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The possibilities are explored of considering nothing as the intended object of thoughts that are literally about the concept of nothing(ness) first, and thereby of nothing(ness). Nothing(ness), on the proposed analysis, turns out to be nothing other than the property of being an intendable object. There are propositions that look to be both true and to be about nothing in the sense of being about the concept and ultimate intended object of what is here formally defined and designated as N-nothing(ness). We are thinking about it already in reading and understanding the meaning of this abstract. Nothing nothings, is asserted in all seriousness and with a definite formally definable literal meaning. The concept of N-nothing(ness) as defined and explained here is a concept with identity conditions like that of any entity, the difference being that the concept of N-nothing(ness) is a nonentity and nonexistent intended object. The boundaries established by the proposed concept of N-nothing(ness) as a Meinongian object and property nominalization is compared with Sartre's concept of néant in Being and Nothingness. It is argued that Sartre far oversteps the bounds of what can meaningfully be said about nothing and nothingness by trying to attribute constitutive properties to that which, by virtue of its identity conditions of constitutive properties, is nothing more than intendable. The prospects are considered of applying the proposed Meinongian concept of N-nothing(ness) toward explaining the apparent logical possibility of a null or totally empty universe, and as to why there is something rather than nothing.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-18075-5_9

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