Blob theory is the philosophical position that the properties of things, such as the properties of the objects that we experience in our ordinary empirical life (colors, extension and solidity of objects, etc.), do not exist. Blob theory leads to the conclusion that there are no substances, and thus no things at all. Blob theory has also been called metaphysical nihilism or mereological nihilism.

    The reality humans experience is a reality of properties. For example, the apple is red, where red is what we experience, and is believed to be a property of the apple. According to blob theory, our experience is wrong, and there is no mind-independent redness, with respect to this example of the apple's color. But this example could be comparably given for any items perceived, wherein blob theory leads to the conclusion that there are no things.

     Due to blob theory's disagreement with ordinary empirical experience, blob theory is overwhelmingly rejected by contemporary philosophers, especially philosophers in the Western analytic tradition. Consider just one example of a well-known philosopher discussing her rejection of blob theory,

…[A] purely physical world… lacking all… properties… is a world entirely without individuating structure: The Blob. Even if such a world is possible, it seems quite clear that it is not our world, and thus, that it would be of no particular interest to the physicalist.[1]

     Blob theorists typically maintain that empirical experiences are mere mental fabrications, and what actually exist are absolutely propertyless and/or structureless basic building blocks (that are apparently non-empirical and irreducible). Although philosophers in the Western tradition, especially the Western analytic tradition, often imply (as does the citation above) that (1) blob theory can merely be disregarded without argument, and/or (2) blob theory is not a serious philosophical position, that however appears to be a highly dubious stance on the topic, since blob theory, or something very close to it, is a philosophical position that has been held by some of the most prominent Western philosophers through history, such as Immanuel Kant[2] and W. V. O. Quine.

     Blob theory leads to the conclusion that, despite what humans may believe to be the case about reality due to what they (believe they) experience about reality with their senses in their everyday life, their senses are lying to them, and their sense experiences are about objects that do not exist, or only exist as mental apparitions. Blob theory also leads to the position that reality in fact does not have any structure at all: reality is only composed of structureless[3] particles.

    Blob theory is of course in stark opposition to our empirical experience, but interestingly, blob theory appears to apparently have much in common with the theories of what reality is like at the quantum level (at the tiniest level of reality that we know to exist). In other words, quantum theory and blob theory are both in opposition to empirical experience, but this may just mean that our empirical experiences are incorrect, and they do not describe how reality actually is. (Most philosophers in the Western analytic tradition assume that empirical experience is correct, and therefore, due to that assumption, blob theory is incorrect, and the findings of quantum theory are somehow incomplete.)

     Instead, reality may merely be composed of structureless and featureless, indistinguishable quantum particles, which is a position supported by blob theory and by quantum mechanics. Of course, if quantum mechanics and blob theory are correct, it would mean that the reality that humans experience in their daily life, which is a reality of colors, surfaces, and moving solids (such as when a person witnesses a cloud floating by, which she experiences as a white surface moving slowly in the sky), is an illusion, and/or are is a creation and fabrication somehow generated by the very act of experiencing, having no basis in reality itself.

      Lastly, blob theory involves the amazing position that mental states can only be propertyless and unstructured. This, of course, leads to the difficult-to-understand position that a self's empirical experiences of color patches, for example, are not actually happening, and if one could experience properly, experiencing what actually exists, one would experience a structureless, colorless, immaterial, and undifferentiated reality. This is, ironically, the very reality described by Advaita Vedanta, and by early Indian Buddhists (see abstract atomism for discussion).

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"Blob Theory: N-adic Properties Do Not Exist", Sorites, vol. 17.