nihilism

[popeye1945]

It was largely tongue in cheek. I read your post and had no idea what your point actually was in regard to the points I raised above pertaining to nihilism. That's why I always encourage posters here to focus in on a particular set of circumstances.

The pertinent circumstances for you are your everyday reality, your apparent reality, which is a biological readout of how the world alters your biology to create and experience.

Same thing though. I read this and fail to grasp how "for all practical purposes" your point is relevant to my point regarding nihilism...moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments.

I don't think moral nihilism is something anyone stands by. Morality is the first necessity for the formation of society, it only makes sense in that context. An organism is in isolation in nature and there is no morality to nature. Do people use the term nihilism to describe the state of the physical world regarding meanings? Meaning is the property of life forms, or biological consciousness and never the property of the object or the physical world. The physical world only acquires meaning when the conscious subject bestows its meanings on a meaningless world.

I just means that biology is the measure and the meaning of all things and that in the absence of a conscious subject, in this case humanity; the physical world is utterly meaningless.

Then the argument others make that in a wholly determined universe, the human brain itself is just more matter inherently embodying the laws of nature given the only possible reality.

Well yes, that sounds like a fair description. There is no such thing as free will, the fact that all organisms are reactive organisms unlines that reality. Organisms do not experience ultimate reality, they experience the effects of ultimate reality as it alters the state of one's biology giving it experience/meanings/knowledge.

There is nothing which is not nature. All organisms are reactive organisms, there is no such thing as human actions there is but human reactions.

Again, given what context? And, sure, if all of us reacted to the same set of circumstances in exactly the same way, philosophers could then note this and suggest it reflects -- re both genes and memes -- the optimal human reaction. But we don't do we? This I ascribe existentially to dasein as encompassed in my signature threads. What do you attribute it to? [/quote]

The larger reality the physical world and the cosmos are cause to all organisms, it is this to which they react, and their reactions in turn are cause to the physical world in incremental ways contributing to its ever-changing nature. I don't believe there is such a thing as optimal human reaction, reaction is as varied as the complexity of existence, which is beyond human comprehension.

Then, given "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule", we can speculate about meaning...but since we have no capacity to connect the dots between the "human condition" and the existence of existence itself, how on Earth would any of us go about pinning down whether the physical world is utterly meaningless? We can't connect them either scientifically or philosophically. And [so far] the theologists among us have produced exactly zero Gods. To the best of my current knowledge.

Spinoza pointed out to us just how we come to know the physical world of objects, he said objects alter our biology giving us experience/ meanings and knowledge of the outside world. Our everyday reality, our apparent reality is a biological readout of those alterations the outside world makes to our biological being. We only know the world this way, on a subjective level, we are like an island onto itself in the way of personal experience.

Spinoza outlined how we come to know the world of objects, and that is by the alterations the physical world affects on our biology, this gives us experiences to which we bestow meanings, which we then attribute to the physical world in the way of projections formulating out of this apparent reality.

Okay, how was this applicable given his interactions with others in the is/ought world? Given, in turn, contexts in which what is deemed meaningful to some might be construed as gibberish [or flat-out wrong] to others. [/quote]

The world is full of objects, others are objects to us, though with fellow humans we can communicate, all inhabiting a like form as we do. To the individual experience is truth, and to the collective truth is agreement. Experience is always true to the biology experiencing it, if that biology is impaired, its experience will be true to that impairment. Biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself, it has meaning only in relation to biological consciousness.

Here I connect the dots existentially in the is/ought world. The meaning we ascribe to many things pertaining to moral and political value judgments are rooted subjectively -- intersubjectively -- in dasein and in the Benjamin Button Syndrome. Historically, culturally and in regard to our uniquely personal experiences. Then the subjunctive components embedded in our emotional and psychological reactions. In our "intuitions".

When we are born into the world we have no identity, we are simply a constitution, we acquire an identity through our journey through the environment context we are born into, you've heard the term context defines yes? How we fair in this journey through context our thoughts and feelings about successes and our failures conditions our psyche which in effect is our identity. Institutions, systems, structures, and inventions are all biological extensions or expressions of our humanity and tend to reflect back upon us further conditioning our journey through our environmental context.

