nihilism

Tell me about it! Mine too!! You know, here!!!

Well, okay, maybe not in a dozen different ways: :sunglasses:

Allow me to translate this for you:

Nihilism is an intellectual contraption that has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to actual human interactions.

On the other hand, sure, if anyone here speaks “serious philosophy” fluently and would like to make an attempt to note its relevance to their own interactions with others, by all means, give it a shot.

You know how this works.

1] He posts something at KT
2] I ridicule it as an intellectual contraption
3] he reads that and then posts yet another intellectual contraption

As though to mock me. Or, sure, to mock himself.

Here’s the latest:

Now, again, for those here who speak his “serious philosophy” fluently, what on earth is he telling us here about nihilism in regard to, say, that which he and I discussed when, according to Wendy, he makes his annual “Christmas visit” to ILP.

The subjects being gender roles and sexual preference.

Here are the arguments that I made:

So, how would he construe my points here as nihilism? And how does he actually go about demonstrating that his own arguments – being just intellectual contraptions – are not lies?

How are the points I make not reasonable?

Let’s focus in on this point:

Now, with nature, the mutations have no teleological font. Unless you believe this is God. They just happen biologically given the brute facticity embedded in the evolution of life and existence. And, depending on the context, for, say, lions as predators and zebras as prey, it’s good news for one or the other.

But it’s not like the lions and the zebras go online and, philosophically, discuss the implications of it.

It’s all basically instinct.

But, in regard to gender roles and sexual preference, how exactly does nihilism work/unfold “for all practical purposes” within our own species.

This because unlike with lions and the zebras, the “mutated” behaviors can also revolve around historical, cultural and circumstantial/experiential memes. Human beings [given free will] have the capacity to weigh in on what is thought to be or not to be “biological imperatives”.

Thus, for those animals wholly lacking in memes, biological imperatives are everything. Just not so for our own species. With human beings, gender roles and sexual preferences encompass a vast, vast panoply of conflicting options.

Naturally, as it were.

Again, he refuses to actually make this brand new “intellectual contraption” applicable to the subjects that I proposed: gender roles and sexual preferences. Nor does he situate it out in the world of actual flesh and blood human beings interacting in another context where value judgments precipitate behaviors that come to clash precipitating in turn actual consequences that reverberate far beyond merely a world of words precipitating yet another world of words.

He is a “serious philosopher” and that is just not done!

So, all I can do is to ask anyone here who speaks “pedantic intellectual” fluently, to embody his ideas in regard to feminism and homosexuality. What makes them part of the nihilistic “modernism” that is flagrantly opposed to what nature intended.

Given that conflicting assessments of gender roles and sexuality have been around now for thousands of years and the species keeps reproducing new generations just like it always has.

Also, if we can do something – anything – and we are a part of nature, how can it be said to be “unnatural”. It is as though Nature was this actual entity that existed [like God] and you could go to it and ask if same sex fucking and women running a government was inherently and necessarily Unnatural.

Note to Satyr: You’re up at KT. And I double dare you to come down out of the clouds.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

Who really knows if this actually is what Nietzsche meant in regard to morality. Especially when the focus does shift to a particular context. Also, from the perspective of those who do shoot up schools, places of worship or workplaces, their own motivation and intentions might be deemed by them to be anything but the embodiment of crazed behavior. In fact, for some, their behavior can be seen by them to be quite the opposite of nihilism. On the contrary, from their frame of mind their behavior, anchored to one or another “kingdom of ends” is defended as entirely moral.

Well, this moral nihilist would say that, sure, there might be an objective morality accessible to mere mortals. But this particular mere mortal here and now does not believe that there is. But: if other mere mortals [here at ILP for example] do believe that there is then let them note both an argument to encompass it and a demonstration, given a particular context, in which an attempt is made to note how “for all practical purposes” they might be able to convince others that if they wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings they are obligated to concur.

You’re up.

