nihilism

Ur not even gonna try and help me through this terrible, evil affliction?

That’s just crazy. After all we’ve been through 2gether.

I swear to god if u don’t help me I’ll cut the goddamn thing off!!

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

Actually, in my view, this all gets entangled in means and ends. Then it can become particularly murky. For example, when the word nihilism pops up in the news it is almost always in regard to means…to the “terrorist” tactics deployed by the “nihilists” involved. Blowing up the World Trade center is the epitome of nihilism for some.

Again, the irony being that they do things like this precisely because they are anything but nihilist in regard to the ends behind the means. Whether they be theocrats, Communists or Nazis, it is precisely the sacred “kingdom of ends” they embrace that allow them to justify the use of “any means necessary”.

In other words, whatever that means. Ever and always going back to the elusive understanding of where genes end and memes begin. Abandoning the notion of the objectivists among us that they and only they know precisely where that is. In, among other things, one or another “ism”. Or TOE.

Here you would have to follow those who call themselves nihilists around and then when they do something that you wouldn’t do you can ask them why they did it. How they themselves make the distinction between doing it because it seems like the reasonable thing to do in order to benefit them or because on a more visceral level they just went for it “in the moment”. Like, say, the sociopaths among us.

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

Here, nihilism isn’t all that different from all the other “isms”. There is what you believe about your place in the world around you and there is the actual set of circumstances you find yourself in. Life might have no essential meaning for you but there is plenty of existential meaning around. So, sure, you might think your life is ultimately without purpose…but that doesn’t necessarily make the food you eat less delicious, or the music that you listen to less sublime, or the friendships you accumulate less fulfilling, or the sex you have less satisfying.

This is a point I often come back to. Once you are locked into moral and political objectivism – in either a God or No God world – your options are either/or. You either do the right thing or the wrong thing. It’s just a matter of what the reward is. It could be pats on the back from all the rest to our own “one of us” clique…or it could be Heaven itself. Though, sure, the psychological comfort and consolation here is no small thing. Still, that won’t increase your options any. Your freedom still revolves around one of another dogmatic agenda.

This sort of assessment is always going to be rooted subjectively in dasen. As though when you capitalize Nihilism you are configuring it into the Real Thing. Existentialism starts with the assumption that existence is prior to essence. But that will always mean different things to different people in different sets of circumstances.

Everything here comes down you how radical you insist on being in regard to what is said to be meaningful. Here the sociopath can scoff at the existentialists with their alleged “authenticity” bullshit and insist that absolutely nothing is beyond justifying if morality itself is said to revolve around me, myself and I in a No God world.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Bingo. With me it was Walt Fuchs. Chair of the philosophy department at Towson State University. Along with his then wife Joann Fuchs. Only it was probably me that framed our discussions more along the lines of nihilism. Active or otherwise. That being the case because back then they were more committed to Marxism than I was. I was beginning to stumble head over heels into the implications of the “rival goods” that William Barrett had introduced me to.

Yes! Back again to that. The manner in which the assumptions embedded in nihilism regarding the existence or lack thereof of essential meaning, can have a profound impact on the manner in which you approach options in your life. The more convinced you are that one or another “ism” – fascism, socialism, paganism – is the one True Path the more you are obligated to act accordingly. You sustain the comfort and consolation of believing in the one True Path but in any number of contexts you can find yourself “stuck” on it.

As for “fulfillment”, that get’s trickier. At least for me. Yes, if you can think yourself into embracing a purpose in your life through nihilism then you need go no further. On the other hand, any number of nihilists [like me] find themselves “fractured and fragmented” in regard to that crucial meaning and purpose revolving around moral and political value judgments. And then those who rationalize a sociopathic frame of mind. You choose to pursue things based solely on the assumption that in a No God world, if it brings you pleasure and fulfilment then do it. Others be damned.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Then immediately the irony that revolves around how a nihilist might attempt to explain the meaning of that. Not that there actually is a one-size-fits-all nihilism here that all nihilists can concur with.

