, if not, it will just be seen as a natural state and wouldn't be took in consideration, even as a concept, neither a word to describe it.

The war/peace thing was just an example. A better example, then, might be "would 'vegetarianism' mean anything if there were no meat?" as you don't have to worry about meat on a "small scale" as you do with war.

mmm, I don't see the convenience of the term, because vegetarianism is an isolated term. The act of eating veggies only... The only way it couldn´t exist, as you state, is that there's nothing else to eat. So, we would be veggies also. I used war/peace example also to make my point, that if you have no comparison point, the need for creating a term doesn't exist. Then, I agree with your point, as the absence of something would etymologically, not really, avoid the existence of other things.

Study taoism.

I second that, I was reading a Japanese philosophy book and it talked about how in the western philosophical tradition, nihilism was not a real issue until the 18-19th century existentialists like Nietzsche. But in the east, the fundamental basis is the importance of "absence" or 無.

But no, I don't meditate.

I disagree with the fact that a society without war could not define war/peace. That would be simular to not being able to imagine it. Humans have imagined *many* things that really do not exist.
One could argue, that these are somehow derived from things that do exist. Like war in space is simply combining space and war. Like darwinbots(.com) are an abstraction designed to attempt to emulate evolution. (cool, btw)
However, a single murder in such society would then lead to the concept of war. (although it would seem to insane for such a society perhaps.) Maybe even a single death, since someone could think that in principle, the cause of death could be created by a person. (indeed, this could perhaps even been seen as the cause of wars, and the way they are fought. Or it is an invention.)

@handy; I dont understand why your post did not meet more resistance. For one, the way it is said, seems to be viewing the universe as "utilitarian". Hell, i dont even what you mean with (in)finite in your post. And, what does it have to do with existence of absence anyway?

Lol, existance is inescapable!

Quoting your personal message Jasper84:

Hi,
About http://socialdiscussion.com/religion...istence-2.html and posts before.
That hardly answerred my question. If you think it is somehow obvious, (which i doubt it is) can you break it down for me anyway?
Is it sarcastic or something? (Not meaning anything) Does it refer to something?
Jasper

/Quote

What I was meaning is that we are a part of the indescribable (because we are in a finite universe) infinite creative intelligence/energy...

So whether we are in the finite or the infinite, we still exist, albeit very differently in the infinite due to it's unlimited nature.

Ok, how did people get -that- meaning first time?
I think considering such things simply beyond us is probably a very sensible standpoint. So you mean infinite, in the sense of "math"/intelligence? What does that have to do with time/space being at the same point?
And BTW it could not be infinite energy, which is just something in the nature of our own specific universe, i do not see how that could be possibly be relevant. You might aswel talk about impulse too, being relative. Why do you not add temperature and electric charge, electromagnetic fields.