nihilism

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popeye1945
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Re: nihilism

Post by popeye1945 »

Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:49 am
iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:13 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:47 pm

Ok, we need a context! The question is what is this context? Any ideas? Your reasoning skills, by the way, are impeccable! Good for you!
As I said, "anyone else?"
But you didn't answer me question: what's the context in which ... whatever?
The context is always the conscious subject, for meaning belongs solely to the conscious subject and never the object or the world as object.
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Re: nihilism

Post by Agent Smith »

popeye1945 wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:46 am
Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:49 am
iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:13 pm

As I said, "anyone else?"
But you didn't answer me question: what's the context in which ... whatever?
The context is always the conscious subject, for meaning belongs solely to the conscious subject and never the object or the world as object.
So is context good/bad?
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Re: nihilism

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:36 pm
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am
I have seen no one in this thread who qualifies as a pure nihilist. Such a person would not mount arguments. They would not differentiate between is and ought issues, since nihilism sees objectivity as a whole, not just moral objectivity, as an impossible enterprise.
For some here, it's ever and always up in the "intellectual contraption" clouds.
I'm always using intellectual contraptions? Nah. Sometimes, in a philosophy forums...yeah, just like you. Here's a question...how could my post have served a purpose different from the one you might have wanted it to. It is often amazing how someone skeptical of objective morals judges immediately when others have different values for posting here. Irony, yes. And that you see a post describing nihilism in a thread entitled nihilism as an intellectual contraption (which seems to be perjorative term for you)...that's kinda funny. Further it smacks of objectivism. Did I do something wrong daddy? I know, implying your sense of objective morals is not the same as being direct about them.
Above, I encompassed my own understanding of moral nihilism given the existential trajectory of my life in regard to abortion. As I did in the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Now, either you will encompass your own take on nihilism in the same manner or you won't.
A pure nihilist?
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:36 pmYes. Did you not understand the concept? This would be someone who is an anti-realist and radically skeptical about our ability to know anything and does not think any authorities have validity as authorities and thinks life has no meaning. Oh, wait. I explained that already.
Over and again I note that my own intertest here is less in exchanging concepts of nihilism and more in integrating those concepts out in the world of actual human interactions that come into conflict. If not in regard to abortion then an issue which is of particular importance to you.
Given what context?

Again, my own favorite: Mary has an abortion.

Okay, how would a "pure nihilist" react to that?
Pure nihilists while sharing the above traits could still have a range of reactions. Maybe Mary was their girlfriend and they are relieved or disappointed. etc.
Exactly. How we react to abortion is predicated in large part on how existentially we have come to acquire a particular subjective understanding of it. And, of course, the actual circumstances involved. How then can there even be a "pure nihilism" here?
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:36 pmOr do you mean what would a pure nihilists stance on Mary's abortion be?

Well, they obviously could not view it, or Mary, as immoral. They would consider it impossible to know if the fetus was a living entity in the sense some anti-abortionists do. Since they would tend to have a negative view of life, they might view it as a saving the potential child from a hellish existence. They would also think that it was not any church's, government agency's right or authority to have the slightest control over Mary's choice, since they don't have any authority. Though at the same time they would not think Mary, however much they loved or hated her, had a right to choose...though until recently, she certainly had the power, unless she was a minor in some place or late along.
To me this all smacks of a collection of political prejudices. While those on the other end of the specturm have their own collection of assumptions. To me, a pure nihilist would just abandon all such moral and political prejudices. He or she might take a position analogous to Wittgenstein's suggestion that, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". It's futile to discuss and debate the morality of abortion because language in a No God world [philosophical or otherwise] is not able resolve anything. I merely suggest that language employed here is the embodiment of dasein.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am A nihilist can, it seems, only find meaning in reacting to non-nihilists. They have little to say to each other. Even moral anti-realists have little to say to each other.
And what on Earth does this mean? It's not what moral nihilists say to each other...it's what they either can or cannot demonstrate that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to say to each other. It's about the limitations of language here.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am You ask what it means, then disagree with it. And it seems then universalize your values by saying what 'it' is. What you want to focus on is THE issue, period. Implying being morally superior somehow avoids being an objectivist.
My aim here is to take what we think something means in regard to nihilism and, to the best of our ability, attempt to demonstrate why we believe that other rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to believe the same. Given a particular set of circumstances in the is/ought world where conflicts over meaning precipitate conflicting behaviors in turn.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 amIf you look at the two main promoters of this position, Iambiguous and Peter Holmes, they have little to say to each other. But Peter Holmes is not a nihilist, since he certainly believes in objectivity. Iambiguous is more mixed, but does make the is ought distinction so he is a not a full blown nihilist. But there is a great deal of skepticism and more focus on the meaninglessness of life.
Unless of course he's wrong. :wink:
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am Obviously; one could write that after every sentence anyone writes.
Yes, but in the either/or world, we can generally determine if in fact someone is right or wrong. The distinction I make is between nihilism/meaning there and nihilism/meaning in the is/ought world.
I know! How about a context!! Of his own choosing.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am I responded to your context on abortion with what the pure nihilist position would be on an abortion. And it's a negative position, not surprisingly. It doesn't argue that Mary was right to have an abortion or that she has a right to choose or that she isn't bad, since all that would be gibberish to a pure nihilist. And in some sense whatever the outcome - abortion, miscarriage, adoption, acceptance of being a mother.....whatever happens to Mary and the fetus...doesn't really matter since it's all meaningless to the pure nihilist. I think, I've met one of these and they sure as shit don't hang out in philosophy forums.
Your pure nihilist. Mine assumes that even that is but an existential contraption rooted subjectively in dasein. I just construe the "self" here as considerably more "fractured and fragmented" than others.