As definitions go, sure, this gets closer to my own rooted-existentially-in-dasein understanding of nihilism. Revolving around meaning and purpose as they pertain to “how ought one to live?” Then opposed to the dogmas of the objectivists: the perspectives of religious or political or ideological or deontological or materialist/naturalist agendas.

As for the laws of physics, well, we know how far that can be taken, don’t we?

Here though nihilism gets entangled in political economy. Hundreds and thousands of “Harvard men and women” who have no doubt gone on to become thoroughly enmeshed in a global economy owned and operated by those that I construe to be nihilists.

Nihilism in the sense that what motivates them by and large are two things:

1] show me the money
2] what’s in it for me

When it comes to that, you won’t find many fractured and fragmented personalities in, among organizations, the Bilderberg Group.

Though, sure, in regard to to any number of “social issues” or “value voter issues” they might embrace a more or less idealist/objectivist frame of mind. The part, in other words, rooted in dasein.

As for what we should fear, is it not still the fulminating fanatics at either end of the political spectrum. Here for example those who rally around things like “The Coalition of Truth”, or who spout one or another TOE in which you are either “one of them”…or else.

“Else” depending only on how much power they have to enforce their own authoritarian/totalitarian dogmas.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

It is certainly the nihilism that I have avoided. On the other hand, come on, once you do manage to convince yourself that in a No God world, your very existence itself is essentially – essentially – meaningless and purposeless, it is likely that you will come at least in the vicinity of depression. And I am no exception here either. How can it not be depressing at times to contemplate the supposed “brute facticity” of everything. You squash a bug and think of all the billions of years that had to pass in order that it existed at all. And then just like, it’s flattened. And you know that one way or another nature will flatten you too. Back to the oblivion from whence you came.

Okay, but, once again, this is always dependent on the actual situation that you find yourself in. Do you have the option to embody this freedom? Will others allow you to embody it as you would like to? Are you someone just months or weeks or days away from oblivion itself? Are you able to reconcile yourself [as I must] with accepting a fractured and fragmented “self” in confronting conflicting goods?

In other words, ever and always the gap between discussing “active nihilism” philosophically as the author does here and actually having to live with it in the particular world you find yourself in.

And, again, those either indoctrinated into believing in objective morality or who have come on their own to accept it – religious or secular – still have a measure of comfort and consolation that “active nihilism” can never provide.

Yes, there is that side of the coin. But, on the other side of it, are those “active nihilists” who tend more toward the ominous and destructive lives rooted in, among other things, the sociopathic mentality. Or rooted in the mentality of those who own and operate the global economy…lives more or less dedicated to the credo “show me the the money” and “what’s in it more me?”

And to hell with all those who get in their way.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

How is all of this not profoundly embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of moral nihilism in my signature threads? How does it not pertain to the meaning you ascribe to your life? Just look at how many millions of men and women are thoroughly indoctrinated as children to see the world around them given particular historical, cultural and community standards…and then more or less take that all the way to the grave.

But: what makes the “modern age” different is the extent to which so much gets sucked up into the global economy that intertwines so many in embodying the mantra “show me the money”. It’s all about “what’s in it for me”. Moral nihilism on a [now] epic scale. That and the fact that through such things as modern communication and the internet many, many more people have access so many different lifestyles and points of view. You can talk about a global village but who is kidding whom that it resembles villages of old, where there was always a place for everyone and everyone was always in it…year in and year out. Not many of them left around.

Then there are those of my ilk who speculate not only about subjective and subjunctive points of view, but frames of mind that can become fractured and fragmented. So, for me, it can often come down to one of two paths. Finding those who might convince me to reject moral nihilism [active or otherwise] or finding those who might empathize with me in accepting that their own life is construed to be essentially purposeless and meaningless.

My very own experience with some here. And the results have been, well, rather bleak.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Conclusion:

Let’s go back again to the distinction:

“Passive nihilism is more the traditional ‘belief that all is meaningless’, while active nihilism goes beyond judgement to deed, and destroys values where they seem apparent. Passive nihilism signifies the end of an era, while active nihilism ushers in something new.” Vered Arnon

Now, please, don’t tell me we can avoid the need to explore this given particular sets of circumstances.

