h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to Zeno's thinking, it would be impossible to say where an object is precisely at any one time, down to the smallest subatomic particle, and therefore, that would mean that the actual place of the stationary object is infinite - which would suggest that because it is in no region of space it does not exist. Because things do exist - (if we accept empirical reality for ultimate reality) - then it must be that there is a point at which something can't be split. It is entire and fundamental - made of no smaller parts.

One of the false presumptions Zeno makes is that things can be split infinitely - while that may be true of numbers, it cannot be true for space, and therefor time (The act of movement implies that the object has somewhere to move).

The sticking point is the 'if we accept empirical reality for ultimate reality'; that really begs the question against Zeno. Zeno was a follower of Parmenides, who was quite happy with the idea that 'mortal opinions' are just illusory and the universe as logical necessity reveals it to be is nothing like what we think it is. So while the point about the impossibility of location is an interesting one, I actually think Zeno would be happy to agree with you; he doesn't want to tell you how things are, but to show that it's no less absurd to think that things exist than to think (with Parmenides) that only 'It is'.

To argue about ultimate reality is a dead-end conversation - whether something or not is real in reality or whether it's all just imagination or just appears that way cannot be argued for the simple fact that we can't know anything for sure. That is why we must accept reality as it appears to us in the event that it is real reality - nothing will be lost by interacting in a fake world, but if we refuse to interract just because we refuse to acknowledge what we observe in nature - that is foolishness. I don't understand the argument that the universe as a logical necessity reveals itself to be nothing like what we think it is.

If something exists, doesn't that just mean the same thing as "it is?"

(I need to read up on Parmenides)

For Parmenides it's a very special 'it'. 'It' turns out to be this unlimited, immobile, gapless mass... (Not a very good way of putting it, but then he had a worse one.)

'we can't know anything for sure'

Certain of that, are you?

'if we refuse to interract just because we refuse to acknowledge what we observe in nature - that is foolishness'

Zeno didn't refuse to interact; neither did Parmenides. But they were philosophers, and hence interested in thinking about the world as well as interacting with it.

I get your point - but no, of course I can't be sure about it, due to the nature of knowledge, but it is, in fact, true, while being contradictory. Maybe the only thing we can know is that we can't know anything for sure except for the fact that we can't know anything for sure