And to the extent that the pure nihilist chooses to interact with others...whether in philosophy forums or out in the world socially, politically and economically...he or she will be reacted to and judged by others. Sure, you can dismiss these reactions and judgments as no less essentially meaningless, but others will react to that too.

As, for example, you making this all about me here:
Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:14 am Did he disagree with my description of a pure nihilist, iow one who has the range of beliefs attributed to nihilists and not just, for example, moral nihilism`? We don't know. Did he have a specific criticism of any point made in my post? No, just implicit judgment and yes, moral judgment.
The moreno/karpel tunnel syndrome, I call it.

And, over at ILP, he was one of my own "Three Stooges". :wink:
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Re: nihilism

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 8:51 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:47 pm
iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 6:51 pm
Again: we need a context.

Nihilism and meaning and antinomies in regard to what? to mathematics? to the laws of nature? to the empirical, material, phenomenological world around us? to the logical rules of language?

No, instead, assuming that 1] we live in a free will world and that 2] we accept that any answer we give can only be assessed given the existential parameters of Rummy's Rule, I focus in on the world of conflicting goods. On moral and political and spiritual value judgments that come to clash given human social, political and economic interactions down through the ages.

Nihilism then.

This antinomy:



Nihilism here.
Ok, we need a context! The question is what is this context? Any ideas? Your reasoning skills, by the way, are impeccable! Good for you!
More objectivism. We need. Not I want. His values are a universal need. Needs having to do with is and his wants having to do with how he produces his oughts.
Unless, of course, they're wrong. 8)
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

Post by iambiguous »

Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:49 am
iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:13 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 7:47 pm

Ok, we need a context! The question is what is this context? Any ideas? Your reasoning skills, by the way, are impeccable! Good for you!
As I said, "anyone else?"
But you didn't answer me question: what's the context in which ... whatever?
Just out of curiosity, in The Matrix...

"Smith was an Agent of the system and, like other Agents, had the role to police and maintain the Matrix by eliminating potential threats to the stability of the system, which were mostly seen to be Redpills and defunct programs. Agent Smith was personified as stern, serious, and nearly invincible."

Do you see yourself as an "Agent of the system" here? And what exactly is "the system" here?

Let's call this the "context", okay?
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Re: nihilism

Post by Agent Smith »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:55 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:49 am
iambiguous wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:13 pm

As I said, "anyone else?"
But you didn't answer me question: what's the context in which ... whatever?
Just out of curiosity, in The Matrix...

"Smith was an Agent of the system and, like other Agents, had the role to police and maintain the Matrix by eliminating potential threats to the stability of the system, which were mostly seen to be Redpills and defunct programs. Agent Smith was personified as stern, serious, and nearly invincible."

Do you see yourself as an "Agent of the system" here? And what exactly is "the system" here?

Let's call this the "context", okay?
Ok, but is [i[context[/i] apposite to the issue at hand?
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Re: nihilism

Post by iambiguous »

Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 8:42 pm
iambiguous wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:55 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:49 am

But you didn't answer me question: what's the context in which ... whatever?
Just out of curiosity, in The Matrix...

"Smith was an Agent of the system and, like other Agents, had the role to police and maintain the Matrix by eliminating potential threats to the stability of the system, which were mostly seen to be Redpills and defunct programs. Agent Smith was personified as stern, serious, and nearly invincible."

Do you see yourself as an "Agent of the system" here? And what exactly is "the system" here?

Let's call this the "context", okay?
Ok, but is [i[context[/i] apposite to the issue at hand?
You remind me of this guy...

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... 27s+corner

Is this you, Pedro?!!

