Sincere thanks to roving transcendentalist reporter and award-winning *Stupidity Scout* Philip Baker, who has just filed this latest example of another oafish Heideggerian hypocritical contradiction. Highly respected nomadic newsman Phil has unearthed an additional Heidegger goof, providing yet further evidence that The Philosopher of Nazism's mouth was bigger than his Bauer-wie brain. Our thanks to Phil for pointing out yet more of Heidegger's self-contradictory anally retentive vacuities and providing yet more reasons why University and College governors should take into account the long-suffering protestations of the taxpayer, who should not be asked to cough-up their hard-earned funds to finance the teachings of this weird Nazi contradictory crackpot's fantasies about the existence of "nothing."

Heidegger Version (1)

"He who speaks of nothing does not know what he is doing. In speaking of nothing he makes it into a something. In speaking he speaks against what he intended. He contradicts himself. But discourse that contradicts itself offends against the fundamental rule of discourse (logos), against 'logic'. To speak of nothing is illogical.

Heidegger, self-confessed illogician - An Introduction to Metaphysics

Heidegger Version (2)

*The nothing with which anxiety brings us face to face, unveils the nullity by which Dasein, in its very basis, is defined, and this basis itself is as thrownness unto death.* Heidegger, Being and Time 356

The question of *Nothing* is absolutely simple, uncomplicated, elementary and straightforward and does not fall under the category of being a *philosophical conundrum.* Though most people, [except transcendentalists kooks,] understand and grasp the role of the *nothing-word* intuitively, it DOES take a bit of time to explicate it.

The explication of it is not really *philosophical,* but merely a textual rendering of what you already probably already KNOW or FEEL sensorially deep down.

Simply put, the human mind, does not exist - what exists are *minded* (enbrained) humans, who, when generalising using human language, are required to communicably mark the "absence" (although "absence does not exist to be marked either) of an entity or entities. An underlying cognitive substitution can be suggested: such as: *that which has been in a certain spatial location but no longer occupies that space- or *that which might be expected to exist in a certain spatial location* and does not - with a form of words or signifier of explanatory or contrastive negation. That is not to say that the statement/observation *There is nothing in the fridge* is not a perfectly good sentential form of telling somebody about an empty fridge.

But I am not addressing the fact that reification can be semantically useful in many situations - I am addressing what actually (ontologically) exists in the world - and what does not - and NOTHING certainly does NOT exist. But even to say that NOTHING does not exist ia ontologically flawed, for there is no such state of being in a state of not existing, which is something that Shakespeare's Hamlet could not get his head around when he was toying with the idea of throwing himself off the battlements of Elsinor Castle and muttering about the non-states of his childhood imprintation known as: "being" and "not-being. "

What are the sentential options open to us [human kind] in such an ontologically antonymous situation?

It is possible to open the fridge and say: * There are no yoghurts, no tomatoes, no olives, no chocolate biscuits, no apples, no bananas, no berries, no grapes, no lemons, no limes, no melons, no nectarines, no oranges, no peaches, no pears, no plums, no strawberries or watermelon. Neither are there any Mexican beans, green chilli, refried beans, salsa, Spanish rice, tacos, tortillas. Unbelievably there is not even any dairy butter, cheese, cottage cheese, cream cheese, eggs, margarine, milk, sliced bread or sour cream. Even WORSE (for some people)  - there is no beer in the fridge and no tonic water to go with my London Gin!

To avoid having to come out with similar massive mouthfuls or umbrella terms like: "There are no items to eat or drink, etc)"  to explain the absence of eatables and drinkables which we might expect to be there, how much easier it to be the reificative human animal you are and say:

                                             *There is *nothing* in the fridge*.

Interestingly there are certain items on the above list which would not qualify or be included in my own Evans' household's list of absentee foodstuffs, and specific foods would hence not be included in the Evans' neurological compendium as being part of the *nothing.* Being a family of lacto-vegetarians , we do not eat meat, eggs or butter etc., so these items would not be conceived of as *missing* or *absent* and form part of the catalogue of  *nothing,* which is metaphorically crouched like a growling hound of heaven in the family fridge.

Of course no fridge is ever really empty and no fridge contains or doesn't contain *nothing, *for like the universe itself is perpetually full of something to keep the larger objects apart -  on earth every fridge is always full of oxygen gas.


I suggest therefore that everyone has their own version of what is included in the marker-concept of *nothing.* I feel sure that a New Guinean tribesman's concept of *nothing* does not include my wife's *Jones' Sewing Machine* left to her by my mother for example, and I feel fairly confident that your notional list of missing *somethings* would not include the tribesmen's penis sheath - unless that is your need of such a penile cloaking chlamys is more pressing than the lusty denizen of the New Guinean highlands?

The problem with the transcendentalist is that instead of using the basic common-sense that his imaginary God gave him and realising that the abstract notion of *no-thing* is another linguistic, timesaving short-cut [see missing fridge-contents list above] he dramatises the simple, completely rational and understandable notion - something which was developed over the many millennia of human linguistic history by ordinary homo-sapiens who understood *nothing* [fill in here what you think they would have included in their *nothing-list or *missing-list*] about the ins and outs of ontological shenanigans and wouldn't have recognised a denotatum if one tripped them up and landed them in a nest of red ants.

No, the transcendentalist hoi polloi  is NOT satisfied with leaving a perfectly straightforward linguistic device to save breath alone - they want to reify it out of all proportion and place it on top of the wardrobe of wonderment to be admired, bowed down to, and fashioned into a semantic stick with which to beat uncomprehending university students into feelings of abject intellectual inadequacy because the *mad professor* claims that *nothing* signifies some mystical metaphysical Holy Grail, which remains outside of the reach of the field-worker which his rude calloused hands and blackened, half-chewed fingernails.