And then, if that wasn't spooky enough, there's the subconscious and the unconscious mind. There's the id and instinct and drives we can scarcely grapple with at all...logically? [/quote]

We are born into this world without an identity and the formation of identity is created as we react to our environmental context, context defines as the saying goes. Identity is an ever-growing thing as we move through the context of the world until death, emotional and psychological reactions are the formation of the psyche, and the psyche at any given point is your identity ever-changing.

That is more or less my own frame of mind "here and now". But then, given my own assessment of this in the signature threads, it seems reasonable to sustain a "fractured and fragmented" moral philosophy given a No God world. Except for those crucial formative years as a child when we are thoroughly indoctrinated to sustain the identity of those who raised us. They brainwash us in much the same manner as they were brainwashed given the historical and cultural parameters of their time and place. But this is often done out of love. They certainly don't see themselves as having been indoctrinated, or as indoctrinating their own kids. [/quote]

THAT IS CONTEXT AND CONTEXT DEFINES.

There is no unconscious mind, there is the subconscious mind which I believe is the consciousness of the community of the body. The Id and instinct are your very constitution as vital or as weak as it might be. Identity is like clothing the constitution with the experiences of life. The subject is never fully clothed or is constantly changing costumes.

Again, however, what on Earth does this mean given our reactions to all of the moral and political conflagrations that beset the species? Just follow "the news" for a spell and be confronted over and again with conflicting goods. Then the part where philosophers/ethicists either are or are not able to take into account the points we both agree on above and arrive at something in the vicinity of an objective, deontological moral philosophy.[/quote]

Shakespeare states, " There is no such thing as right or wrong, only thinking makes it so." Heraclitus: " Only to man is there a right and wrong, to god all things are right and good."

On the other hand, the realities embedded in the either/or world -- nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, logic -- do seem applicable to all of us. Communication breakdowns here tend to revolve around those who are either ignorant of what is in fact true for all of us or are flat out wrong about it. Assuming of course that "somehow" we did acquire free will and that we don't inhabit a dream world or a sim world or are being shaped and molded by those sustaining one or another rendition of the Matrix.
[/quote]

The constitution is a unity to some degree, an island onto itself, the constitution at birth has some propensities and qualities that the environment will mold, strengthen, or inflict harm upon the constitution forming and perhaps extinguishing the given constitution and identity.

I have no idea what "for all practical purposes", given human interactions that come into conflict regarding value judgments, this means. Note its significance given your own relationships with others.

Apparent reality is a simulation, a biological simulation, reality is not what we experience, what we experience is how ultimate reality alters and affects our biology giving us experiences and meanings relative to our biology, at which time we project those meanings onto a meaningless world. Biology creates all meanings and is the measure and meaning of all things.

Biology may create all meaning in a wholly determined universe but given some measure of autonomy in a No God world, how could that possibly be true? If it's all about biological imperatives then how to explain the fact the human beings coming into the world with the same biology but being raised [memetically] in very different historical and cultural and experiential contexts have come to sustain all manner of conflicting moral and political philosophies?

Nihilism is the natural state of the physical world in the absence of conscious life forms, it is meaningless.

Not in my view. If nihilism revolves around what is deemed either meaningful or meaningless, rational or irrational, moral or immoral by individuals out in particular worlds they have come to understand in particular ways, a universe absent consciousness is just a "brute facticity". That's why Gods are invented. To have something we can connect our own meaning to. To make our meaning that which all other men and women are obligated to embrace if they wish to be thought of as rational and moral themselves.[/quote]

Nihilism is the absence of all meaning and that would be the physical world in the absence of biological consciousness, for again, biology is the measure and the meaning of all things Take away the physical world as object, the object being the fuel of mind, and the subject ceases to be, take away the subject and the world ceases to be, on a subjective level of course, but that is the only level in which we know anything.