First, the distinction has to be made between 1] existential meaning that comes about [of necessity] whenever two or more people are interacting and moral and political conflicts come about as a result of conflicting goods, and 2] essential meaning in which through the tools of philosophy or science or theology human beings are able to establish the obligatory behaviors of all who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings.

The point isn’t whether you stay in the old era or start a new one, but what actually unfolds between flesh and blood human beings given this “new” agenda that precipitates consequences that some will embrace and others will deplore. It’s not for nothing that many insist that Hitler and the Nazis were “active nihilists” in introducing their own “brave new world”.

Whereas for me, Hitler and the Nazis were just the opposite of nihilists. They were very, very dangerous fulminating fanatic objectivists. At least for those unable to demonstrate that they were “one of us”.

Sure, maybe. Given the nature of dasein not much can be completely ruled out for any particular “active nihilist”. But I suspect that for those not willing to fit right in to his or her “new” meaning, things might become rather problematic. Especially if someone fancies himself or herself to be an Übermensch.

“What if you started out instead by concluding that, in the absence of God, all things really are permitted?”

The first thing you’d have to do is to answer the question, “permitted by whom?” You have to make sense before you can philosophize. Maybe this question makes sense, and I don’t. I just don’t see how it does.

God seems to permit everything. Never heard of God stopping anything from happening. Are you saying that everything is permitted, with or without God?

No offense meant to any incoherent nihilists out there.

F

Prompting me [of course] to note…

“Permitted by whom?” given what particular historical, cultural and experiential context? And given who has the actual power to enforce one rather than another set of behavioral proscriptions?

Philosophers here are like the Pope, right? No actual army to back up their own deontological assessments.

And whether it makes sense to someone or not is only interesting to me given an assessment of a particular context in which there are in fact conflicting moral and political value judgments.

I’m saying that with an omniscient God [as most denominations describe Him] He knows everything. So, if He deems particular behaviors to be Sins that will be confronted on Judgment Day, there is no getting away with committing them; as can be the case for mere mortals in a No God world. And with an omnipotent God [as most denominations describe Him] He is there to assure us that those who commit Sins will be punished.

More to the point, He becomes the transcending font able to make that crucial distinction between moral and immoral behavior.

Where is the mere mortal equivalent of that? Where is the definitive philosophical argument that establishes once and for all that anything from the Holocaust to abortion is necessarily immoral?

Which behaviors do you believe are beyond rationalizing? Given a human history to date where not much hasn’t been. And what of the sociopaths who start with the assumption that in a No God world, morality revolves around self-gratification? Or the nihilists that own and operate a global economy that surely revolves around the amoral dictum “show me the money”?

Any incoherent nihilists among us?

Come forward and Faust and I can explore given a particular context what it means to be an incoherent nihilist.

“Permitted by whom?” given what particular historical, cultural and experiential context?

Now, in the U. S., in your own experiential context will suffice.

Again, we will still need a context. One in which I argue that a behavior I choose is permitted given the components of my moral philosophy, while another argues that it is not permitted given the components of their moral philosophy.

My own experiential context “here and now” revolves entirely around an imploded world. I have no experiences with others pertaining to conflicting goods in a No God world.

Instead, my aim is to explore the behaviors chosen by those who do not believe that “in the absence of God all things are permitted”. Those who are not a moral nihilist as “here and now” “I” am.

And, in particular, the moral objectivists.

Agreed. Without one, the claim contained in your question, the one I quoted in my first post, is nonsense. I am asking you to provide the context for the word “permitted” that would perhaps rescue it from meaninglessness. Words have meaning only within a context.

You used the word. It’s not up to the world to provide context for that word, it’s up to you. This is very far away from philosophy. It’s just about language. Language that you have used.

Okay, let’s focus in on the state of ILP of late. Far removed in my view from the days when you and only_humean and other actual committed moderators, created and sustained a forum in which far more substantive exchanges unfolded. These days we have Dan and Carleas. But the last time Carleas even visited the forum was “Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:31 am”.