Trying to turn PN into the next Corner? :roll:
Iwannaplato
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Re: nihilism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Amazingly when one does go into a specific context, not all problems are solved. And certainly not by (or in this case on behalf of) a pure or true nihilist, since they see primarily problems. No great shining Northern Lights and sudden happiness. No great resolutions of any individuals problems.

So, even if someone thinks that there want (to get a specific context) is what we need, they might even, after a time, realize that what they want neither becomes some holy grail nor does it make the person using it wither into a puddle of continuous despair.

I would suggest still that iambiguous is a partial nihilist (at most) but just to show variety in nihilists, partial ones, here is an articles on people who are relieved to be meaningless - yup, you read that right. Whole link here........https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... t-precious

Sunny nihilism
I’m usually wary of epiphanies, lightbulb moments and sweeping realisations that reorder lives. But walking home one evening earlier this year, my existence shifted with a single passing thought.

I was chronically stressed at work, overwhelmed by expectations, grasping for a sense of achievement or greater purpose and tip-toeing towards full-on exhaustion. Then it hit me: “Who cares? One day I’ll be dead and no one will remember me anyway.”

I can’t explain the crashing sense of relief. It was as if my body dumped its cortisol stores allowing my lungs to fully inflate for the first time in months. Standing on the side of the road I looked at the sky and thought: “I’m just a chunk of meat hurtling through space on a rock. Pointless, futile, meaningless.” It was one of the most comforting revelations of my life. I’d discovered nihilism.
I do think this is a less likely reaction, even to a mere partial nihilism, but it's an interesting one.

And here we have some very specific context: individuals who felt better when being or becoming nihilists. Specific people, specific changes. The oft called out for context.

Yowza!
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Re: nihilism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Posts 2 and 3 by the OP writer are also intellectual contraptions or rather filled with them....
viewtopic.php?p=557667#p557667
viewtopic.php?p=557749#p557749

Yes, there is a demand for contexts in one of these, but these are posts (and part of a trend now), presumably considered useful to the writer, that are filled with abstractions and generalities.
But, if others have posts that perhaps define terms, point out general issues, deal with things at a more universal or abstract level, these are 'intellectual contraptions'. Only the OP writer is allowed the use of such posts - and a great deal of use, I might add.

And the OP writer will also generalize the accusation: it is always so. Not that many people write some posts that are on the abstract end and others that are not or not just that. No, it is always.
I tell my kids, you’re allowed to watch the TV all you want… Just don’t turn it on! This way they will begin to understand the futility of all things.
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Re: nihilism

Post by Iwannaplato »

I think a good case can be made that this thread is the work of a Straw Nihilist....
The Straw Nihilist (also known as the Straw Pessimist) is an extreme version of The Cynic and a specific type of The Philosopher who delivers Despair Speeches and Breaks People by Talking about Life, The Universe, and Everything (or at least how meaningless it is to fight for any of them), often Chewing the Scenery about how the hero/audience lives on an Insignificant Little Blue Planet and morality never existed in the first place. Often Above Good and Evil, due to the Straw Nihilist's Armor Piercing Questions about "What Is Evil?".

The basis for the Straw Nihilist is usually extreme scientific empirical materialism: we're all nothing but matter and energy and eventually the universe is going to die as if we never existed, so what's the point in trying to hope and fantasize in a world full of suffering and destruction where morality is dictated by force? Your consciousness is merely an electrochemical reaction inside a dying chemical reactor called the brain which, out of animalistic instincts to protect itself from pain, creates the illusion of meaning and significance in a reality that has none. Good, evil, morality, and thought are nothing but illusions, with no absolute standard in the universe by which to prove their absolute existence as immutable physical laws.

These are one of the inhabitants of the cynical side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Their ability to play existential mind games and force the audience into ethical dilemmas make them a popular sage in the Ontological Mystery genre, Existential Horror, and amoral Crapsack Worlds such as the Cosmic Horror Story. Sometimes they serve as Mr. Exposition, sometimes they do have a justifiable point in their ramblings while other times, everything they say is a Fauxlosophic Narration or even a Red Herring, or they're a mix of all of them. But if done badly, they can end up looking like a gratuitous scene of Wangst, making people only get puzzled on why they haven't been Driven to Suicide yet.
from...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... awNihilist
And the links within the text (in the original online version of the above text are quite fun.

Some useful tropes such as Wangst and Despair Speeches are part of television cliches, but they are also cliches in life.

One of the hallucinations is that there are Armor-Piercing Questions here....

Perhaps most important, in context, is the discussion of the TV trope: The AntiNihilist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... tiNihilist

secret prediction - these posts will be dismissed with objective language masking personal values.
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Re: nihilism

Post by promethean75 »

A straw nihilist

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Re: nihilism

Post by henry quirk »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:31 pm I think a good case can be made that this thread is the work of a Straw Nihilist...
👍
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Re: nihilism

Post by Agent Smith »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:14 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 8:42 pm
iambiguous wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:55 pm

Just out of curiosity, in The Matrix...