It cannot even be said to exist, for to exist is to be perceived subjectively. What is the meaning of a flower, an old Buddhist asked his students, and after a time one student indicated he knew the master's insight, the flower has no meaning, it just is, and what is, affects us one way or another, that effect upon us is experience/meaning and is never the property of the flower/object.

On the other hand, there are facts that can be ascertained about the flower and about those like us who react to it. The either/or world is bursting at the seams with things -- relationships -- that mean the same thing to all of us.
[/quote]

The flower only has the meaning we attribute to it, it just is, and so, that is the nature of the world.

[iambiguous]

The pertinent circumstances for you are your everyday reality, your apparent reality, which is a biological readout of how the world alters your biology to create and experience.

Same thing though. I read this and fail to grasp how "for all practical purposes" your point is relevant to my point regarding nihilism...moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments.

I don't think moral nihilism is something anyone stands by. Morality is the first necessity for the formation of society, it only makes sense in that context. An organism is in isolation in nature and there is no morality to nature. Do people use the term nihilism to describe the state of the physical world regarding meanings? Meaning is the property of life forms, or biological consciousness and never the property of the object or the physical world. The physical world only acquires meaning when the conscious subject bestows its meanings on a meaningless world.

Same thing though. What does this really have to do with "moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments"?

Again, in these threads...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

...I attempt to encompass moral nihilism as it pertains to my fractured and fragmented views on the ethics of abortion. You'll either go there yourself given a moral conflict that is of particular interest to you or you won't.

I just means that biology is the measure and the meaning of all things and that in the absence of a conscious subject, in this case humanity; the physical world is utterly meaningless.

Then the argument others make that in a wholly determined universe, the human brain itself is just more matter inherently embodying the laws of nature given the only possible reality.

Well yes, that sounds like a fair description. There is no such thing as free will, the fact that all organisms are reactive organisms unlines that reality. Organisms do not experience ultimate reality, they experience the effects of ultimate reality as it alters the state of one's biology giving it experience/meanings/knowledge.

To me, that's just more of the same philosophical lingo. Which is why in discussions of free will, I focus in on Mary aborting Jane and moral responsibility as understood by those who -- click -- deem themselves to be either libertarians, hard determinists or compatibilists.

There is nothing which is not nature. All organisms are reactive organisms, there is no such thing as human actions there is but human reactions.

Again, given what context? And, sure, if all of us reacted to the same set of circumstances in exactly the same way, philosophers could then note this and suggest it reflects -- re both genes and memes -- the optimal human reaction. But we don't do we? This I ascribe existentially to dasein as encompassed in my signature threads. What do you attribute it to?

The larger reality the physical world and the cosmos are cause to all organisms, it is this to which they react, and their reactions in turn are cause to the physical world in incremental ways contributing to its ever-changing nature. I don't believe there is such a thing as optimal human reaction, reaction is as varied as the complexity of existence, which is beyond human comprehension.

Again, there are the reactions we have to events in the world around us. The fact of those particular reactions. And then the part where philosophers and ethicists grapple with pinning down what they construe to be the optimal reactions. The most rational and virtuous reactions?

Then, given "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule", we can speculate about meaning...but since we have no capacity to connect the dots between the "human condition" and the existence of existence itself, how on Earth would any of us go about pinning down whether the physical world is utterly meaningless? We can't connect them either scientifically or philosophically. And [so far] the theologists among us have produced exactly zero Gods. To the best of my current knowledge.

Spinoza pointed out to us just how we come to know the physical world of objects, he said objects alter our biology giving us experience/ meanings and knowledge of the outside world. Our everyday reality, our apparent reality is a biological readout of those alterations the outside world makes to our biological being. We only know the world this way, on a subjective level, we are like an island onto itself in the way of personal experience.

If you say so. But how do you translate this into the behaviors that you choose when confronted with challenges to your own moral philosophy. In other words, how close to being fractured and fragmented are you yourself in regard to this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Spinoza outlined how we come to know the world of objects, and that is by the alterations the physical world affects on our biology, this gives us experiences to which we bestow meanings, which we then attribute to the physical world in the way of projections formulating out of this apparent reality.

