That guy was precisely not a nihilist.
It’s funny a casual read might take this as critical, but since he seems entirely unlike someone who sits on balconies as neo-beatnik french existentialist guy, it comes off more as a rerouted compliment.
Well i like to believe that self termination for anything, any cause, that has no real lasting consequence, is a purposeful act of nihilistic destruction of the self. And that’s a no-no in prom’s guide to life extended edition.
Among consequences of no lasting value I include political protesting, which makes that self immolating dude either a nihilist or a dummy.
Now if self destruction is to save a bunch of other people, we have an arguable case against nihilistic purpose and acts of genuine nihilism. But that monk just didn’t give a damn, knowing darn well what he just did would make little to no difference in the scheme of things. All that monk got out of that thing he did was a spot on an album cover.
How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Matthew L Reigada
The defining characteristic of nihilism is the proposition that nothing has meaning or purpose. You can further specify to a category of nihilism and refine the subject matter on which the proposition predicates as well as whether one is specifying innate/objective meaning or subjective meaning, but the general proposition is the same across the category at the logical level of why it is inaddressable.
On the other hand, how exactly would one employ logic in order to determine why something exists instead of nothing at all? Or why this something exists and not something else entirely?
How, logically, does the human condition fit into all of this? Is it logical or illogical that sim worlds or dream worlds exist? Same with God or the multiverse.
Logic would seem to revolve largely – solely? – around those who have managed to create a language sophisticated enough to…to need it? In other words, you can’t just say anything that pops into your head. Let alone insist that everyone else is obligated to say the same thing.
But: about what?
How about this: actual social, political and economic contexts? For example, is it more or less logical to elect Kamala Harris president of the United States?
Thus, the need to make a distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world. Subjectively, you might believe that Leprechauns exist, but that God does not. Thus, in my view, the far more crucial component here revolves not around what you believe exists “in your head” [logically or not], but what you can demonstrate exists empirically “in reality”…for everyone?
Yet, as subjective beings, we here on Earth have already created hundreds and hundreds of One True Paths which, while others might reject them subjectively, it doesn’t make them any less objectively wrong.
Well, whatever objective means in a universe this staggeringly vast and mysterious.
Martin Alonso Aceves Custodio:
Nihilism is an inevitable pitfall of excessive philosophizing. After pondering countless partially answered questions and inadequately supported theories, one may succumb to the feeling that life serves no discernible purpose.
Just for the record, in regard to meaning and morality, some nihilists [like me] make an important distinction between “discernable purposes” in our individual lives [the part I root existentially in dasein], and the essential purpose rooted in religion or philosophy or biological imperatives.
Martin Alonso Aceves Custodio:
On the other hand, are or are not the vast majority of moral objectivsts intent on pursing anything but truth and knowledge? Instead, many insist only their own One True Path truly does encompass both.
Ethics explainer: Nihilism
From The Ethics Centre website
“If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life goes away.” – Jobu Tupaki, Everything Everywhere All At Once
Do our lives matter?
Or, of course, it matters in a very different way if the universe is, well, you tell me.
On the other hand, even if our lives do not matter “ultimately” that hardly makes them not worth living.
Okay, suppose it is determined that human existence really is essentially meaningless. Does that make the food you eat less tasty, the music you listen to less sublime, your orgasms less intense, your relationships less fascinating, your accomplishments less intact.
On the other hand, if nihilism is just one more school of philosophical thought, to what extent then are those who call themselves nihilists able to bring those thoughts down to Earth? In other words, what particular objective truth? what particular moral truth? what particular value and purpose of life?
Medical nihilism. Had to Google that one: Therapeutic nihilism - Wikipedia
Ethics explainer: Nihilism
From The Ethics Centre website
Existential nihilism
In popular use, nihilism usually refers to existential nihilism, a precursor to existentialist thought. This is the idea that life has no inherent meaning, value or purpose and it’s also often (because of this) linked with feelings of despair or apathy. Nihilists in media are usually portrayed as moody, brooding or radical types who have decided that we are insignificant specks floating around an infinite universe, and that therefore nothing matters.
