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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

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Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#71

Post by haswell »

lisper wrote: post #55
disadvantage wrote: post #17

> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around." Ikigai[0] is worth exploring…

> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.

This is a perspective rooted in a human understanding of biology, which is ultimately just a language and labeling game to make sense of observed phenomena.

If we're here to make copies of our DNA, then one has to ask what the DNA is here for, and we're back in the same place.

The point someone like Watts is making is that even if we're just DNA replicators, that which is being replicated holds this capacity for playfulness and the enjoyment of play, which confers some broader notion of playfulness to the conditions that brought about our DNA.

I recently watched "My Octopus Teacher" (worth a watch), and watching the behaviors of the featured octopus as it goes about it's daily life doing octopus things, even including what appears to be literal playtime with schools of fish, it's easy to see the point Watts was trying to make.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#72

Post by csdvrx »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #45
jmdeon wrote: post #35

I believe this is existentialism, not nihilism. They both start from the premise that the universe is inherently meaningless, but in existentialism you can create meaning while in nihilism you cannot.

I'm an inverted existentialist and a post-nihilist. My explanation may be a little silly to read. Existential dread is a weird psychological state for people who need the psychological comfort of ultimate or external meaning, it starts with laying awake at night telling yourself "things matter" and hearing that quiet rebuttal. "What if nothing matters". Pulling that thread organically leads people to existentialism,…

> Pushing humanity's bounds of knowledge and having a thriving, dynamic society that can prosper and fund the pursuit of that question is perhaps the only important thing.

I love your view, and how you described it helped me think.

I've learned a lot thanks to everything that's available online and I know a lot now, but there's still so much I don't know that I want to share and improve knowledge

It's both for myself and others, and I don't need much more meaning in life than this!

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#73

Post by jona-f »

adasdasdas wrote: post #3

Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).

Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? What you call nihilism, i might call radical nihilism or extreme nihilism. Yes, taken to the extreme, it would lead to total apathy, as there is no reason to do anything (Also no reason to kill yourself btw). But you can still have nihilism as the foundation of your philosophy. That would probably be a contradiction to you, cause you take nihilism very literal. And yes, by your definition any known nihilist is a fake nihilist, otherwise you wouldn't know them.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#74

Post by lisper »

haswell wrote: post #71
lisper wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.

This is a perspective rooted in a human understanding of biology, which is ultimately just a language and labeling game to make sense of observed phenomena. If we're here to make copies of our DNA, then one has to ask what the DNA is here for, and we're back in the same place. The point someone like Watts is making is that even if we're just DNA replicators, that which is being replicated holds this capacity for play…

> one has to ask what the DNA is here for

DNA is not here "for" anything, DNA is a Thing That Happens. Given the right combination of atoms, a source of energy, and enough time, a self-reproducing system will appear by pure chance. After that Darwin takes over.

> that which is being replicated holds this capacity for playfulness and the enjoyment of play

Sure, but that's just a side-effect of the process. It's not the reason we exist.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#75

Post by Aerbil313 »

How ironic. People (excerpt from article) "from an early age learn to accept the basic meaninglessness of the universe" then go on to write an article titled A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning.

All of science is based upon human intuition axioms, yet people reject some human intuitions and accept others so stubbornly. A video which discusses this among other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNlEtBZxML8&list=PLcnL9bB-q3...

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#76

Post by smif »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #45
jmdeon wrote: post #35

I believe this is existentialism, not nihilism. They both start from the premise that the universe is inherently meaningless, but in existentialism you can create meaning while in nihilism you cannot.

I'm an inverted existentialist and a post-nihilist. My explanation may be a little silly to read. Existential dread is a weird psychological state for people who need the psychological comfort of ultimate or external meaning, it starts with laying awake at night telling yourself "things matter" and hearing that quiet rebuttal. "What if nothing matters". Pulling that thread organically leads people to existentialism,…

What about a third option, "everything may or may not matter, but the answer to that question is currently inaccessible to us (and possibly may always remain inaccessible)"?

In this way you could be led to a kind of inverted Pascal's wager, where you can't reasonably go down the nihilist route because everything might just might matter, but you just don't know. You also don't know in which ways it might matter if it does, so you don't really have a conclusion to draw about where to go from here.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#77

Post by adasdasdas »

maxbond wrote: post #53
adasdasdas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. In fact, the sentence kind of implies you are speaking of objective meaning which is what grinds my gears.

> Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Let's suppose for a moment you're mistaken. How would you recognize evidence to the contrary, were you to receive it? If you met a nihilist, you'd dismiss them, right? It's an approximately unfalsifiable construction. > Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. It seems like you call it "purpose" and I called it "me…

> Let's suppose for a moment you're mistaken. How would you recognize evidence to the contrary, were you to receive it? If you met a nihilist, you'd dismiss them, right? It's an approximately unfalsifiable construction.

I think it's almost tautological. But most people are on a spectrum, there are extremely nihilistic people who still care about their mothers for example. But yea, I think that the spectrum of nihilism is just the inverse of the spectrum of willingness to live.

> presupposing that a life of suffering should be ended

I'm not prescribing action, I just think it usually ends up this way.

> An example of a line of thinking you might accept; a nihilist could decide go on living, just because they feel like it.

I believe many people live like this, but not because they are a nihilist, but because they don't do introspection and/or take meaningful things in life for granted, because just a tiny bit of introspection would reveal that there are many many things you find meaningful in life, even if its something basic like, security, health, or peace. If you take these things away from a person, they will probably contemplate their existence and try to figure out why they should go on with life.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#78

Post by reliablereason »

Very few words about meaning as i would define it, but lots of words about things in life that have emotional value.

Meaning as would define it is this: "The purpose or a description of something (as described within some context)/(in relationship to some model)."

A core difference between my view and the authors view seams to be that the author somehow starts with the premise that the sentence "what is the meaning of life?" is somehow a valid question. With that as a start the author manufactures a context around the question that answers the question, by doing that the author reframes the question in to a new question that can be answered. The new question is however not the same question as the original one and the answer is thus not the answer to the original question.

The original question lacks a context and is thus an invalid question, invalid questions can not be answered(only reframed, then answered).

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#79

Post by downWidOutaFite »

z3c0 wrote: post #22
downWidOutaFite wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's morally repulsive to me to believe something just because it makes me feel better.

If it's morally repulsive to do otherwise, wouldn't this stance be for the sake of feeling better? I do agree with you; I just love the barber paradox as well.

Good point, I'm basing my rejection on my repulsive feeling. I'm not familiar with philosophy but I'm sure there are philosophers that have built up arguments on why a life based on seeking truth and logic is worthwhile.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#80

Post by lusus_naturae »

adasdasdas wrote: post #29
CoastalCoder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it. Would you mind sketching out your take on it?

It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering". A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I c…

> A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself

Nihlism is acknowledging that many if not all aspects that result in "life" are pointless. I fail to understand how that equates to no will to live life. There is only irrationality to living while acknowledging the pointlessness of it. According to the nihilist, every other justification is flimsy at best, so justifying the pointless is equally irrational to them.

Regardless, I think there are a lot of misjudgments about such philosophy, particularly with associating with some destructive impulse or depression etc.

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