Okay, how was this applicable given his interactions with others in the is/ought world? Given, in turn, contexts in which what is deemed meaningful to some might be construed as gibberish [or flat-out wrong] to others.

The world is full of objects, others are objects to us, though with fellow humans we can communicate, all inhabiting a like form as we do. To the individual experience is truth, and to the collective truth is agreement. Experience is always true to the biology experiencing it, if that biology is impaired, its experience will be true to that impairment. Biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself, it has meaning only in relation to biological consciousness.

"Spinoza was clearly a pantheist. Spinoza's God is not personal and not transcendent but immanent, as God is identical to the world or Nature." Springer

Whatever "for all practical purposes" that means in regard to conflicting goods given our own speck of existence here on planet Earth?

So, by all means, if someone here thinks they understand Spinoza's own moral philosophy, let them bring it down out of cosmological clouds and, pertaining to a moral conflagration that is of particular importance to them, note what they believe Spinoza's own reaction might be. Then the part where some pantheists are more partial to determinism than others.

Here I connect the dots existentially in the is/ought world. The meaning we ascribe to many things pertaining to moral and political value judgments are rooted subjectively -- intersubjectively -- in dasein and in the Benjamin Button Syndrome. Historically, culturally and in regard to our uniquely personal experiences. Then the subjunctive components embedded in our emotional and psychological reactions. In our "intuitions".

When we are born into the world we have no identity, we are simply a constitution, we acquire an identity through our journey through the environment context we are born into, you've heard the term context defines yes? How we fair in this journey through context our thoughts and feelings about successes and our failures conditions our psyche which in effect is our identity. Institutions, systems, structures, and inventions are all biological extensions or expressions of our humanity and tend to reflect back upon us further conditioning our journey through our environmental context.

Okay, how would you connect the dots between this and, say, the war in Ukraine or in Gaza?

And then, if that wasn't spooky enough, there's the subconscious and the unconscious mind. There's the id and instinct and drives we can scarcely grapple with at all...logically?

We are born into this world without an identity and the formation of identity is created as we react to our environmental context, context defines as the saying goes. Identity is an ever-growing thing as we move through the context of the world until death, emotional and psychological reactions are the formation of the psyche, and the psyche at any given point is your identity ever-changing.

That is more or less my own frame of mind "here and now". But then, given my own assessment of this in the signature threads, it seems reasonable to sustain a "fractured and fragmented" moral philosophy given a No God world. Except for those crucial formative years as a child when we are thoroughly indoctrinated to sustain the identity of those who raised us. They brainwash us in much the same manner as they were brainwashed given the historical and cultural parameters of their time and place. But this is often done out of love. They certainly don't see themselves as having been indoctrinated, or as indoctrinating their own kids.

THAT IS CONTEXT AND CONTEXT DEFINES.

Different people interacting in exactly the same social, political and/or economic contexts...contexts in which conflicts erupt...might define the meaning of the words they use in very different ways. I root this subjectively in dasein. But the moral objectivists among us root it in one or another so-called "transcending font". God or No God.

There is no unconscious mind, there is the subconscious mind which I believe is the consciousness of the community of the body. The Id and instinct are your very constitution as vital or as weak as it might be. Identity is like clothing the constitution with the experiences of life. The subject is never fully clothed or is constantly changing costumes.

Again, however, what on Earth does this mean given our reactions to all of the moral and political conflagrations that beset the species? Just follow "the news" for a spell and be confronted over and again with conflicting goods. Then the part where philosophers/ethicists either are or are not able to take into account the points we both agree on above and arrive at something in the vicinity of an objective, deontological moral philosophy.

Shakespeare states, " There is no such thing as right or wrong, only thinking makes it so." Heraclitus: " Only to man is there a right and wrong, to god all things are right and good."

Still, in regard to the either/or world, there are countless things that we can be right or wrong about. You can think that the world is flat or that Donald Trump is still the president of the United States or that alchemy is the real deal...but demonstrating it?

