Rather tautological article.
What Nihilism Is Not
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#22Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved t…
There would be nothing stopping a "divine being" from creating a meaningless world, but they approach things from the other direction. The world as they can see it has no meaning, so there would be no reason to believe there is a designer.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#23Nihilism is a logical fallacy and to believe in it is utterly delusional. To assert “nothing” is to contradict the assertion. To assert “nothingness“ or that “everything is nothing” or that “nothing exists” is actually just a form of materialism in which the concept of a void is reified as just another kind of thing. If someone was truly a nihilist they would have to refute nihilism, for nihilism could not possibly exist, nor could nothing or any nothingness be established. Nihilism is logically impossible.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#24Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved t…
I've not infrequently found nihilism intellectually attractive. Usually, something like political nihilism. One problem that I think has long been overlooked is the foundation of human rights. Only in the past roughly five years has there been much scholarly contribution on the matter. What could possibly ground human rights? And if they have no ground, then aren't they simply the same as the preference for, say, pee…
Human rights are just a concept that humans have come up after thousands of years experience with systems of laws. The fact that some societies manage to do without them shows that they aren't really essential.
Edit: Or to put it another way, ideas about legal systems can evolve over time, by analogy to how biological systems can evolve. Ideally, we'd be looking at what works and what doesn't and adopting best practices.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#25Nihilism is a logical fallacy and to believe in it is utterly delusional. To assert “nothing” is to contradict the assertion. To assert “nothingness“ or that “everything is nothing” or that “nothing exists” is actually just a form of materialism in which the concept of a void is reified as just another kind of thing. If someone was truly a nihilist they would have to refute nihilism, for nihilism could not possibly e…
This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article, and the concept of "nihilism" has more to it than a literal translation of the Latin base word.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#26Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved t…
There would be nothing stopping a "divine being" from creating a meaningless world, but they approach things from the other direction. The world as they can see it has no meaning, so there would be no reason to believe there is a designer.
Sure, it may be possible to be a nihilist who believes in divine beings who perhaps are also nihilists and who created a meaningless world. Or to be an atheist who thinks that life is meaningful. But I do think that atheism and nihilism more logically go together.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#27"Nihilism: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless;" Oxford. Concise and seems pretty clear to me. While the article is well written, it doesn't really adds much IMO.
> life is meaningless
This is actually objectively true, our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars.
Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#28The author doesn't actually seem to demonstrate an understanding of nihilism or of pessimism. Most of classical philosophy is predicated on _something_ in the universe having an intrinsic purpose or value. They require an "uncaused-cause" of moral values.
Nihilism is simply the rejection of inherent value or purpose to the universe or anything in it. It means the only values or purposes in the universe are non-inherent and they are things we made up. It doesn't discourage you from making up values, it just discourages you from claiming they are inherently right for some reason.
For a nihilist, hearing somebody ask how things are "good" or "bad" in a nihilist viewpoint is like an atheist being asked why they act morally without a god to act as judge. It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#29I think this article is a waste of time. Rather than using actual sources the author uses scenes from mtv highschool sitcoms to prove their point. Also the author injects their personal bias into everything.
What's wrong with MTV highschool sitcoms? There's a lot to be learned from the artifacts of pop culture.
Re: What Nihilism Is Not
#30Nihilism is a complicated subject. Like feminism, it's a word that means a wide range of things to different people. One person's take on nihilism obviously is their operating definition more than a single decisive statement on the subject.
Nihilism has been a fad in the last 5 years. (I blame Rick and Morty) A lot of these "nihilists" that I've met use it as an excuse to be apathetic or even low-level belligerent, or to not put a mental filter on their disjointed thoughts. But it's not that they never gave a damn about anything; it's that they're either bored or were let down in some way by the establishment. I discovered nihilism before I even underst…
Morals don't need to be objective to be valid.