On the contrary, as often as not, nihilists are portrayed in the media as those who insist their own ends justify any and all means. It’s less the policies they pursue and more the draconian measures some will take in order to sustain that pursuit. All the way to the gulags and the gas chambers and the final solutions.
On the other hand, who can entirely rule out the possibility that we are just insignificant specks floating about in an infinite universe whereby, ultimately, sans God, nothing and no one does really matter.
Next up: an essentially meaningless and purposeless multiverse? How about an essentially meaningless and purposeless God?
Over and again, as well, I’ve come across this “spiritual” rendition of nihilism. The part where, in regard to human interactions on this side of the grave, the “self” is deemed an existential construct – an illusion? – “somehow” connected to Enlightenment that is “somehow” connected to karma that is “somehow” connected to reincarnation that “somehow” comes back around to Buddha?
Here, of course, some will bring us around to Marx and Engels, or to Freud and Jung, or to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.
And then cue the postmodernists?
Or [my own personal favorite] Wilhelm Reich.
Define cog?
In films and tv, yes, amoral criminals, the antagonist.
In literature, the gloomy figure.
I don’t think the creators of gulags, gas chambers and final solutions consider themelves or are considered by others as nihilists. People who do such things are filled to the brim with meaning and they see meaninful acts, both bad to them and good to them, all over the place. They have plans, goals and values and tend to see them as objective.
Since one matters to someone or some entity. It seems at least some people matter.
Buddhism isn’t nihilistic though some seem to think it is. it highly touts compassion for all life and on the ground, not in the clouds, any Buddhist organization so clearly values certain actions/processes/attitudes over others, one will be reprimanded, and soón thrown out, if one doesn’t align with these. It has strongly recommended practices and are tied to preferred goals, even if there are some paradoxical portions in all that.
That isn’t nihilistic to the Buddhist, though out of context of the whole it might look like the idesa of some nihilist. But a nihilist need not believe in anatma. They can think life is meaningless even for a coherent unified self.
This manages to be both vague and misleading. I
Are these supposed to be nihilistis? Marx and Engels promoted a vision of a just and equitable society. Freud’s whole aim was to provide a method to relieve suffering and heal. He did believe that our ids our irrational nature had much more effect on what we think and do. But he didn’t not end up at all saying it was all meaningless. Jung pretty much directly rejected nihilism. He has a spiritual side and set of goals. He saw all sorts of interconnectedness and meaning. Nietzsche shares quite a bit with nihilists, though his main project was to show the way to transcend nihilistm. We can throw together some quotes to follow N from nihilism, but beyond ins a little bricoleur short story: “Nihilism stands at the door. Whence comes this uncanniest of all guests? […] It is a sign of the times, a sign of the decline of man’s belief in meaning.” “Nihilism, in its final form, is the path to despair.” “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” “The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth.”
As far as Wittgenstein, I can’t really see the connection at all.
But maybe you didn’t mean they were nihilists. Who knows?
They can be nihilistic, but the one’s I’ve know are neither the amoral villain nor the brooding, gloomy type some pre-raphaelite might want to paint.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Reich, though I get the feeling he’d be hard to be around. But he’s hardly a nihilist. That guy was all about, yes, getting rid of authorities, but he also saw meaning, aimed at helping the life forces be freed and healthy. He was all about libertation so that one can connect with others and know joy.
Noir films, some existentialists,
Ethics explainer: Nihilism
From The Ethics Centre website
The fool!
From my frame of mind, take away the Übermensch and, come on, of course he’s a nihilist. And the Übermensch themselves overcome nothing at all in the end. They merely become what some construe to be substitutes for God given the 70 odd years we have to come up with something in the way of a meaning and a purpose. So, sure, why not become a master rather than a slave.
Then this part:
He saw humans responding to this crisis in two ways: passive or active nihilism.