On the other hand, the realities embedded in the either/or world -- nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, logic -- do seem applicable to all of us. Communication breakdowns here tend to revolve around those who are either ignorant of what is in fact true for all of us or are flat out wrong about it. Assuming of course that "somehow" we did acquire free will and that we don't inhabit a dream world or a sim world or are being shaped and molded by those sustaining one or another rendition of the Matrix.

The constitution is a unity to some degree, an island onto itself, the constitution at birth has some propensities and qualities that the environment will mold, strengthen, or inflict harm upon the constitution forming and perhaps extinguishing the given constitution and identity.

I have no idea what "for all practical purposes", given human interactions that come into conflict regarding value judgments, this means. Note its significance given your own relationships with others.

Apparent reality is a simulation, a biological simulation, reality is not what we experience, what we experience is how ultimate reality alters and affects our biology giving us experiences and meanings relative to our biology, at which time we project those meanings onto a meaningless world. Biology creates all meanings and is the measure and meaning of all things.

Biology may create all meaning in a wholly determined universe but given some measure of autonomy in a No God world, how could that possibly be true? If it's all about biological imperatives then how to explain the fact the human beings coming into the world with the same biology but being raised [memetically] in very different historical and cultural and experiential contexts have come to sustain all manner of conflicting moral and political philosophies?

Nihilism is the natural state of the physical world in the absence of conscious life forms, it is meaningless.

Not in my view. If nihilism revolves around what is deemed either meaningful or meaningless, rational or irrational, moral or immoral by individuals out in particular worlds they have come to understand in particular ways, a universe absent consciousness is just a "brute facticity". That's why Gods are invented. To have something we can connect our own meaning to. To make our meaning that which all other men and women are obligated to embrace if they wish to be thought of as rational and moral themselves.

Nihilism is the absence of all meaning and that would be the physical world in the absence of biological consciousness, for again, biology is the measure and the meaning of all things Take away the physical world as object, the object being the fuel of mind, and the subject ceases to be, take away the subject and the world ceases to be, on a subjective level of course, but that is the only level in which we know anything.

Well, from my frame of mind here and now, "the absence of all meaning" is just plain ridiculous. Existential meaning is everywhere. Instead, it is in regard to essential meaning in a No God is/ought world where objectivism seems beyond the reach of either philosophy or science.

It cannot even be said to exist, for to exist is to be perceived subjectively. What is the meaning of a flower, an old Buddhist asked his students, and after a time one student indicated he knew the master's insight, the flower has no meaning, it just is, and what is, affects us one way or another, that effect upon us is experience/meaning and is never the property of the flower/object.

On the other hand, there are facts that can be ascertained about the flower and about those like us who react to it. The either/or world is bursting at the seams with things -- relationships -- that mean the same thing to all of us.

The flower only has the meaning we attribute to it, it just is, and so, that is the nature of the world.

Well, it's not often that flowers are something that precipitate moral and political conflagrations. But what is the "nature of the world" when they do.

Think, for example, of the controversy that swirled around John Laroche using native Americans to poach orchids in the Everglades.

[popeye1945]

Iam,

No society embraces moral nihilism, morality is a basic necessity of community. I have never met a person who claimed to embrace moral nihilism. Only a world devoid of conscious life could be meaningless because biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. All societies share a base morality to ensure the security and well-being of their citizens, it is an expanded concept of the self that ensures the protection of the individual, the individual self. I think Nietzsche's fear for humanity was in realizing that the physical world is meaningless in effect he felt he knew that humanity could not survive without its delusions to live by, religiosity for example. Moral relativism or disagreement about morality is largely due to the influence of the individual's society and environmental context, we adapt to context or parish.

