Yes, welcome to the forum, Iambiguous.
Regarding your post we’ll need a context, of course.
Epistemic Nihilism
Reflections on The Abyss That Divides Us…
John Timothy Manalaysay
And yet day after day after day we seem to understand each other just fine in regard to things that in fact can be demonstrated to be applicable to all of us.
Instead, where things become considerably more problematic is in regard to conflicting moral values. Those on both sides of them seem able to justify their own One True Path merely by insisting that their own and only their own assumptions about the human condition must prevail.
To wit:
One starts out with a particular set of assumptions regarding the “human condition”, regarding “human nature”:
1] that it is more in sync with capitalism than socialism
2] that it is more in sync with “I” than “we”
3] that it is more in sync with genes than memes
4] that it is more in sync with God than mere mortals
5] that it is more in sync with sexual restrictions than sexual freedoms
6] that it is more in sync with our race and our gender and our sexual orientation
7] that it is more in sync with conservatives or liberals
8] that it is more in sync with big government than small government
9] that it is more in sync with idealism than pragmatism
10] that it is more in sync with might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.
And yet even in regard to the either/or world itself no one seems able to explain why it is as it is and not some other way. Or even why it is something instead of nothing at all. We don’t even have a way of pinning down yet whether or not human beings are acting of their own volition given whatever the ontological nature of existence itself is.
Then this part:
The part, in my view, the objectivists among us are, more than anything else, intent on scoffing at: the fractured and fragmented “I” in an essentially meaningless and purposeless world that for each of us one by one ends in oblivion.
Unless of course that’s wrong. And all I can do is to come into places like this and hope against hope that someone is able to actually convince me that it is wrong.
Epistemic Nihilism
Reflections on The Abyss That Divides Us…
John Timothy Manalaysay
Think about this. You go about your day to day interactions with others. Now, in the either/or world how often are you mistunderstod by them? How often do the words of physicists, chemists, biologists, etc., fail to communicate clearly rather than obfuscate? Sure, it requires an education and years of accumulating knowledge to become ever more precise in communicating what is in fact either this or that. And, yes, in all such fields there comes that part where in regard to the really, really big and the really, really small precision gives way to profound mysteries.
In other words, some things may well never change. As for moral and political biases, it’s not like we acquire them out of the blue. And it’s not like the social sciences have come anywhere near to confronting them as the natural sciences have. It’s not for nothing that among the hard scientists, their work almost never involves conflicting goods. On the other hand, when they do, the powers that be can and often do buy and sell them.
Better that than using nihilism as an excuse to shoot up schools or to become a sociopath, or to convince yourself that “show me the money” really is the center of the moral universe.
Epistemic Nihilism
Reflections on The Abyss That Divides Us…
John Timothy Manalaysay
Okay, let’s pin down how men and women who believe this might go about explaining all the facts that they encounter day after day after day. Does it all come down to what each of us think we know about this or that particular fact vs. all that actually can be known about the ontological and/or teleological nature of facts themselves?
Sophistry? And, again, in regard to what mere mortals in a No God world think they know about mathematics, the laws of nature, the empirical world around them…? Are there or are there not any number things that you know and I know and others know such that they reflect what all rational men and women are obligated to know “for all practical purposes” from day to day. The either/or world may not be as we think it is, but I’m certainly comfortable assuming that what makes it an either/or world is not going anywhere anytime soon.
“This book develops the argument that they do. That is, it contends that moral and epistemic facts are sufficiently similar that, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts also do not exist. But epistemic facts (facts that concern reasons for belief), it is argued, do exist. So, moral facts also exist.” oxford academic
Of course, I’m still waiting for the moral realists here to note examples of objective moral facts. In particular, given sets of circumstances from their own lives in which their value judgments came into conflict with the value judgments of others. What facts were both sides able to agree on?
Epistemic Nihilism
Reflections on The Abyss That Divides Us…
John Timothy Manalaysay
Machiavellian over, under, sideways and down, let’s say. Or Trumpian?
As for axiological nihilism…
“…Axiology is the branch of practical philosophy which studies the nature of value.”