For Nietzsche, passive nihilists are those who resign themselves to the meaninglessness of life, slowly separating themselves from their own will or desires to minimise the suffering they face from the random chaos of the world.
Yeah, that’s me by and large “here and now”. Imploded, accumulating distractions, pursuing my “win/win” approach to…to what exactly?
But that’s la la land, right? The world we live in does not permit that sort of thing. Unless, perhaps, some here would like to share their very own “multi-dimensional awareness” of their very own reality.
Besides, no one in my view has come to encompass this frame of mind better than Milan Kundera from The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
"Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal returns states that a life which disappears once and for all…is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than a war between two African kingdoms in the 14th century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a 100,000 blacks perished in excruciating torment…
Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit…?
Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler’s concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period of my life, a period that would never return?
This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted."
Eternity in now—the whole story is not ephemeral—it is in every moment. Meaning you don’t have to wait to see how things turn out to know that you did the best (or worst) you could “now” — as far as you were/are aware and could mitigate for or against unintended (but foreseen as possible or even probable) consequences — to acknowledge (or ignore, passively or actively) recognized personhood in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But the story is required. The before and after. The context. Without it you don’t know where someone is at in terms of growth or death. One moment gives no context. Where did they come from? Where are they going? You can’t tell if they are falling or flying, or dead.
Something Mari knew/knows.
Ethics explainer: Nihilism
Where to go from here
A common thread runs through many of the nihilist and existentialist writers about what we should do in the face of inherent meaninglessness: create it ourselves.
Okay, you create what you deem to be the most reflective description of the human condition: “This means this and that means that.” And you stick with it all the way to the grave.
Isn’t that basically how it works for most of us? And even then, only after years of indoctrination by families and communities and cultures.
Which, in my view, is why my own assessment of the human condition is particularly disturbing to many. I start out with the assumption that in creating your own meaning much of this revolves existentially around dasein. It becomes your meaning only after all of the historical, cultural and experiential variables in your life predispose you to accept one set of moral and political prejudices rather than another.
And it’s not like political philosophers have been able to factor all of that in by creating the “best of all possible worlds” in regard to meaning and morality. Although, again, that hasn’t stopped countless advocates of this or that One True Path from insisting it’s actually their very own.
Yes, but no sooner do some of us begin to revel in this freedom when, over time, it begins to sink in: “I’m free but then I conclude that in a No God world it seems reasonable to be drawn and quartered, fractured and fragmented regarding any and all value judgments.” The existential notion of “authenticity” comes to revolve more and more around what some construe Sartre meant by “Hell is other people”. They are hell not so much because they torment us, as because they attempt to objectify us out in a world that revolves solely around how they construe it to be. Period.
Indeed, but if objective morality, immortality and salvation are your thing, you will certainly need one or another essential meaning to anchor that precious Self of yours to.
It seems implicit in your response ‘and so the nihilists are confused or misguided here because if their values are in part, in the main, wholly, created by dasein, then there’s no point.’
But the point of creating your own values is to in part notice your own values. What do I Iike, what do I prefer, how do I wish the world was. Etc.? Instead of saying in a meta-position, yes, up in the theoretical clouds - how can I know what is objectively good or what I should want? - one decides to value what one values, to test out and explore what one wants. To sidestep or ignore the debate about how do I arrive at the objectively correct values, and focus on what you do want and then strive for that.
Of course dasein and one’s inborn tendenices and temperment lead to the values, but instead of stepping outside oneself and philosophizing in abstract ways to try to find a method at finding objective values, one decides to focus one’s own values, whatever the source they have arisen from.
It’s a practical suggestion, not a moral suggestion per se.
And that’s staying at the theorretical clouds level. Which is of course a choice - determined or not. But once hearing the idea that one could instead of viewing this and trying to wrestle with it objectively and come up with THE correct answer that all reasonable humans should think is THE right set of values, one builds from one’s own values. And yet, there can still be conflicting values, but it sure narrows it down. Some things you feel no attraction for: collecting different salt shakers is priority number 1, eating baby heads. Probably most individuals are not trying to resolve all possible values and ways of relating to others. So, the shift is from a third person perspective on yourself an the goal of finding perfect objectivity and building from one’s own values. Of course, challenges remain, but the focus is very different.
