nihilism

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

What you mean by nihilist, and what is most often meant by it, is actually a pretty bold assertion. It is the assertion that life has no meaning. Not that you do not know what the meaning is, or not sure whether life has meaning or not; no it is asserting definitely that life has no meaning.

And then asserting what you really mean by this is that, going all the way back to what you have no definitive grasp regarding how or why the human species exists at all, and given your own teeny, tiny speck of existence going all the way back to the stupefying vastness of “all there is”…?

Then the part where some here will confuse their very own self-righteous One True Path to Enlightenment with, what, an ontological and teleological meaning and purpose for…everything? The Ayn Rand mentality? The “it’s in the Bible” mentality? The manifesto mentality? The “genes are us” mentality? In fact, the more you think these dogmas through the more preposterous they become. If only because there are hundreds of them from which to choose. And, in my view, it’s the “psychology of objectivism” that motivates them by and large. It’s not what you believe so much as that you believe what you believe really, really is the ticket to a comforting and consoling life.

And death?

Also, this is not asserting that a particular life does not have any meaning; it is asserting that no human lives have any meaning. Nothing in this world matters. Whether you torture a puppy or refrain from doing so is of equal value according to this position, because there is no such thing as value.

Of course: the distinction between existential meaning derived from our day-to-day interactions with others…meaning that all accept as the objective truth…and an essential truth that all of our subjective opinions can [philosophically or otherwise] be reasoned back to. It’s just that for the objectivists among us this distinction is rejected.

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

The problem with this assertion [above], as with most philosophically skeptical positions, is that it is asserting too much. By asserting that life has no meaning, you are also implicitly stating that you know what would give life meaning.

Too much…or too little? All the more reason to bring discussions revolving around philosophical skepticism down to Earth. What in particular are you skeptical about given your day to day interactions with others?

And perhaps there are some here who believe particular nihilists have convinced themselves there is an underlying meaning embedded in human interactions. But I’m not one of them. Or, rather, not “here and now”. My contention is that in the absence of God I have not myself personally come upon the philosopohical or scientific – or social, political and economic – equivalent of Him.

Think you’ve found it? Then let’s get started.

[quote]In order to get to this idea, simply ask the nihilist: “Why [do] human lives not have any meaning?” In this case the nihilist will most likely give one of the following answers:

“Well there is no God, so nothing matters”
“Nothing we value now, will not inevitably end when we die”
“The sun is going to burn out, so all humans will become extinct anyway”
“We are just chemical meat machines”
“Morality does not exist, it is just a human creation”
“The universe doesn’t care about me, or any other human beings”

The problem with all of these answers is that none of the intuitions behind them are any ground upon closer inspection.[/quote]

That may well be your problem with them too, but I’m still more inclined to suggest that even your own “intuitions” here are no less derived existentially from dasein. And that none of our “closer inspections” seem able to establish objective morality much beyond positing one or another “my way or the highway” One True Path. Then “the gap” and Rummy’s Rule.

[HumAnIze]

Imagine thinking you need to refute nihilism.

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

[quote]So let’s pick them a part one at a time:

Well there is no God, so nothing matters. This is implicitly saying that if there was a God, then you would think that life would matter[/quote]

Of course: What matters to whom and in what set of circumstances? Who in their right mind would ever argue that nothing matters? If nothing else, you can always ask yourself if that matters. Instead, many are confronted with their own speck of existence in the vastness of “all there is”. They feel a need to somehow connect their own individual insignificance to an essential or universal meaning that encompasses, well, everything. After all, isn’t that the antidote of choice for those who connect the dots further to immortality and salvation?

Yet even in regard to God, there are are so many renditions of Him. And with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, how can it not be absolutely vital that your God is the God?

As for this…

Suppose a higher intelligent being appeared on earth and explained that she had created the universe, and then moved on to explain to us humans that the meaning of life is to rape. That’s right, thou shalt rape! Would that suddenly make raping a meaningful pass time? Of course not.

