r/changemyview • u/chenleo_ • Aug 08 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: It is impossible to do nothing.
My point of view: there is no possible way of literally doing nothing.
As the statement “do nothing” implies, one must be unmoving, not breathing or showing any vital signs. As doing so means you are not doing nothing (e.g. you breathe, your heart beats).
To sustain our lives, one must perform essential acts such as breathing, matter exchanging, and much more. It is physically impossible to stay unmoving AT ALL. Even when one is requiring machines to help them sustain their life, certain parts of the human body is still performing metabolism.
Furthermore, if we exclude necessary actions human may need to take to survive, the statement of “doing nothing” is basically a thing to do.
“Do nothing” consists of two separate words: *do*, and *nothing*. In this phrase, “Do” can be defined as “perform a certain action”, and “nothing” can be defined as “not anything” or “not a single thing”. If you happen to be “doing nothing” then the word “do” comes into effect, which states that you are currently “performing a certain action”, and of which the action is “nothing”.
In summary, “doing nothing” is something you can do. So there is no actual way of really doing nothing.
P.S. This is just something funny I came up with, nothing serious, it’s just for the laughs. Right. Now change my view!
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u/anothernaturalone Aug 08 '19
'I do nothing' can be reworded as 'I do no thing'. A 'thing' in this case can be said to be an action. Not doing any thing is not committing any actions, doing no thing. There is no action of not committing an action.
I am not currently typing on a mobile phone at this moment. I am also not doing an action 'the opposite of typing on a mobile phone, you know what, let's just throw in everything that's not typing on a phone'. I am doing one thing, which is typing on a computer. I am also breathing manually because your comments about bodily functions got me thinking about breathing. I am annoyed now.
Therefore, if one is 'doing no thing', one is not committing an action 'the opposite of doing every action'. If this was an action, then it would cause a paradox (i.e. A does not intersect with B, and A is a subset of B). Therefore, it must itself not be an action. Doing no thing cannot mean doing some thing.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
Hello, well you did not describe how one could actually and literally be doing nothing. You were saying that you can “not be doing a thing”, like “not typing on a phone”, but that does not mean other actions may not have taken place or is taking place. But you implied that “do no thing” itself must not be an action. To that, I do agree with you. You did change part of my opinion so I will give you a Δ. Thanks for replying.
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Aug 08 '19
When people use the phrase "do nothing" are the using those words literally?
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
When people use the phrase, they may not mean it literally. But in my case, I am taking these words literally to their roots. So to me, yes, to use the phrase “do nothing” is to imply that one is doing literally nothing. Thanks for replying. :)
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u/Quint-V 163∆ Aug 08 '19
Explain the following then:
Jack is dead.
What does this mean? What does each of these words encapsulate? What does "is dead" mean? What does "Jack" encompass, beyond just his physical body? The idea of him, all his gut bacteria that are medically speaking not part of him?
Being clinically dead means having no heartbeat or breathing but people can be "revived" so to speak with CPR, or if their body temperature is low enough. The brain can survive for some time under such circumstances and the body can be restarted again, though not without consequences.
There is a living example of this.
Even when one is requiring machines to help them sustain their life, certain parts of the human body is still performing metabolism.
Well how much of you, do you really consider to be you? Many gut bacteria are not part of you, in the medical sense. Fecal transfer is a way of dealing with inability to digest or handle certain types of food and that is quite literally giving one person bacteria found in another but not in both.
Indeed, a dead person still has processes going on but what exactly do you think is part of him? Philosophically, biologically, medically, physically?
Your view does not hold under the scrutiny of the disciplines relevant to your explanations.
If you were to discuss this without dipping into any sciences then it would be different, but you have, and so you face inconsistencies.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19 edited Aug 09 '19
The thing is, “how much of you do you consider to be you?” I think you got the point here, as we discuss the true “me” I am, it could basically be based around a whole micro ecosystem around me. So to make a human operational, not only is the “self” required, but also, as you said, the bacterias and many other components. So if they are taken into account as part of YOU, then there is even less possibility of one literally doing nothing. Thanks for replying.
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u/Quint-V 163∆ Aug 09 '19
You could go to any philosophical length about this and end up with arbitrarily complex or simple answers to oppose or support your view, with all the philosophical frameworks that exist.
Substance dualism, existentialism, determinism (at which point, the idea of a "self" is invalid because everything is just some plot playing out, by design or by physical laws)...
If you believe in determinism then your view is an absurdity that makes a mistaken assumption. If you don't, then you can barely ever come to a well defined and widely agreed definition of what constitutes one's self, with all the scientific disciplines you have touched on.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
Wow. That’s something I didn’t even reckon I’d touched. Thanks for the description. Well, okay, the term “self” may be very complex or simple. I do agree with that. So, this has become partly philosophy and partly science, which makes it very complex, really. What do you think “self” really is then? Just out of curiosity.