Yes, if you want objective morality then you need something else. And if you think there is a way for immortaility and salvation and you think these are only on the table if you choose a system of values other than what you would have if you focused on your own values, then sure you can stare blankly at the lists of religions and spiritualities. But note, this means you assume they are correct to some degree. At that point it might be good to explore coming in contact with God. Because while there are may religions, most of them expect some kind of belief in God and some kind of at least reaching out to God. So, that would be a first step. Another approach would be to go to the religion that promises those things that fits best with your current values. It would be odd to choose one that has beliefs you abhor for example. Practice rather than ratiocination. Trying rather than expecting others to try for you. And then Buddhism and Hinduism’, for example, you either don’t have to worry about it - eventually through reincarnation you will reach enlightment though it may take a long time or there is no self to have immortality and salvation, but suffering for the non-self can be reduced via Buddhist practice.
If one is starving and wants to not starve, bemoaning the vast number of restaurants and waiting for someone to prove that objectively you should get Thai food or Italian at a specific take out place is a ridiculous approach.
And it has a LOT of assumptions in it.
Remember you have a chosen way that you consider the best way to achieve your goals. You chose not to try other approaches. Your approach is to ask others to prove that their approach is the best. Your approach is not to try any of the approaches, including ones that might at least not contradict your values - you know they don’t make you take a moral stand you hate, for example. You don’t look for common features in many of these approaches and start in the common ground - for exmaple with prayer and contemplation - that’s a common ground to pretty much all the paths that promise immortality and salvation with those words. Take a step, then see where you are after having taken that step and participating as well as you can. Your approach is generally up in the clouds, at a theoretical level, expecting others to provide proof in words on a screen. That’s a choice. I’m not even saying it’s the wrong choice for you. But it is a choice. What makes you think that’s the best one? What epistemological method did you use to decide that was better than other approaches in giving you the best chance for what you want?
That’s all on you. That’s your responsibility, if anyone’s, do show that this your current approach to solving your problem, is the one you continue to choose to do and have for at least a decade. How’s it going? Are you still convinced it’s the best approach?
On what grounds? Could you convince all rational men and women? How would you go about that?
Here you are with the values you have and this affects how you relate to people.
Here you are with your approach to potentially, at least, solving the problems you have.
You have your interpersonal values.
You have your approach to solving the problems you want solved.
Can you demonstrate that these are the the best ones to all reasonable people?
Presumably you can’t since you have made many disclaimers around that and you are the first to admit…etc.
So, the choice is not Iambiguous outside the universe in the abstract making a choice from all the options and not have his own values and approach. Iambiguous already has values and a methodology.
Why is he convinced these are ones to hang on to given that they don’t meet the criterion he expects of others?
Why will he continue the choice he has been making for at least a decade? And viewing others in the negative way he does, in general, if they have different approaches?
If AI is patterned after us in their programming, who are we patterned after in our DNA?
Asking for persons in general.
It takes at least two to recognize…so…I’m assuming we’re patterned after an irreducibly complex being that subsumes all personhood.
I mean.
Reasonable assumption, right?
Epistemic Nihilism
Colin McGinn
I try to make it plain that “here and now” I am not able to go much beyond morality in regard to how I understand nihilism. The either/or world may well be included, sure, but I have never come across either an experience or an argument that convinces me of that. In fact, epistemological nihilism seems more in sync with things like sim world or dream worlds.
What else can we really come back to here but attempts to close the gap between what we believe about something like this “in our heads” and what, scientifically and philosophically, we are in fact able to demonstrate about it. Or is all of this here between us actually a manifestation of one or another Matrix. Or of solipsism?
We can broach, explore, assess and perhaps judge lots and lots of things pertaining to nihilism. But, beyond worlds of words, how much progress has been made in pinning down What It Really Is
Though here I suspect some flesh and blood human beings might be wondering: “What on Earth does any of that have to do with by own day to day experiences?”