There are two kinds of nihilism:

1: Neutrality. Super passive. Silent. Desireless.

2: Anti meaning. Deconstructing and debunking virtually everything.

We’ll need a context of course.

Or are those things moot when you can encompass nihilism so succinctly in points like yours?

Context is presupposed by text

Or, aesthetically, the foreground retains focus in spite of the background.

No 'practical way to reduct or induct this pretty down to earth, presently significant conclusion. ignorance of this ‘law’ is not excusable.

Let’s recall that, with respect to nihilism, this exchange between Satyr and myself has come to revolve around his willingness to intertwine the points he raises about it with respect to both gender roles and sexual preference.

Or, sure, a “set of circumstances” all his own.

Instead, he is sticking with his “ponderous and preposterous intellectual contraptions”.

So, if you are wondering if you might be a nihilist yourself in regard to these things and you go to him for advise, here is what he will tell you:

Got that?

Well, okay, if you do, please convey to us how his description here is entirely in sync with the behaviors that you choose in regard to gender interactions and sexual preference. What specifically makes you a Satyrean nihilist here?

Once and for all: is this intellectual gibberish of yours just an act you perform here, a “condition”, or do you truly imagine that your points are relevant to a discussion of nihilism that needs no contexts at all…other than the “text”?

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

And all one need do is to note the manner in which “agents” construe the world around them from very different historical, cultural and circumstantial perspectives. If there really was a “universal” morality able to be either discovered or invented don’t you suppose philosophers, ethicists and political scientists would have announced it to the world by now.

Ah, but they have. Over and over and over and over and over again. Given one or another God, political ideology, deontological philosophical contraption, assessment of nature. Human history is bursting at the seams with universal moralities. Even Nietzsche, the moral nihilist, put his reputation on the line by inventing a No God teleology of sorts that revolved around the Übermensch. And isn’t this just another rendition of “right makes might”?

That’s the thing about a world that ever and always combines an ineffably complex intertwining of genes and memes in a “human condition” that never stops evolving amidst an avalanche of contingency, chance and change. As with God, if a universal morality didn’t exist it would have to be invented.

After all, look at all the renditions of it here!!

See how it works? Human interactions cannot be allowed to sink down into the “nasty brutish and short” mentality of might makes right. The fittest will survive but only because they deserve to. The masters are the masters not merely because that have the raw power to impose their will on the weak, but because they are inherently superior to the weak. It’s not for nothing that folks like Ayn Rand brought elements of Nietzsche’s thinking into their own intellectual models.

On paper, Nietzsche can be shaped and molded to fit all manner individual requirements. Again, look at all of the renditions of him here. Some by way of Satyr, others by way of Fixed Jacob and his “intellectual contraption” brood.

Therefore, we can focus in on a particular context and the Übermensch among us can inform us as to what is required of us if we wish to be included among their own own “one of us” clique/claque.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

So, it never occurred to him that individuals come in all shapes and sizes morally? That historical and cultural and experiential factors don’t play critical roles when it comes down to how all of us are indoctrinated as children to view, among other things, everything under the sun? That the “search for meaning” is deeply embedded in the profoundly problematic confluence of social, political and economic variables that any particular one of us might be immersed in? Even an understanding of nihilism itself shifts over time as new factors come into play.

I can only try to imagine Nietzsche around today reacting to the manner in which I would deconstruct this sort of thinking. Gain an understanding of what particular conflicting good? And from what particular perspective – liberal, conservative? Though, yes, reflect on our experiences. But what about the experiences of those who live lives very, very different from ours? Which set of experiences [often beyond our full understanding or control] matter most? In a sense, Nietzsche’s frame of mind mirrors the attitude of those later existentialists who spoke of living “authentically”. And, sure, up in an intellectual clouds where the “serious philosophers” live in a “world of words”, an authentic life is always so much more readily encompassed…academically.