Of course not? Either this God is dead serious when She announces that rape is the meaning of life, or She isn’t. And by dead serious I mean that those who worship and adore Her either will or will not be confronted on Judgment Day.

And if the God said that we ought to be good to each other, then that would be meaningful but that’s because we would agree with that statement, not because it was stated by the God.

And, in regard to all of the conflicting goods that continue to plague the species thousands of years after the invention of philosophy…? Also, given all of the many, many the One True Paths encompassing what it means to “do the right thing”, what about all of the behaviors that prompt fierce disagreements instead?

I should add that I do not think that people who believe in God necessarily are absurd in their belief in God; I just I don’t think that a God is necessary or even sufficient for meaning or value.

What this revolves around by and large, in my view, is the fact that not a single religious denomination has ever actually demonstrated the existence of a God, the God, their God. So, they can say almost anything about Him or Her. They merely have to have faith. Or quote Scripture.

[HumAnIze]

Nihilism is gay.

There. Refuted. Easy.

[promethean75]

“Nihilism is gay. There. Refuted. Easy.”

Fight Club - How is that working out for you ?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Two guys that are one guy talking to each other himself. Are you saying you’re humanize?

Now here’s the thing. How would I know if you were lying or telling the truth? I wouldn’t.

Unless I would. But would I tell you that? Not on purpose.

[promethean75]

Hey man i know your obsessed with this idea of sock puppets so let me help u out. I have enough trouble convincing myself to keep one account at this site, much less two.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Choose Two:

a) …because you keep getting banned?
b) try 3+

[promethean75]

Yo Carleas, can u please tell Ecmandu’s wonder twin how many times u have banned me?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Don’t make me say all your freaking usernames that are no longer with us.

[promethean75]

Oh i see. You’re still stuck in 2005.

[promethean75]

Some people simply aren’t built for philosophy, and spending years at a forum for such people will only make them more nutts than they already are. U and Ecmandu are two text book examples of this unfortunate fact. U guys should have never opened that plato for dummies book twenty five years ago and instead just stuck with myspace.

[promethean75]

“Don’t make me say all your freaking usernames that are no longer with us.”

And who keeps track of someone’s user names over a period of twenty years, anyway? Seriously who does that?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Don’t blame me. It just sticks in the brain.

Nice of you to tell the truth for once.

[HumAnIze]

Omg someone says the word gay as an insult, and said something degrading (yet true) about zoomers???

OH NO NO NO NO noooo please plz plz censor their content!!! #CancelCulture! #AvgILPmoments

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

[quote]Nothing we value now, will not inevitably end when we die

This I guess is debatable.[/quote]

You bet your life it is.

I mean although I will not experience love myself when I die, love will likely live on without me.

This is really what it often comes down to…being able to “think yourself” into believing things like this. And when you are able to accomplish this [as many here have] you may well manage to embrace and then sustain this comforting and consoling frame of mind all the way to the grave.

And God surely knows I wish I could. If there is, one.

Yes, love and sex and friendship and family and music and film and food and all of the other things you cherish in life may be gone forever, but that’s just for you. Others are still around reveling in them.

Again, if this works in providing you with peace of mind then that’s all that matters, right? No, you can’t actually demonstrate that what you believe about all this is true, but that’s the beauty of the human condition…you don’t have to!

You simply believe it? Absolutely. If you are able to convince yourself of something and, in believing it, it motivates your behaviors, isn’t that always the bottom line? After all, it’s your behaviors that will precipitate consequences.

At best, you might manage to configure your thinking here around something like this…

Anyway, it is true that the activity of me valuing things will end when I die. But so what? Me enjoying a nice piece of cake will also end when the cake is finished, yet the fact that I finished the cake took nothing from the value I received while I ate the cake.

On the other hand, you can always cut yourself another slice of cake. Once you’ve live your life, however, it’s either praise the Lord or nothingness

Why should I only value eating a piece of cake if me eating the cake never ended? Upon reflection, this assertion that, that which we engage in is meaningless because it ends at some point in the distant future, is an absurd idea.