Care to go there yourself?
Click, of course.
But you make precisely that kind of argument all the time using determinism, that people may be compelled to think something is true or false, and it is merely determined that they think that way. That’s an all encompassing epistemological nihilism. Stunning that you haven’t noticed this. You use it to dismiss points made by others with great regularity. Of course, for some reason, you don’t use it as often to undermine your own POVs, but it’s just as applicable to them.
Epistemic Nihilism
Colin McGinn
On the other hand, how does he know that?
One thing that few will deny is that the human species has come to know more about what it may or may not mean to know – something, anything – than any other species. On the other hand, there are things we claim to know are true simply because at any particular moment in time we believe they are true.
More to the point [mine], we know any number of things about the either/or world in which few if any will challenge the objective truths that abound there. Only the metaphysical earthquakes embedded in sim worlds and dream worlds and matrixes call human knowledge here and now into play.
As for the concept of knowledge, you tell me. Then bring that theoretical assessment down out of the clouds and defend it…existentially?
Okay, let’s focus the assessment above on, say, the recent presidential election here in America. What exactly would epistemic nihilists conclude about that. Especially the consequences over the next 4 years.
No, in my view, moral nihilists of my ilk are able to believe that what they know in and/or about the either/or world is no different from what those on all their countless One True Paths believe. The laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us and the rules of logic seem applicable to all of us. How do we know that? How do we demonstrate that? Well, how far out on the metaphysical branch do you want to go?
Yeah, that was a pretty poor start McGinns part. Zen Buddhists have a better approach to what amounts to a kind of epistemic nihilism and that’s to avoid saying things.
keeping in mind Nietzsche said there are individual truths could have meant that every person carried a truth with them, truth is objective and may only differ based on our own relative insights, relating to our own mathematical narratives, relativity… Einstein, so in saying what holds true only enviably passes when we do may be based on this comment.
Or live your life to the fullest because your truths will inevitably pass as you do, they are the things you didn’t or did tend to.
nihilism was to Nietzsche the degradation of people and nature
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Epistemic Nihilism
Colin McGinn
Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with the fact that Plato himself was no less the historical and cultural embodiment of The Gap and Rummy’s Rule.
Knowledge…proper? And what knowledge is improper in a world where all knowledge is suspect?
Knowledge: the word.
Back again to the part where some insist that until a word is properly defined there’s no point in taking any discussions of it down out of the technical realm. So, sure, if some claim to know that knowledge can’t be defined then they can claim to know further that it doesn’t exist.
Or something like that?
And then one day The Big One smashes into Earth for that final extinction event. And anything and everything about knowledge is then obliterated along with us. And if we are the only intelligent life form in the universe, it will be as though knowledge never existed at all.
Or something like that?
Epistemic Nihilism
Colin McGinn
Assuming, of course, the things we think we know, we know of our own volition. Otherwise, scientists have been remarkably successful in exploring the evolution of biological life here on planet Earth. And then coming to the part where “somehow” the human species acquired the capacity to reason far, far, far more effectively than any other animals.
And who really knows where or when to draw the line between reason and the senses? Given, say, a particular context?
Again, however, how are philosophers able to translate this such that it can be made applicable to actual human interactions? How are they not but providing us with what they think they know about it at any given point in time.
You know – “know?” – what’s coming…
Human knowledge “somehow” fits into the evolution of biological life on Earth. Biological life “somehow” fits into the evolution of matter. The evolution of matter “somehow” fits into the Big Bang. The Big Bang "somehow fits into the existence of existence itself.
Then those who argue that “somehow” the existence of existence itself fits into the existence of God.
Me, I always come back to what “here and now” seems to be a clear distinction. I know that I am typing these words. And, given free will, I am typing them of my own volition. But: I do not know – cannot know? – if the words I am typing now reflect the most rational understanding of epistemic knowledge.
Welcome, I hope you get a lot of value from ILP.