But what of the points I raise as a moral nihilist?

Perhaps someone here who is familiar with and a proponent of Nietzsche’s own moral nihilism would be willing to discuss that with me.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

This is the part where things get tricky. The part where “might makes right” and “right makes might” are intertwined into a moral perspective that no one is is really certain about in regard to the part where “me, myself and I” end and everyone else begins.

Unless, as a serious philosopher who really does get Nietzsche, you invent your own intellectual contraption to rip them apart.

In other words, you take your own particular leap to Übermensch status. But this is predicated on “principle”. You rise above the herd but only because you deserve to and not just because you can.

Thus we have those like Satyr and what’s left of his clique/claque at Know Thyself [and his kowtowers here] basically insisting that Übermensch status revolves entirely around their own authoritarian assessment of race and nature, gender and nature, sexual orientation and nature.

And all else they insist that, genetically, truly rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to pursue. This set of behaviors and not that set. This they then insist revolves around being a “rugged individualist”. Ah, but one who is absolutely obligated to think exactly like they do about…everything.

The irony then being completely lost on them.

Whereas, from the perspective of nihilism as “I” understand it, Richard Rorty’s “ironism” is smack dab in the middle of my own value judgments:

The antidote? Objectivism of course!

Just to update you…

I continue to follow Satyr’s posts on the nihilism thread over at KT.

As you’ll recall, I noted that I would only respond to a post of his that actually brings his “general description intellectual contraption” arguments about nihilism down to earth. In regard to gender roles and sexual orientation for example.

Nothing even remotely close so far.

In fact, here is his latest post:

So, if anyone here can reconfigure what you believe his point is here into an account of nihilism that is applicable to the life that you live and the behaviors that you choose giving a particular context please, by all means, do so.

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

This sort of argument seems to be on par with a discussion of whether this sort of argument is only as it ever could have been given a wholly determined universe. In other words, to finally pin down the definitive argument that establishes once and for all if life has a meaning, the meaning seems beyond our reach.

Whatever that means.

Right?

So, given human autonomy, meaning in what sense? We go about the reality of existing from day to day to day in which there are countless things, countless interactions, that we are able to establish as in fact true. We are able to completely agree about what this or that means. What it means to wake up in the morning, to eat breakfast, to go to work or school, to come home, to have dinner, to do any number of things that we all are able to communicate rationally about back and forth without the slightest contention.

Meaning that appears to be be objectively the same for all of us.

Where it all starts to break down however is when we agree about what we are doing but disagree about whether we ought to be doing one thing and not another. We all agree that John is eating bacon for breakfast. We don’t all agree that this is immoral because it is wrong for human beings to consume other animals.

We know what it means to have conflicts of this sort. But we don’t all agree on what it must mean to rationally resolve them.

If life and reality itself are essentially meaningless then how meaningful can it be to assert that “nihilism is just a fact”? Instead, as with me, it seems more reasonable to suggest that mere mortals, having no way of grasping whether life/reality has any necessary meaning/ontology or purpose/teleology going back to an explanation for existence itself, some think themselves into believing one thing, others another thing. With none able to actually demonstrate that either their assumptions or their conclusions are the whole truth.

Unless, of course, I am not thinking this through in the most rational manner.

“It all starts to break down”

Nope.
It doesn’t break down.

The truth isn’t monodimensional.
Conflicting ideas are not all of a sudden unreal or impossible,
when they go about disagreeing with each other.

Communication breakdowns don’t occur all the time between those who crave bacon and those who passionately embrace animal rights?

Maybe not around where you live?

What do you call that then?

How is the point I make above not reasonable? And how is the point you make above even relevant to the point that I make in regard to animal rights conflagrations that pop up on the news from time to time.

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

This is the point I often come back to…the point that many [the objectivists in particular] just seem to shrug off as of seeming little importance at all. When of course in grappling with anything in the vicinity of teleology, it is by far the most important consideration of all. Until someone has a grasp on why something rather than nothing exist, and why this something and not another something, it’s like them reading one verse from one chapter of the Bible and attempting explain the meaning and the purpose of Christianity.

