The philosophical concept of "Nothing"

I have always been fascinated by the philosophical concept, “Nothing”. The following contains my ideas about it. It would be a surprise to me if it was found to have the depth of thought of a Wittgenstein or Russell, but perhaps it is not without interest. Among its virtues are brevity and I believe clarity—not always found elsewhere.

Nothing
In my opinion, "nothing" is one of the most misunderstood philosophical, mathematical, and mystical (these are probably all equivalent) concept. The misunderstanding is about different ways we think of existence. When we use a word, "it, or something, comes into existence". When we say "the absence of something", something indeed comes into existence. But that something is merely a word, not the thing. (Quine probably has said it better). The problem is vastly confounded by the fact that in English, as in many other languages, the suffix "thing" is appended to "some" and "no" as in "something", as well as to "nothing", or in Hungarian, valami and semmi ("mi" means "thing" in Hungarian). At least German and French don't have this problem. For them half the battle is won.
But I am already ahead of the game, in that I have already committed the first mistake, saying that the opposite of something is nothing, because that usage already confers and ontological existence to "nothing". Maybe I should have said "not something", or use the negation ~something (to stand for not something). In the rest of this article, I shall use ~S to mean not something. And the ~S is not a "thing".
At any rate, the mistake is not to realize that when we name something, what exists is the name, or to be more precise, a series of sound waves, signifying saying the thing, or a pattern of dots on paper which we read. In our minds, to speak loosely, we decode the waves of sound or light and assign a meaning to it. So the sound waves exist, the light packets exist, the thought and its neurological "forms" (neuronal changes) exist, but the "thing" named does not. This can best be seen by speaking of a logical contradiction, like for instance, "square circle". In a sense it exists, but what exists are the words "square and circle" or the joined concept "square circle", but not the square circle, which obviously does not exist, Many writers have used "the Golden mountain" when talking about this problem. The golden mountain is not the best example, because its existence is merely unlikely, not impossible. I prefer square circle, since its existence is impossible. No amount of naming game can bring it into existence. This is true about a less obvious contradiction, "the largest prime". After the Greeks, we can talk about "it", whatever "it" is, but only in the sense that "it does not exist". Of course we are already in trouble again. We cannot name what does not exist, we can only utter words, which do exist. The sentence "the largest prime does not exist", of course can be simply demystified using the form suggested by Russell, "there is no "x" such that "x" is the largest prime". But even mathematicians can get in a bind using concepts like the "null set".
There are several things to consider. One of the firsts is the idea of opposites. For instance, it is to us intuitively obvious that the opposite of up is down or of left is right, things by no means obvious to a creature with circular symmetry. Certainly positive and negative charges are only opposite of each other in that one attracts the other repels. More insidious is the couple, "true or false". A statement has two values, true or false. But the two do not have equal contents. This can best be seen by a trivial example, lottery. If I enter, I can either win or lose. True or false, equal chance? By no means so. To win I have maybe 0.000001% chance, to lose 99.99999%. The two possibilities may be opposites in one sense, but not in another. Let us now look at true or false statements. A statement such that my shoes are in the closet can be true only in one configuration, if the shoes are in the closet. The statement can be false in an infinite ways; the shoes can be in the hallway, stolen, lost, burnt in a fire, and so on. To generalize, P can be true in only one way, its opposite, the falsehood, ~P, can be true in an infinite number of ways.
We should keep this in mind when we consider "nothing". In one way, it is the opposite of "something", but in what way? All the other examples, up-down, positive-negative, attraction-repelling, and so on consist of similar things on both sides. But something and its absence are not similar things; in fact, the latter is not a thing. Treating them equally is to commit Ryle's category mistake.
