<snip>
Vacuum is a complex concept that, as Krauss has shown, is at the junction of the most advanced science and philosophy. Vacuum is cosmic, physical, and energetic (hypothetically also dark). When I use the concept of vacuum in the way that fits my thinking, I capitalize it. So, Vacuum is the context of everything we know to exist; it is the spacetime as a background on which the Cosmos is seen. To simplify this philosophically, you may take Vacuum to mean a nonexistence (as unperceived existence). When I mentioned before (in the conversation with Greg) that whether there are facts of nonexistence or that facts presuppose nonexistence, I meant that one can have facts that presuppose other facts. This is a regress in the chain of facts that ends up in nonexistence (or existence that we do not yet wholly grasp).
If you will recall from that exchange, I said facts presuppose existence and identity. Furthermore, I’ll add here, even the concepts of nonexistence and nonidentity presuppose existence and identity.
When Peikoff indicates you can know there is not a gremlin behind the door, it is simply because of what is known about gremlins. Unlike kings and cabbages, gremlins are made up fairy tales, imaginary creatures. They do not exist, just as nonexistence does not exist. There cannot be a gremlin behind the door. On the other hand, gremlins exist as imaginary creatures in fairytales, as nonexistence exists as an imaginary example to supposedly differentiate existence from.
Facts that presuppose other facts can only regress until one reaches the source of facts, existence. Nonexistence is not a fact, it is the absence of a fact, a derivative concept pertaining to a relationship, i.e., a concept which can be formed or grasped only in relation to some existent that has ceased to exist. To insist that nonexistence is otherwise, is simply to commit the fallacy Rand calls the Reification of the Zero. (as discussed in ITOE’s Axiomatic Concepts.)
This and the section on Aristotle’s square of opposition (<snipped>), appears to me as to be leading to a rehash of what was here.
In the square of opposition, Some S is P (type I) can be used in place of an All S is P (type A) in a syllogism. Substituting a ‘type I’ expression for a ‘type A’ expression does not convert to “A is I”. All S is P is not Some S is P. All S is P is All S is P, while Some S is P is Some S is P. So no, this doesn’t make sense or reflect the left side of the square. Personally, I prefer All S is P over Some S is P, when I can get it. I.e., All fallacies deny identity to the subject matter at hand, where “fallacies” is S and “deny identity to the subject matter at hand” is P.