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What Nihilism Is Not

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Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#71

Post by Aperocky »

syrrim wrote: post #41
Aperocky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"The universe doesn't care about us" =/= "the basis for meaning doesn't care about us". That is, "the laws of physics" =/= "the source of meaning".

What is the basis of meaning then, if it cannot be defined in a physical space then it is something that is artificial and to our own consciousness only.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#72

Post by rolltiide »

rolltiide wrote: post #54
Aperocky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Exactly, a broke nihilist and a wealthy nihilist are still with their recognition of a lack of meaning. One person can use it as an excuse to turn to woe, another person can use it as an excuse to treat the world as their oyster. Nihilism on its own is merely the recognition of the random and arbitrary nature of reality.

*are still doing different things with their recognition of a lack of meaning

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#73

Post by boomboomsubban »

jariel wrote: post #68
frutiger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or 'conscious'). I’m not sure I follow.

Scientific materialism is reductionist - it implies we are random bags noise. You can't have life, love, sorrow, consciousness, wisdom etc. from a bunch of atomic lego blocks working together according to some rules. The very assumption that the universe must be made up of 'laws that act on matter/energy' literally rules out our own existence as sentient beings, because it implies we are just randomness. It's a parad…

>You can't have life, love, sorrow, consciousness, wisdom etc. from a bunch of atomic lego blocks working together according to some rules.

All of those are ways we have developed to explain the sensations we have experienced according to those rules.

We act as though we have free will and consciousness because they are the terms we have developed to describe how we think we act. They can not be described by physics because they were theories developed with very poor data available, not truths that need to be described.

>Well, 'us' the 'observer' is obviously not accounted for in the materialist, reductionist view, and yet it's there and we all know it.

"Us" is not an independent observer, we are a part of the universe. The universe can give itself as much meaning as it wants, that doesn't create an external meaning to the universe.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#74

Post by skolskoly »

yepguy wrote: post #69
Barrin92 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually a great take. In my opinion there always has been something downright creepy about justice. The way some people talk about justice and the good society is eerily similar to Norman Bates in American Psycho or corporate modernity which the movie mocks. There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying peopl…

You just took Socrates out of the conversation, though. I think the point is that you can only call Socrates a nihilist by refusing to treat him seriously. From the article: > Thrasymachus’s cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the “Republic” trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the eff…

Yeah I was a bit taken aback when reading that part and became increasingly concerned that the author didn't know what he was talking about.

Imagine your friend asks you to count the windows on a building, so you count the rows and columns and multiply them. When he asks you how you did it so fast, you tell him, and he responds with something like: "Oh, I didn't realize you were a Nihilist." He then explains that mathematics is immaterial, and therefore non-existent. You believing in such a thing apparently makes YOU the Nihilist?

No. Nihilism is not about holding supposedly "empty" beliefs. If anything, it's the opposite; Nihilism would hold that these beliefs in the immaterial are themselves empty. Your friend might be a Nihilist, but you certainly aren't.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#75

Post by stanfordkid »

I used to be really into philosophy, until the revelation hit me that philosophy is ultimately ontological: it names ways of thinking -- suppose living life is like painting a painting. Philosophy, then, is a theory of aesthetics. Sure it can be handy, but at the end of the day you need to create a painting. How much time you spend reading about aesthetics deducts from your time actually painting and experimenting.

I think the author doesn't look at the drawbacks of nihilism completely -- nihilism is a blank canvas as opposed to something like paint-by-numbers. Ultimately the choice of nihilism is still personal. We are all given a blank canvas to start. What kind of painting do you want to hang up?

Nihilism is basically saying that no theory of aesthetics is better than any other. Is this really true? Would you paint random dots on the canvas? Surely circles are more meaningful than scribbles?

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#76

Post by MacsHeadroom »

incompatible wrote: post #65
thrwaway69 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are biological reasons that make you believe your existence is important and you should live, then suicide would be a way of showing freedom from the restraints?

Why would you need freedom from the restraints? You are what you are, and the will to continue living is part of that.