[iambiguous]

Iam,

No society embraces moral nihilism, morality is a basic necessity of community. I have never met a person who claimed to embrace moral nihilism. Only a world devoid of conscious life could be meaningless because biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. All societies share a base morality to ensure the security and well-being of their citizens, it is an expanded concept of the self that ensures the protection of the individual, the individual self. I think Nietzsche's fear for humanity was in realizing that the physical world is meaningless in effect he felt he knew that humanity could not survive without its delusions to live by, religiosity for example. Moral relativism or disagreement about morality is largely due to the influence of the individual's society and environmental context, we adapt to context or parish.

Again, you will either go here...

What does this really have to do with "moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments"?

Again, in these threads...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

...I attempt to encompass moral nihilism as it pertains to my fractured and fragmented views on the ethics of abortion. You'll either go there yourself given a moral conflict that is of particular interest to you or you won't.

Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, you are just one more philosopher here who prefers to discuss human morality up in the theoretical -- philosophical -- clouds.

As for moral nihilists, we live in a world that is bursting at the seams with them. Those who own and operate the global economy, for example, with their amoral "show me the money" mentality. Those like Putin and Xi sustaining their own draconian state capitalist regimes.

Then the moral objectivists among us who pursue their "kingdom of ends" by embracing nihilism in regard to means: anything goes. All the way up to re-education camps and gulags and holocausts.

And you completely ignore the distinction I make between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world.

[popeye1945]

Iam,

No society embraces moral nihilism, morality is a basic necessity of community. I have never met a person who claimed to embrace moral nihilism. Only a world devoid of conscious life could be meaningless because biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. All societies share a base morality to ensure the security and well-being of their citizens, it is an expanded concept of the self that ensures the protection of the individual, the individual self. I think Nietzsche's fear for humanity was in realizing that the physical world is meaningless in effect he felt he knew that humanity could not survive without its delusions to live by, religiosity for example. Moral relativism or disagreement about morality is largely due to the influence of the individual's society and environmental context, we adapt to context or parish.

Again, you will either go here...

What does this really have to do with "moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments"?

Again, in these threads...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

...I attempt to encompass moral nihilism as it pertains to my fractured and fragmented views on the ethics of abortion. You'll either go there yourself given a moral conflict that is of particular interest to you or you won't.

Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, you are just one more philosopher here who prefers to discuss human morality up in the theoretical -- philosophical -- clouds.

As for moral nihilists, we live in a world that is bursting at the seams with them. Those who own and operate the global economy, for example, with their amoral "show me the money" mentality. Those like Putin and Xi sustaining their own draconian state capitalist regimes.

Then the moral objectivists among us who pursue their "kingdom of ends" by embracing nihilism in regard to means: anything goes. All the way up to re-education camps and gulags and holocausts.

And you completely ignore the distinction I make between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world.

I see the error of my ways!

[iambiguous]

Iam,

No society embraces moral nihilism, morality is a basic necessity of community. I have never met a person who claimed to embrace moral nihilism. Only a world devoid of conscious life could be meaningless because biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. All societies share a base morality to ensure the security and well-being of their citizens, it is an expanded concept of the self that ensures the protection of the individual, the individual self. I think Nietzsche's fear for humanity was in realizing that the physical world is meaningless in effect he felt he knew that humanity could not survive without its delusions to live by, religiosity for example. Moral relativism or disagreement about morality is largely due to the influence of the individual's society and environmental context, we adapt to context or parish.

Again, you will either go here...

What does this really have to do with "moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments"?

Again, in these threads...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

...I attempt to encompass moral nihilism as it pertains to my fractured and fragmented views on the ethics of abortion. You'll either go there yourself given a moral conflict that is of particular interest to you or you won't.

Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, you are just one more philosopher here who prefers to discuss human morality up in the theoretical -- philosophical -- clouds.

As for moral nihilists, we live in a world that is bursting at the seams with them. Those who own and operate the global economy, for example, with their amoral "show me the money" mentality. Those like Putin and Xi sustaining their own draconian state capitalist regimes.

Then the moral objectivists among us who pursue their "kingdom of ends" by embracing nihilism in regard to means: anything goes. All the way up to re-education camps and gulags and holocausts.

And you completely ignore the distinction I make between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world.

I see the error of my ways!

Okay, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle it is then.