…is someone here more familiar with it able, perhaps, to explain how it might be differentiated – theoretically? technically? – from moral nihilism. Then bringing this scholastic assessment down out of the academic clouds, note how it is applicable given their own grasp of values. Given a particular context of their own choosing.
Here, in my view, philosophers can only speculate about all of this in a “world of words”. If there is a neurobiological element, I suspect it will be natural science that discovers it. Unless, of course, the biological component here revolves entirely around…hard determinism?
Which, from my own frame of mind “here and now”, revolves around both dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome. We can only acquire so much understanding of the human condition. And much of our own sense of reality revolves around countless variables we may scarcely understand and control. Even regarding the lives we live from day to day to day. Our experiences, our relationships, our access to information and knowledge. In other words, leaving out all of the experiences, relationships, information and knowledge we might have had instead had our lives been different.
Epistemic Nihilism
Reflections on The Abyss That Divides Us…
John Timothy Manalaysay
One or another rendition of the Benjamin Button Syndrome? There’s just the distinction I then make between these interactions in the either/or world and in the is/ought world.
The lower processes? Biological imperatives, perhaps? And, in my view, reality is based on our own existential relationship to all of the different things out there in the world. Relationships we can pin down objectively and relationships we acquire and sustain existentially given either one or another One True Path or one or another rendition of moral nihilism.
All of which are intertwined in ever evolving historical and cultural interactions.
Towards a response to epistemic nihilism
Jake Wright
Epistemic nihilism
I take epistemic nihilism to be the rejection of truth as an intrinsic or instrumental good. Often, discussions employing the term focus on at least the view that knowledge via universal epistemic principles is unobtainable…
On the other hand, as with all assessments pertaining to human knowledge, what is most crucial, in my view, is not what we claim to know “in our heads” about whatever reality may or may not be, but the gap between what we claim to know and all that there is to be known about existence itself. God or No God. That’s why over and again I suggest that at the very least attempts must be made to demonstrate why all reasonable men and women are obligated to know this or that.
And this certainly does not exclude epistemology itself, right?
Of course, those like Nietzsche and Rorty are in the same boat all the rest of us are in. Unless, perhaps, someone here is able to demonstrate to us why their own assessments really are the exceptions? And not just theoretically but for all practical purposes.
From my frame of mind, this would seem to be more in sync with such fantastic assumptions as sim worlds or dream worlds. “It’s a radical form of skepticism that claims there’s no reason to believe anything, including the view itself.”
So, right from the start proponents of epistemic nihilism would seem to be acknowledging there is no reason to believe even this. Instead, it would seem that one would need God or God’s equivalent given an ontological/teleological explanation for the universe itself.
Let’s call thus the…either/or world?
Towards a response to epistemic nihilism
Jake Wright
Again, for those of my ilk, it all comes down to just how far out on the metaphysical limb it’s taken. In other words, in the vicinity of sim worlds or dream worlds or solipsism? Sure, if someone is actually able to demonstrate that all knowledge is illusory, let them give it a try.
In the interim, I’m sticking with the rooted existentially in dasein assumption that knowledge embedded in the laws of nature, in mathematics, in the empirical world around us, in the rules of language, etc., while still profoundly mysterious given The Gap and Rummy’s Rule, are clearly less illusory [to me] than knowledge that is claimed to be objective regarding conflicting value judgments.
There’s what a doctor either knows or does not know about performing safe abortions. And then there’s what ethicists claim to know about the nature of human morality itself here.
Click, of course.
Come on, how is this not far, far, far more pertinent to moral and political and religious conflagrations. Whose truth, after all?
Right, that’s really all that nihilists ever pursue given their interactions with others…lying, bullshitting and trolling. Now let the epistemic nihilists among us note how, what they think they know about this themselves, is…illusory>
Though, yes, I may simply be misunderstanding what this…
“Epistemic nihilism, as it is termed, is committed to the claim that there are no epistemic facts. It is argued that this type of view yields a radical type of scepticism, according to which there is no reason to believe the view itself or anything else, for that matter.” Oxford Academic
…does mean for all practical purposes.
How on Earth can someone go about the business of living life from day to day without being pretty damn certain that they know lots and lots of things. Things that have been a part of their lives for years, or even decades.
They meant “to an institution”. Hope that helps.