Still, the question remains: What ought to be permitted here if we did regain a dedicated team of moderators?

Who should decide what warrants a warning or a banning? And based on what criteria?

Also, in the Society, Government, and Economics forum, there are any number of discussions/debates pertaining to any number of contexts in which, pertaining to behaviors some want permitted and others want prohibited, conflicting assessments are provided by objectivists all up and down the political spectrum.

I argue instead that value judgments here are rooted more in the arguments I make in my signature threads. I then challenge others to note my points there and given a set of circumstances of their own choosing [in a free will world] to note why they agree or disagree with my own conclusions.

Why don’t you give it a go? Or are you going to stay up in the didactic clouds where we must first pin down once and for all what words like “permitted” mean. How we must define them technically.

So you’re asking, “Sans God, what ought to be permitted if ILP restores the level of moderation it once had?”

The context of “permitted” is the theoretical future (nothing wrong with that). The historical context a certain period of time in the past. The cultural conditions are a little hard to pin down (hard for me, but probably not for you). But we could arrive at a rough rendering of the culture of the site and how it has changed. The wider cultural milieu may include how people behave on the internet in general, social media, and the pressures many SM sites are facing (and the reasons why). The experiential context is one that you and I, and others who may read this, share, to one extent or the other. We’re familiar with the site, and many of us with its history.

Further, it’s clear that most posters here are not sophisticated in Western academic philosophy. It’s been a long time since many posters here were.

And so on.

So, we know that, since this site is private property, most of the control is in the ownership’s hands. We also know that there are some laws that restrict behavior here and that these vary from country to country. If the site were banned from China, however, it would have little effect.

When I was a mod, the owner had final say, but took counsel from his moderators. Moderators had conversations with members, and took under consideration their thoughts. It wasn’t unlike a Western representative democracy. So, some of the controls over posting behavior were born of “community standards”.

I fought for a long time to ban one or more (couldn’t tell how many) child molesters from posting. I wanted them permabanned. I was met with a lot of resistance. In the end, I was informed that the site was climbing rapidly on Google, on that particular subject. I brought that to the tribunal. Free speech arguments were then jettisoned, as the owner did not want this to become known as a ped*o site. That could be real trouble.

Self-preservation was the operative moral principle. All moral principles serve the self-preservation of someone. A well-conceived moral system will preserve those who will act to in turn preserve the group they belong to. The argument for moral rules is not circular, but the causal chain that generates them is.

Your mistake is one that philosophers make all the time. It is to believe that morality should somehow be self-generating and absolute, or it’s not really morality.

This doesn’t come from any didactic cloud. It comes from the recognition that philosophy exists only within language. It doesn’t exist in a cloud, or in the empirical world, or in God’s lap, or anywhere else but in language. Which is why our words must at least have a meaning in the most ordinary sense.

I am certainly not trying to teach anyone morality. I am trying to get them to speak clearly. Most are a long way from philosophy.

And, then, given that this will mean different things to each of us, we can sustain an exchange that goes on and on attempting to pin down what the words we use in our assessments ought to mean – how they must first be defined – or we can take our own meaning and definition to be the most technically proficient and explain why we believe it is justified to warn or ban someone here given actual posts.

Thus: Is this or that post an example of an ad hom or a personal attack or going off topic or hijacking the thread? Is a warning or a ban justified? How close can those who are “sophisticated in Western academic philosophy” come to resolving differences of opinion here?

How does this make my point any less relevant? It still often comes down to our own subjective reactions to the posts of others. In any number of contexts, there does not appear to be a way to pin down definitively, objectively when someone is going off topic or hijacking the thread or becoming personal. Ambiguities can often abound here.

Yes, there are contexts such as this where a large majority of members would agree. For others it revolves around race or gender or homosexuality or Jews or Nazis. But what of those who rationalize extreme forms of sexuality? Where is the argument that unequivocally defeats their point of view?

And then out in the world, the sociopaths or those who run the world from their perches in Washington or Moscow or Beijing.