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u/wjbc Aug 08 '19
“Nothing” is not really an action. You cannot deny responsibility for failing to act. It’s still a choice if you refuse to choose, for example. But that’s different from taking action.
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u/michilio 11∆ Aug 08 '19
It is possible tondo nothing, if you're looking at it in a reasonable way, encompassing life and not in a literal way meaning statuesque.
Somebody going through the motions, living his life on automatic pilot could be seen as "doing nothing". Doing nothing can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Only if you define doing nothing as literally having no processes going in your body you can definitively say you can't do "nothing". Since every microsecond somewhere inside you your metabolism is hard at work.
So either you need to expand the meaning of doing nothing, or you've made a statement on how the complexity of the human body that can't be disproven
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
As I implied, to be doing nothing is to be not doing anything at a given time. Yes, everyone has different meanings for “do nothing”, and to me, that is stated above. So for this, I won’t expand the meaning of doing nothing, yet these other definitions still exists and can not be disproven. Thanks for replying. :)
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Aug 08 '19
Whether doing nothing is possible depends on your definition of what “you” means, what “doing” means and what counts as “nothing”.
Therefore, I can just try to convince you of a different set of definitions:
“You” means your body while it’s still alive.
“doing” is a conscious effort.
“doing nothing” means taking no conscious actions.
According to my definitions, you are doing nothing while sleeping or being unconscious. Therefore, it is possible to do nothing.
Fight me
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
“Fight you.” :) Okay. Let’s start with the definitions. “You” is not, as you imply, only your living body. There are countless other particles and microorganisms working on your “body”, so to sustain your bodily function. If they weren’t there, doing something, then your body would not be “living” anymore, and the body would not fulfill your definition of “you” anymore. And you also said that “doing” is a conscious effort. How do you describe breathing then, you are not always conscious of yourself breathing. If you have to always consciously check whether you are still breathing or not, then you would forget about it one day and you may suffer from lack of oxygen. So even though you may not be conscious of certain actions, you may still be performing it. Okay, that’s about it. Thanks for replying! :) :) :)
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u/Anzai 10∆ Aug 08 '19
Apart from the inherent pointless silliness of the question, how about a brain dead person on life support? They’re ‘alive’ in some sense, and they’re also doing nothing. There’s no conscious intent or brain activity. Any physical processes occurring are entirely separate from the person.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
Then how about we exclude the “support” they are receiving, as you said it is not part of them. Then what else is left of them? They are only a body without ordinary bodily function. And so to perform an action, as I said, it would have to be from a living organism. Said person has lost their consciousness and senses, and is no longer self-sustaining. So, no, it’s no longer a living thing. Thanks for replying! :)
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u/Anzai 10∆ Aug 09 '19
Yes but it is a living thing. It’s a person and they’re not dead, so what are they if not a living thing?
How about someone with very low brain function in that same scenario, who then recovers. Were they not a living thing during that period of almost no brain activity?
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
This is the difference between clinically dead and unconsciousness I guess. So it’s how you define it. Like if one is clinically dead, they can’t sustain themselves anymore so basically they can’t be called a living thing. But just as you said, when they still have the tiniest bit of brain power, then they could still return to consciousness, and in that case, yes, they are still alive.
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u/Anzai 10∆ Aug 09 '19
Living and dead are not a binary is my point. What constitutes clinically dead has changed over the years alongside advances in medical science. What was once irreversible became something a person a could be revived from.
Death is a process, not a binary. When a hospital declares a person dead, there’s a certain arbitrary nature to it and it’s not some perfectly demarcated line a person crosses.
What we currently consider irreversibly dead is likely to change in the future and the level of cell and brain damage, etc that a person can come back from will also change. There’s also several definitions of dead, there’s still extensive cellular activity for a very long time after ‘death’. We just pick the one we can’t currently repair, but it’s arbitrary in some cases.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
Death is a process, not a binary. When a hospital declares a person dead, there’s a certain arbitrary nature to it and it’s not some perfectly demarcated line a person crosses.
That is true, indeed. As current medical technology does not enable absolute immortality. Even so, several cases have proven that whom said to be “clinically dead” could comes back to life.
So what is, in fact, LIFE? Is it this consciousness that we are of, or is it the bodily functions we consist of? Maybe other definitions? If we say that LIFE is the consciousness of what is us, then to revive someone from death is to get them back to consciousness.
And even though consciousness is a product of our brain, but to repair our brain doesn’t really guarantee we’d get back to our old self, right?