[iambiguous]

The Original Meaning of Life
Stephen Leach and James Tartaglia investigate where the idea of the meaning of life originated.

The Beginning Of The Meaning Of Life

It is all the more surprising, then, that the phrase ‘the meaning of life’ has not always been with us.

"With us" in what sense? Philosophically? Does anyone doubt that, going all the way back to the time of the cave dwellers, homo sapiens pondered what on Earth existence itself was all about.

There's the final scene from Quest For Fire: https://youtu.be/lJVOTT8N2zM?si=fzCVroMuVAGnyAJD

Naoh and Ika gaze up into the night sky. Wondering no doubt what it all means. They've mastered the art of creating fire. But are still utterly ignorant regarding all of the many new discoveries that science will eventually disclose. And then, for many centuries after, "the Gods" will eventually give way to a God, the God and His "mysterious ways" as the teleological foundation of choice.

As for this...

In fact, it has a specific historical origin. Its immediate predecessor was the German phrase ‘ lebenssinn’ (‘life’s meaning’), which occurs in a letter of 9 July 1796 from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Friedrich Schiller. Goethe had just published Book VII of his novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and was defending himself from Schiller, who had been urging him to make his philosophy more explicit. Goethe refers to the indenture which Wilhelm Meister receives from the mysterious Society of the Tower – a contract to bind his conduct as he performs a task for the Society. Goethe says that if he had not been forced for artistic reasons to cut short the ‘Indenture’ section, then he would have gone on to make pronouncements on life’s meaning.

...it reflects a species able through "surplus labor" to invent philosophy as a way in which to grapple with the meaning of life...philosophically. Goethe's own conclusions reflect a "human condition" far more sophisticaterd in many ways from the grasp of the cave dwellers.

On the other hand, how much closer have we come even today to encompassing the human condition spiritually, morally and politically? What does it mean to live "the good life"? Why one set of behaviors and not another?

Philosophy...and "art"?

As it is, according to Goethe, it talks mainly about art (although modern readers might disagree with him about that). Indeed, the first sentence echoes Hippocrates’ first aphorism, in which the ‘art’ in question is that of the physician:

“Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome… It is but a part of art that can be taught; the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong; who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late… Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words… No one knows what he is doing, while he acts aright; but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only, is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar: their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us, opens the mind; for where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master.”

You tell me how close to or far from this assessment is to your own.

[iambiguous]

Ethics explainer: Nihilism
from the Ethics Center

“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?

Well, let's just say that for the overwhelming preponderance of us, our lives do matter. And they matter for all of the many, many reasons that each of us as individuals can give. But if they do matter for different and ofttimes conflicting reasons, is there a philosopher among us who can then sort through the reasons and rank them from most to least rational? Most to least meaningful?

In other words, it's one thing to argue that human existence has a meaning for each of us existentially, and another thing altogether to demonstrate that the meaning we give it is that which all other reasonable men and women are obligated to share.

In fact, mere mortals invented religion and philosophy to take on that task. And look where we are today.

Nihilism is a school of philosophical thought proposing that our existence fundamentally lacks inherent meaning.

Inherent: "existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute."

Which, of course, most ascribe to God. Their God. End of story. Or their ideology. Or their philosophy. Or their own dogmatic account of nature itself.

And though there are hundreds and hundreds of often hopelessly conflicting One True Paths from which to choose, each pathfinder is convinced the one they are on really is the One True Path. Why? Because once you are on the path, you are able to anchor your One True Self to it. Providing you with moral commandments on this side of the grave and, for most, immortality and salvation on the other side.

It rejects various aspects of human existence that are generally accepted and considered fundamental, like objective truth, moral truth and the value and purpose of life. Its origin is the Latin word ‘nihil’, which means ‘nothing’.

Again, however, this particular nihilist does not reject objective truths pertaining to the material world we interact in. The laws of nature precipitating the empirical world around us certainly seem applicable to all of us. We are just stumped here because we can only grasp the "human condition" up to a point. Where it fits into existence itself is still no less baffling and bewildering. And then the word games. Wittgenstein's conjecture that "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The limitations of language itself pertaining to value judgments and ontology and teleology.