Instead, at best, one can start with attempting to understand the meaning and the purpose of one’s own life. While, at the same time, noting that in some respects, it seems to overlap with the lives of others. Then sharing experiences with them…attempting to come up with those things that seem to be true for all people. In other words, an existential meaning and an existential purpose.

In other words, seeming to lack in any essential meaning and purpose such that when we compare and contrast the particular things that we think, feel, say and do, there does not appear to be a “transcending font” we can turn to in order to sort out differences and conflicts.

Still…

Here, however, I am quick to point out that evoking a “groundless” existence is just another manifestation of dasein. I have no way in which to demonstrate that there is neither a God nor a Humanist font from which to derive an essential meaning and purpose. And that, in fact, in the world as I know it, there are far, far, far more people able to think themselves into believing that there is one than there are folks like me who “here and now” cannot.

And that’s before we get to those who are able to just shrug all of that aside, and immerse themselves in any number of experiences/interactions that provide them with fulfilment and satisfaction. All of the meaning and purpose that they need as it were.

The difficulty here tends to revolve around the part when, in the pursuit of your own pleasures, it becomes an obstacle or an obstruction for those who wish to pursue things that precipitate conflicts. Or when these pursuits revolve around moral and political value judgments that come to clash.

Then this: which existential “meaning and purpose” will prevail?

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

Here’s the thing though…

If you treat your life itself as you do a game of chess, you merely have to think yourself into believing something about your life that is the equivalent of how you think about a checkmate in chess. Ontologically and teleologically the rules of chess and the aim in following them is to arrive at checkmate. So, if you believe that there does exist a God, the God or, instead, a No God Humanistic equivalent, then revolving your life around accomplishing that which you deem to be an obligation on your part in living your life becomes all that is really necessary.

That’s the beauty of things like this: the belief in and of itself is all that is necessary to make it true. You either do or you do not checkmate your opponent. You either do or do not live your life in sync with God or in sync with one or another political ideology or deontological/philosophical scaffolding.

Moves have meaning in chess only because they bring you closer to the ultimate meaning of the game. Same with the behaviors that you choose given what you have thought yourself into believing the meaning of life is.

Once you conclude however that there is no essential meaning you can wrap your own particular behaviors around, you are still faced with interacting with others in order to sustain access to the things that you need to subsist and the things that you want that will make your life more fulfilling.

That doesn’t change. This existential meaning doesn’t go away just because you are unable to link it to something that ties everything together.

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

Clearly, if an examination of nihilism focuses solely on the “role of philosophical questioning” then the answers themselves can be solely abstract. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph in exchange after exchange after exchange can be devoted to examining the meaning of “transcendence” without once connecting the conclusions reached to the existential meaning that we grapple with in our day to day interactions. In particular, those that precipitate actual conflicting behaviors that precipitate actual consequences. My “thing” here.

How would the conclusion that “nihilism is compatible with the idea of transcendence” be relevant here?

Okay, what “on Earth” does that mean? Existentially, for example. Being conscious of what actual phenomenal interactions? Transcending objective thought in what sense substantively? In a physical universe that we have only just scarcely begun to understand.

Admittedly, I am never quite certain as to what on Earth – the planet I call home and interact with others on – this is actually supposed to mean. For all practical purposes, say. Again, it’s the sort of thing that “serious” philosophers ever seem intent on focusing in on first before they get to that part. If, of course, they ever do, right?

There are things that we can be conscious of that transcend other things. And there may or may not be any number of “things” up there or out there that transcend any particular things that mere mortals down here on planet Earth may think or feel or say or do. For example, given the lives that they actually live from day to day.

But: That is the part I wish to focus in on in regard to what I/“I” think nihilism means.