Okay, with regard to issues/behaviors such that there is not clearly an overwhelming opposition – sexually abusing children, mass murder – how would this be explored in terms of behaviors permitted or prohibited?

Abortion, gun laws, the role of government, animal rights, conscription, gay weddings, vaccinations. And on and on and on.

What of self-preservation and moral principles there? And then the part where, in any event, I root them in the arguments I make in my signature threads. Where do others see flaws in those points?

And how could that be explored without focusing in on specific sets of circumstances?

Instead, from my frame of mind, you keep the exchange “up here”:

In fact, my whole point is that in regard to “I” at the existential intersection of identity, value judgments, conflicting goods and political economy disagreements about who is speaking clearly is precisely what sustains the most heated debates. Who is “speaking clearly” when the discussion shifts from performing an abortion as a doctor to assessing the morality of the procedure as an ethicist?

Morality is like language, in certain ways. Let’s imagine a world where everyone speaks English, and there are only 10,000 people in it. Within that world, there is language. So, when I say that philosophy exists only in language, we have a simplified version of “language” in the sense in which I am using it. But even so, language, in that same sense, is a higher order abstraction. What is really happening is that language, per se, doesn’t really exist. It’s a conglomeration of 10,000 different languages and what they have in common.

Even this model is oversimplified, because all 10,000 languages evolve, as does the collective language. So it’s a moving target, shot at with 10,000 arrows.

Morality is like that. It works insofar as these 10,000 moralities have commonalities. If all 10,000 moralities agree about murdering babies, all well and good. But moral proscription against baby murder does not require unanimity to function.

The problem with philosophers is that while most people think along a spectrum or continuum or range, philosophers don’t. And here I think we agree. But philosophers did not invent morality. It functions outside of Western academic philosophy and predates it. It functions at the intersection of politics, economics, law, class, gender, family ties and a lot of other stuff.

But let’s let epistemology enter. This has been commonly and tragically used to justify moral theory. And that’s because what philosophers, including you, look for is certainty. Enter metaphysics. Eventually, God enters. Pure Reason enters. Abstractions brought to a point of meaninglessness. Like Plato’s Forms. God is not dependent on context. God is the context.

You can only get to God when you remove all context, and therefore all meaning. But you do the same thing when you say that there is no context to morality and therefore morality means nothing. There is a context to morality. It’s a social construct, and just as science bears fruit even if it can’t produce certainty, so does moral thinking.

Any claim can mean different things to different people, but in practice, moral claims can mean the same thing, or close enough to the same thing, to different people, as can any statement. Even though we speak 10,000 different languages. We can look for differences or we can look for commonalities.

You sure should focus on specific circumstances, but you can focus a lens too close or too far - and either way, you just get a blurry image. But you can also focus the lens in a way that allows you to see. You chose the former way. But that’s your choice, and you have no justification in blaming others.

Yes, but, “for all practical purposes”, only given a particular set of circumstances reacted to by 10,000 individuals. Here though this imagined world is either derived from a history of other communities going back centuries or not. And the culture is either more or less heterogenous.

And, again, the distinction between those things all 10,000 agree are in fact true because they are in fact true objectively in the either/or world and those things they may not agree on with respect to value judgments. If someone insists they are not true in the either/or world it is because they are being demonstrably irrational or they have some mental condition that makes them unable to grasp reality as it demonstrably is.

Well, it’s all well and good given the assumption there is no God. And even if they all agree there is not one that is not demonstrable proof that there isn’t. So, from God’s omniscient frame of mind [as most understand it to be], murdering babies may well land you in Hell.

Then the part where some insist that with abortion you are murdering babies while others insist you are just shredding clumps of cells. Even here, sans God, there does not appear to be a way to resolve it all once and for all.

Are you talking about consensus here? As long as the overwhelming majority of the 10,000 agree on behaviors that are to be prescribed or proscribed, that need be as far as morality goes? For “all practical purposes”?