"Smith was an Agent of the system and, like other Agents, had the role to police and maintain the Matrix by eliminating potential threats to the stability of the system, which were mostly seen to be Redpills and defunct programs. Agent Smith was personified as stern, serious, and nearly invincible."

Do you see yourself as an "Agent of the system" here? And what exactly is "the system" here?

Let's call this the "context", okay?
Ok, but is [i[context[/i] apposite to the issue at hand?
You remind me of this guy...

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... 27s+corner

Is this you, Pedro?!!

Trying to turn PN into the next Corner? :roll:
Really? Sorry if I've caused you offense! And now that I think of it, context is key. What about if you go the whole nine yards with that?
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Re: nihilism

Post by Iwannaplato »

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Re: nihilism

Post by iambiguous »

Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:29 pm Amazingly when one does go into a specific context, not all problems are solved. And certainly not by (or in this case on behalf of) a pure or true nihilist, since they see primarily problems. No great shining Northern Lights and sudden happiness. No great resolutions of any individuals problems.

So, even if someone thinks that there want (to get a specific context) is what we need, they might even, after a time, realize that what they want neither becomes some holy grail nor does it make the person using it wither into a puddle of continuous despair.

You know, whatever that means. 8)

Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:29 pmI would suggest still that iambiguous is a partial nihilist (at most) but just to show variety in nihilists, partial ones, here is an articles on people who are relieved to be meaningless - yup, you read that right. Whole link here........https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... t-precious
Above, I encompassed my own understanding of moral nihilism in regard to abortion:
I believe what many would construe to be two seemingly conflicting [even contradictory] things:

1] that aborting a human fetus is the killing of an innocent human being
2] that women should be afforded full legal rights to choose abortion

As a result, the first thing many point out is that, regarding this issue, I am insisting women should be permitted legally to kill innocent human beings. And that doing so is in this particular context not immoral.

To which I respond:

"Yes, but..."

But:

Just because I construe the fetus to be an innocent human being does not necessarily [objectively] make it so. On the contrary, there are reasonable arguments proffered by those who see the fetus as truly human only at birth or at the point of "viability".

And even if everyone agreed the fetus was an innocent human being from the point of conception, I would still not construe the killing of it as necessarily immoral. Why? Because out in the world we live in there can be no such thing as true "gender equality" if we forced women to give birth against their wishes.

Abortion then is a human tragedy in my view precisely because, like so many other moral conflagrations, it necessarily involves a conflict of legitimate rights.

Consider:

William Barrett from Irrational Man:

For the choice in...human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the ultimate outcome and even---or most of all---our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.

In my view, moral dogmas are basically interchangeable when expressed as sets of essential [universal] convictions. And that is so because we do not interact socially, politically or economically in an essential manner; only in an existential manner. Which is to say that our behaviors bear consequences that are perceived differently by different people in different sets of circumstances.

That's the world we have to live in and not the ones we put together seamlessly in our heads.
As I did in the OP here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

Now, either Iwannaplato will encompass his own take on nihilism in the same manner or he won't. in regard to abortion or in regard to an issue that is of particular importance to him.
Iwannaplato wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:29 pmSunny nihilism
I’m usually wary of epiphanies, lightbulb moments and sweeping realisations that reorder lives. But walking home one evening earlier this year, my existence shifted with a single passing thought.

I was chronically stressed at work, overwhelmed by expectations, grasping for a sense of achievement or greater purpose and tip-toeing towards full-on exhaustion. Then it hit me: “Who cares? One day I’ll be dead and no one will remember me anyway.”

I can’t explain the crashing sense of relief. It was as if my body dumped its cortisol stores allowing my lungs to fully inflate for the first time in months. Standing on the side of the road I looked at the sky and thought: “I’m just a chunk of meat hurtling through space on a rock. Pointless, futile, meaningless.” It was one of the most comforting revelations of my life. I’d discovered nihilism.
Sure, no doubt about it, that's one way in which to embrace nihilism. Another way is is to recognize that once you jettison objective morality, your options can increase dramatically. Unlike the moralists who are obligated to sustain their own rendition of "what would Jesus do?" -- burdened always with doing the right thing -- a moral nihilist can rationalize any behavior. As long as he or she can get away with it, anything goes. And they don't necessarily have to become a sociopath, right? They can choose to stop short of that and embrace their very own private moral code.

Does Iwannaplato have one of those? Or is he still wedded existentially to his own rendition of objective morality? To a God, the God? Or to deontology? Ideology? Nature?

He because I'm still guessing he is moreno/karpel tunnel from ILP.
Last edited by iambiguous on Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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