If there is no truth, what is a lie?
Just supposing, ‘appearance’, and only ‘appearance’, was ‘truth’? This would necessarily relegate ‘non-appearance’ to falsity. In practice, though, how is ‘appearance’ to be distinguished from ‘non-appearance’? Because, the attribution of ‘appearance’, in practice, is variable, contingent on the perspective from which its determination is made. What is apparent or not, very much depends on perspective, whether of perceptual apprehensions or of theoretical outlooks. Furthermore, ‘perspectives’ are themselves constructed and contingent on particular assumptions, both in terms of actual ‘perspectives’, and the very idea of ‘perspective’.
If the appearance of Being is a sticky and synthetic holding of deceptions, as you propose, what holds those deceptions together, as ‘deceptions’, if not the ‘truth’? Where is the truth determining those deceptions as deceptions? Because, if there is no ‘truth’, as you suggest, neither can there be any ‘deception’ or ‘lie’.
Likewise, if “there is not anything”, this would be a positivist proposal stating a definitive lack of objective integrity; ultimately, of the lack of self-identity with regard to ‘things’. But then, is the proposed ‘definitive lack’ identical with itself? If it is, is it then, a ‘thing’, this not–a–thing, or ‘no thing’? But if its self-identity, as ‘definitive lack’, derives from a network of things that it has demonstrated as void of self-identity; then does not this derivation, and thus self-identity as ‘definitive lack’, disappear along with the voidness of the entity network, ‘it’ has demonstrated as void? Yes, it does.
The ‘void’ voids itself, revealing the workings of identification and definition, at every stage.
One should recall, that the Buddha said: “He who attaches to the void, is truly lost.”
The obvious interpretation, is as the admonition against nihilism, against fixating on the void, or on an image of the void. But it is tempting to take the subsequent clause, “is truly lost”; not just as Buddha’s declaration that the nihilist is dogmatically fixating the transitional result of a systematics of open contingency, according to essentially the same substantial assumption, merely using the opposite hypostatic polarity of that assumption; but to point out that both the nihilist and substantialist, so long as they unthinkingly follow the procedural assumptions and expectations of their respective identity (or non-identity) commitments, are condemned to forever wander the dialectics of such commitments, lost in the ‘truth’ or ‘truths’ of, and only of, those commitments, but never to have any other, or wider, understanding of them, or their origins. This would apply as well to the very notion or conception of ‘truth’, as determined by conventional assumptions.
What, exactly, is a ‘thing’, ‘entity’, or ‘id-entity’?
To what degree, does it arise with respect to modalities of definition?
To what degree, is ‘its’ validity expected to conform to the criteria of objectivity; the assumed self-identity conditions of ‘it’ being identical with ‘itself’; given that it’s very arising occurs with respect to modalities of definition? What is ‘definition’, anyway, if not the coding of a ‘thing’ with other ‘things’?
These questions all suggest an economy of assumptions whose conventional circulation is usually self-referential. If each assumption or moment of that economy, is observed in its most radical or elementary form (using the concept of ‘the universe’ as a semantic testing ground, is perhaps a good way to do this, as this allows unobstructed engagement with the conceptual logics at play, without the neglects of exclusionary obligation characterising the formalisations of utilitarian purpose); deeper and more precise understandings can be produced than those associated with most utilitarian conventions. The machinery producing conventional understanding comes into relief. The degrees to which conventional understandings are based on, too often, inappropriate substantial assumptions, is made clear.