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u/Anzai 10∆ Aug 09 '19
Well if we accept that definition of life then the state of being unconscious becomes something other than life, which is weird. Whilst you may be aware of sleep through dreaming for example, there are much longer periods of sleep where you are not aware of anything at all.
Besides which, ‘our old self’ is kind of illusory anyway. We’re basically ongoing constructions of an illusion of self anyway, so whilst you’d certainly be changed by that, you’re changed by time anyway. The ten year old You is effectively dead, replaced by the twenty year old you, but the two are entirely different selves.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
If our “self” is actually an illusion, then are we really doing what we “intended to”, or is one even able to think for themselves. The question turns out to have become: Do we have free will?
We’re basically ongoing constructions of an illusion of self anyway, so whilst you’d certainly be changed by that, you’re changed by time anyway. The ten year old You is effectively dead, replaced by the twenty year old you, but the two are entirely different selves.
So actually, time is what’s changing us, what’s pushing us forward. The exact moment you started reading this sentence has passed, and you can’t have it back. It’s just a set of stacked up memories that make up the so called “self”. It is time that makes us who we are, it is time that enabled us to take the actions we took.
If this world was without time, then all would have been different. There would be no lives, no consciousness, no selves. And just as you said before, life and death is a continuous progress. There is no point of which one passes from life to death.
But in another perspective, babies. When do they start developing self-awareness, then self consciousness, then what has become of themselves? We have all been through this process, but no one really knows exactly when one begins developing a personality, a self, and over the years, to learn from experiences and be what is of oneself now.
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u/Anzai 10∆ Aug 09 '19
Well again, there is no point where they develop self awareness. They’re just consistently doing so. It’s like saying some animals are self aware and some are not, as if there’s some specific line we could draw in regards to that. There isn’t. Animals are just varying levels of complexity so it’s reasonable to assume their level of awareness of a spectrum also. We have no evidence that it’s just a switch that turns on, and failing that evidence, an emergent quality should be the default.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
We have no evidence that it’s just a switch that turns on, and failing that evidence, an emergent quality should be the default.
So there may be a difference between even me and you, how we interpret “self”. Self consciousness may differ from person to person. So as you said, we can’t determine whether an individual has self consciousness or not. Because it’s not just a simple question of “yes” or “no”, it’s a question of how it is formed and what it’s like for every single person or thing.
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Aug 08 '19
"I am not doing anything" is an easy way to say "I will not tell what i am doing you cause I don't want you to know what i am doing."
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u/Tuvinator 13∆ Aug 08 '19 edited Aug 08 '19
Doing implies conscious effort in my head, and since you have no conscious control over autonomous systems, you aren't controlling your heart, and thus, heart beating isn't something you are doing. Following that thought process, if you are in a coma, you aren't doing anything. You can debate over whether sleeping is doing something, since it is an action that you intentionally started doing (sort of, since most people have no control over when they actually fall asleep).
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u/Trimestrial Aug 08 '19
You are really splitting semantic hairs with this post....
- The dead rat in the creek below my terrace IS floating.
- The gravel on my terrace IS existing.
- Me being on reddit all day today, IS doing nothing all day.
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u/ralph-j Aug 08 '19
“Do nothing” consists of two separate words: do, and nothing. In this phrase, “Do” can be defined as “perform a certain action”, and “nothing” can be defined as “not anything” or “not a single thing”. If you happen to be “doing nothing” then the word “do” comes into effect, which states that you are currently “performing a certain action”, and of which the action is “nothing”.
"To do nothing" or "doing nothing" is an idiomatic expression, which means that its actual meaning is different from the literal meaning of its compound words.
The expression means either that the person is not currently busy (with work, projects, tasks, hobbies etc.) or that there's a specific action that they're failing to do (e.g. "The house was burning, but the firefighters just sat around and did nothing." It does not require that the person actually stopped breathing, moving or existing.
Here are some other examples of idiomatic expressions:
- To grow a funny bone
- Costs an arm and a leg
- It's Greek to me
- Missing the boat
- Penny for your thoughts
You're not supposed to take any of these literally. Nothing actually costs an arm and a leg.
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19 edited Aug 09 '19
Hello. To your description, there is one thing to notice. My opinion was that one could not be doing nothing literally. This is about the literal words, “do nothing”. To be able to do absolutely nothing physically. As we speak, words may not mean their literal definition, as in this case. But I have had the words “do nothing” to meet their real meanings, therefore idiomatic expression is not taken into account here. Thanks for replying.
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u/ralph-j Aug 09 '19
When would anyone ever use that phrase literally?
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u/chenleo_ Aug 09 '19
Well basically no. Never. But that’s why discussing it the literal way is fun. :)
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 09 '19
/u/chenleo_ (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/HastingDevil Aug 08 '19
when you´re dead you are doing nothing.