The difficulty with trying to treat "nothing" (form here on abbreviated as "N") is that it is impossible to visualize it. This difficulty can be seen best in comparison with other hard-to-visualize concepts. Even "impossibilities" can be visualized. Admittedly there is no such thing as "the largest prime", but I can think of a large number which could be just that; if a mathematician could prove (I know it is not possible) that there is such a thing, I would have no problem saying "aha, so it is 128994300000000002340001". Of course, one cannot square the circle: there is no square with an area identical to that of a circle. But if one proved that Pi is not transcendental (I know it is) it would cause me no great discomfort, and I could imagine a square with the requisite properties.
The same can be said about eternity, infinity and similar concepts. I can at least visualize infinity, thinking of an infinitely large number as a very large number to which I can keep adding and it will never end; if it is a distance, I can think of walking on and on and on along a road. Admittedly it is not quite infinity, but at least I can visualize something which for me is infinity.
In contrast, I do not even know how to approach total N. I cannot get to it by successive approximation. I cannot get to it by taking one thing at a time away and trying to visualize what happens when everything has been taken away. What remains is still space, vacuum, or void, all surrounded by something. This negative limit of existing things cannot lead to the non-existent, to N. The physicist's vacuum is teeming with Heisenbergian virtual particles. The Buddhist's void is one out of which things are created. They are not pure N.
One can not arrive at the properties of something by enumerating what it is not. N is not this, not that, does not exist, and so on do not help. And I am not referring to such mystical concepts like ineffable, unnamable, "neti, neti", not this, not that. All of these assume that the Spirit, God, Godhead, Intelligence, and so on exist, but they do not have attributes with which we are familiar.
N in my concept is not "neti, neti", the latter is at least a thing, the former is nothing, a vast fundamental distinction. Hence, when the mystics think they are talking of "nothing", whatever they are talking about is not N. N truly cannot be talked about except as a concept, and be left at that.
The problem of thinking of N is similar to the question, "why is there something instead of nothing?" We, as beings in space and (I think in time, though time is more questionable) cannot conceive of non-being, I suspect because of the fact that, contrary to traditional belief, our reason is shaped and limited by our biology. And our biology is in space and in time. For us to conceive N is impossible.
In my opinion, there should be a moratorium on discussing N, except by discussing the concept of N.
Since nothing intelligent can be said about N, I believe we should take Wittgenstein's injunction, one he did not take himself, and remain silent whereof we cannot speak.
Ps. A few more comments about thinking about and naming some item. When I think of my house, I have a definite image in my mind. I can describe it; I can draw it even. When I think of the North Pole, I can no longer rely on my own image. But I can trust others' description, or describe it on the basis of my understanding in such a way that if I were at the North Pole, I could point to it, saying, "this is the North Pole". When I think of a concept, or an idea, it is not this simple, in that I cannot point to something. But talking about the number 3, in an analogous manner, I can pick it out from all other numbers, I can describe it, give its properties. Things become more difficult when I extend the process to the number 1/3. I know what it is, but I do not see it all; 1/3 is actually not a number, but a definition for calculating one, 0.33333333…Since it goes on to infinity, I can never think of the exact number. Still, I know what it means; I can give a formula for calculating it, give its next digit at any time. So naming 1/3, or 0.3333…. still names a real item, assuming a number is real. Naming Pi becomes still a bit more difficult, because when talking about it, I cannot even encompass all of its digits, cannot in theory name the next digit. But even here, saying "Pi" means something, a real thing. The next step, however, is far more difficult. What do I mean by "the largest prime"? It clearly refers to a number, except to no existing number; in fact to a number which cannot even exist. So "the largest prime", whatever it is, is not a "thing", it is not a definition, it is possibly a concept, although with our present knowledge an impossible one. Curiously, it is not a necessary contradiction in the same way as the concept of "a married bachelor" is, because there is nothing a priorily contradictory about the "largest prime", except to one blessed with infinite mathematical knowledge. So what do we mean by "the largest prime"? I will not try to answer this, except to indicate that whatever we mean by it, naming it does not, and cannot point to a real thing.
This thought process should indicate that great deal of thought should be given to the correspondence between referring to "something" and its referent. Whatever we may be referring to may not correspond to anything.