Of course, it’s not an absurd idea at all for others. In fact, why on Earth do you suppose so many Gods were invented if not to assure the flocks that human life itself is meaningful for all of eternity. For millions, therefore, everything they think feel, say and do revolves around eating their cake and having it too until…the end of time?

On the other hand, existential meaning…?

Well, click, of course.

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

Morality does not exist, it is just a human creation

As though the “rules of behavior” that all human communities must eventually come around to – prescriptions/rewards, proscriptions/punishments – can’t be called morality?

As though only philosophers get to define what that really means?

This implies that morality requires something outside the human scope. In this case one would have to ask: “What would morality look like outside of the human scope?”.

Or, perhaps, far more pertinent from my frame of mind, what happens when you inhabit a planet where morality is understood to be objective, but it’s undertood to be objective from literally hundreds and hundreds of at times hopelessly conflicting One True Paths. My way or the highway?

I asked my friend this question recently and got the following imaginative response: “Well, one would need an external being capable of empathizing with every single human being”. I then responded with: “Ok let’s suppose this external being came down to earth and proclaimed that morality is rape: “Thou shalt rape”. Would you then believe that it would be moral to rape?” He then responded: “Well, in that case I wouldn’t rape myself, but I would believe that it was moral”.

First of all, given the human condition as it is “in reality”, what is crucial here is that for the preponderence of us, simply believing something is true about things like rape is what makes it true. I merely suggest instead however that value judgments here are derived from dasein historically, culturally and in regards to our individual experiences.

On the other hand, with God and religion, it gets trickier. Here “leaps of faith” prevail. You believe what you do about rape because you believe that what God believes about rape is what all mere mortals are – in a Kantian sense? – morally obligated to embody.

Then many are taught that, "though we fail to grasp so much about the world we live in, our loving, just and merciful God, despite how mysterious His “ways” might appear to us, is there to provide us with the immortality and the salvation that we need to render oblivion and Hell the place where “one of them” go.

Now of course here he quickly realized what a mistake he had just made, because of course he would not believe rape to be moral in such case which he readily admitted. Now you may say: “But that external being would never say such thing if it could empathize with all”. But how do you know that?

Indeed, how do we know anything at all about these external beings? Well, we are indoctrinated as children, or read about them in Scriptures or in one or another No God manifesto. Or we subscribe here to one or another school of philosophy

You are just human, you are incapable (according to this line of reasoning) of determining “real” moral values? As with God, either you would comply, in which case you agreed with the external being thus the actual moral value came from yourself, or you would not comply, in which case you disagree because of your own moral understanding.

Now, just translate this into the behaviors that flow from your own moral understanding…your own one true path. Why are your values more “real” than the values of all of the many, many other “one of us” [the good guys] vs. “one of them” [the bad guys] objectivists.

[iambiguous]

How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Jon Sochaux

Many of us have this intuition that morality ought to be something ultimate, and given that human beings can disagree, a moral “command” can never be ultimate. Thus, since ultimate moral commands are impossible, (because there is no God etc.) then morality does not really exist.

On the other hand, is the fact that millions upon millions of men and women embrace one or another objective morality actually more a reflection of human psychology instead?

So, if you believe you are on the One True Path, isn’t the fact that this comforts and consoles you an indication that, perhaps, feeling comforted and consoled is [if only subconsciously] the whole point?

How else does one explain the fact there are hundreds and hundreds of belief systems out there in which the advocates all insist it really, really is their very own God or No God account of the human condition that pins down…Reality?

What I have showed thus far is that an external being, be it a God or a certain “moral-being”, is not worth wanting, since we would do whatever we deem moral despite their commands.

Here, I can only keep coming back to the fact that I suspect the overwhelming preponderance of the world’s population would beg to differ. Why? Because, they will insist, God and only God can provide us with both an objective morality and immortality and salvation. Then one by one they come to the “or else” part.