You just came close to disproving your own point above by responding with this comment. You are what you are and the meaning you experience is part of that- part of you.

In regards to emergence, the dominant view of consciousness in physics and philosophy and neuroscience alike is that the first person "subjective" perspective of reality is the inherent intrinsic perspective of physical matter and not an emergent phenomenon (unlike say self-awareness or intelligence)- ie. panpsychism.

Anyway, under this paradigm meaning is nothing more or less than a kind of experience and as such is necessarily subjective. More specifically "meaning" is an account of the type of experiences which are most significant from a subjective perspective.

If receiving meaning by fiat or dictum as if it were objective is something you subjectively find meaningful then that is your perspective and it says nothing of objective reality as such, other than that such subjective experiences are possible.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#77

Post by jariel »

ravenstine wrote: post #43
jariel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morals don't need to be objective to be valid.

I don't disagree with that.

What are the 'morals' of some entirely different alien race? Are they going to be the same as ours? Probably not.

Maybe there are some very 'core' morals that might be consistent, but pragmatically, they won't resemble at all.

The 'morals' of Athenian life in antiquity were such that every able-bodied male had to have his own war fighting gear, and be called to fight in the defence of the city if need be. This would be an existential duty towards the community, without which, they could not exist. But Athens today? Not necessary.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#78

Post by MacsHeadroom »

charleskinbote wrote: post #20

> In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept... I found the irony here rather amusing.

There's no irony in that quote. Nihilism is predicated on the existence of meaningfulness. It merely holds that meaning is a subjective experience.

That's not to say that meaning is relative or that it isn't real.

This may be difficult to grasp at first. But consider this analogy which grasps the objective nature of a more concrete subjective experience: When you gaze up at the sky and see two birds it is objectively true that you are having a subjective experience of two birds in the sky above you (whether you're hallucinating or not) and not one bird or two elephants. There's nothing relative about it and it's very much a real experience. Cogito ergo sum, after all.

Likewise, under nihilism meaning itself is a subjective experience with quantifiable objective properties. Specifically, meaning is a quantitative (something objective) measure of experiences which are the most highly connected (ie. significant) to other experiences from a subjective perspective.

For example, if you experience prayer as meaningful to you, whether you're delusional or not about it's meaningfulness to you or in general, then it is objectively true that you are having said real non-relative experience of meaning.

For more insight, see A Nihilists Guide to Meaning: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#79

Post by MacsHeadroom »

claudiawerner wrote: post #53
frutiger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or 'conscious'). I’m not sure I follow.

I think GP is referring to the idea that there is no yet identified physical mechanism that identifies the arising of consciousness in terms of properties of matter or energy, to which (if I understand GP correctly) physics restricts itself to. Leibniz put the objection to the mechanical materialist conception of consciousness/perception in 1714: >One is obliged to admit that perception and what depends upon it is in…

Physicalism and materialism aren't remotely equivalent. I see people making this mistake too often.

The dominant theory of consciousness in physics, neuroscience, neuro-physics (no surprise) and philosophy today is that conscious experience is the real intrinsic perspective of matter.

As such consciousness and all its contents are necessarily subjective, qualitative, and not reducible to purely quantitative physicalism.

Materialism then accounts for both consciousness and meaning (as measure of the significance of experiences relative to other experiences) in a way which physicalism cannot.

Re: What Nihilism Is Not

#80

Post by mirimir »

ahartmetz wrote: post #66
mirimir wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But nihilism is the gateway.

AFAICT existentialism is nihilism plus a bunch of pretentious gibberish, so if I was going that route, I'd rather stop at nihilism.

You do have a point.

Basically it's making up stuff to believe in, rather than believing in "nothingness" (which is not just "nothing").

As Landmark says, "We are meaning making machines." So it's very hard to stay centered on nothingness. And that's what TFA alludes:

> as nihilism is all about hiding from despair

So with existentialism, you're just manipulating yourself. But that's arguably better than being manipulated by others, your culture, authoritarian structures, and so on.

Another perspective is that it's all games. But that we're prone to forgetting that, and thinking that it means something else.

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