Well, from my frame of mind, the main problem I have had with some philosophers here is that however they construe the role of philosophy pertaining to exploring and examining and coming to conclusions in regard to the question “how ought one to live in a world of conflicting goods?”, I can’t seem to get them to bring their own conclusions to bear on a particular set of circumstances in which some argue that there is an objective morality [even a universal morality] and while others argue that there is not.

What I look for is a font – religion, ideology, deontolgy, nature etc. – that would allow me to predicate my own “fractured and fragmented” moral and political value judgments on something more than just the manner in which “here and now” I construe the meaning of dasein.

Or take a leap of faith to the assumption that with and through God you have all the context and meaning you will ever need. And not just on this side of the grave.

As for social context how is that not ever shifting and evolving over time historically and around the globe culturally in human-all-too–human interactions awash in contingency, chance and change?

Again, given what specific set of circumstances? For me, that means going back to this:

And this:

And not so much this:

What makes this blurry for me is that it is not in regard to a particular context…it is more in the way of what I call a “general description intellectual contraption”.

In regard to moral and political conflagrations in which there are large numbers on both sides of the political spectrum, when is the lens focused just right?

And what I argue is that to the extent some here refuse to take their technical philosophical conclusions down out of the didactic, intellectual clouds is the extent to which, from my frame of mind, the blame is warranted.

“Here though this imagined world is either derived from a history of other communities going back centuries or not.”

This is where you lose me, or where you lose everybody.

“I am part dog, part zebra, and part red Jello or I am not.” Your statement is vapid, which is a very bad thing for a statement to be. Yet you present it as if it means something.

“And, again, the distinction between those things all 10,000 agree are in fact true because they are in fact true objectively in the either/or world and those things they may not agree on with respect to value judgments. If someone insists they are not true in the either/or world it is because they are being demonstrably irrational or they have some mental condition that makes them unable to grasp reality as it demonstrably is.”

It’s my imagined world, so I get to make the rules. They are not agreeing to anything except the meaning of utterances. But that agreement is nothing like perfect. Language would not evolve if it were. Yet language evolves. It’s not all or nothing, as you are trying so hard to characterize it. It’s “in the ballpark” agreement.

Look, this is not rocket science. It’s not controversial. Everyone knows this, if they think about it for a couple of minutes. You’re taking my entirely mundane observations and pretending it’s astrophysics. “True” doesn’t even enter the conversation. It’s “true” that “phat crib” means “nice dwelling” until it’s not true anymore. It’s true while people use those words that way and then not true when they don’t. It’s like kids playing make-believe - they can change that universe at will. The leader of the game changes it, or it’s changed by mutual agreement, or it changes because the players forgot what it was, or for any reason at all. There’s nothing remotely objective about it. Nor is it subjective. The world is not divided in this arbitrary, binary way.

Binary thinking is leading you astray.

“Well, it’s all well and good given the assumption there is no God. And even if they all agree there is not one that is not demonstrable proof that there isn’t. So, from God’s omniscient frame of mind [as most understand it to be], murdering babies may well land you in Hell.”

So what?

“Then the part where some insist that with abortion you are murdering babies while others insist you are just shredding clumps of cells. Even here, sans God, there does not appear to be a way to resolve it all once and for all.”

That moral thinking has its limits does not mean that moral thinking is of no use, or impossible. Even iPhones have limits, but they don’t suck.

“Are you talking about consensus here? As long as the overwhelming majority of the 10,000 agree on behaviors that are to be prescribed or proscribed, that need be as far as morality goes? For “all practical purposes”?”

Moral thinking goes as far as it goes, just like science, religion, hot dog eating contests and Tom Brady’s career.

“Well, from my frame of mind, the main problem I have had with some philosophers here is that however they construe the role of philosophy pertaining to exploring and examining and coming to conclusions in regard to the question “how ought one to live in a world of conflicting goods?”, I can’t seem to get them to bring their own conclusions to bear on a particular set of circumstances in which some argue that there is an objective morality [even a universal morality] and while others argue that there is not.”

It’s a stupid argument and an unproductive dichotomy. As soon as anyone says “objective” they’re full of shit. They literally do not know what they even mean.

I’ll try to respond to the rest after I bathe myself in holy water.