[popeye1945]

All truth and all meanings are biologically dependent, for biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. In the absence of a biological subject, the physical world is utterly meaningless and ceases to be subjectively, in the absence of the subject. The body is a receptor of the energies around you and just how those energies alter your biology gives you meaning/knowledge/experience, as long as the body is alive and conscious there is meaning for the biological subject. Nihilism is nonsense, where there is life there is meaning. Only the physical world as an object can be said to be meaningless in the absence of a conscious entity.

[promethean75]

There's like nine types of philosophical nihilism tho. Usually people think 'existential' is given category, but for example a political nihilist might not be a moral nihilist or there may be a mereological nihilist who is a moral objectivist (or some other combination where one doesn't preclude or exclude the other).

Wasn't Tolstoy a christian nihilist anarchist? Or was it the other Russian dude?

What's alarming is that u could make that work; u could design a short argument making christian nihilism a legitimate thing with its own lines of reason.

[promethean75]

Does the midlife existential crisis begin only when your officially able to say you'll die sooner rather than later having hit the half way mark now?

Very rarely these days do i do this. I used to do this more often. But I'll have like this eureka moment or epiphany where I'll seize up, whatever I'm doing, and it will dawn again on me very heavily, very viscerally, that one day i am going to die. And how. It utterly terrifies me... my own death. I don't know how I'll die. And everyone else. It's not enough that one person experience this nightmarish dread, but countless millions have and will as well.

And the better the time is that u are having at that time of epiphany freeze, the worse the effect of anxiety and dread. The ultimate fail. The epic in-vain. It's like the horns that go 'wah wah waaaah' in the cartoons. That kind of feeling.

Well anyway i just did it a minute ago and got scared af for like three seconds. When u truly know the deal, when u know as sure as your name is Sally that u are not only going to have to be dead, but u are also going to have to die. Two different things here folks. When u get a good hold on these two... look em square in the eyes... well u get this lazy, pasty feeling of uselessness and sadness. It's whatever would be the next level higher than surrender. It's not a physical surrender like exhaustion or fatigue. It's a soul exhaustion or sumthin. A hot nihilistic wave passes over u. Few seconds. U feel the fact, not just know it, that one day u are going to die.

No i totally get it. All the french and russian existentialists, absolutely. They all know what I'm talking about and must have had those epiphany freezes.

[iambiguous]

Ethics explainer: Nihilism
from the Ethics Center

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.

Tell me about it. On the other hand, moral nihilism can become just the precursor you need to dramatically increase your options in life. After all, to the extent one attempts to subsume the despair and the apathy in one or another One True Path to Enlightenment is the extent to which everything always comes down to "doing the right thing". Of course, it's comforting to believe there is but one and only one right thing to do, but then you have to do it...or else.

Or else, depending on the community, you're ignored or shunned or banned or shot.

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.

Unless, of course, that matters to any particular nihilist. On the other hand, for all practical purposes, how exactly would anyone go about interacting with others from day to day being convinced that everything in their life is meaningless? Instead, the assumption is made that nothing matters essentially. But that lots and lots of things matter existentially if you are going to sustain, say, the least dysfunctional existence?

Nihilist ideas date as far back as Buddha; though the beginning of its uprising in western literature appeared in the early 19th century. This shift was largely a response to the diminishing moral authority of the church (and religion at large) and the rise of secularism and rationalism. This rejection led to the view that the universe had no grand design or purpose, that we are all simply cogs in the machine of the existence.

Still, there is not a nihilist among us who is able to actually demonstrate that God and religion are little more than social, political and economic constructs. At least none that I have ever come across. And all the faithful are required to do is simply to believe they are the ontological and teleological foundation for all of reality itself. That and the part where existentially they come embrace one path...and that actually is the one true path.

And with God and religion, "I" continues on for all of eternity.

Of course, what to make of the fact there may be millions and millions of planets throughout the universe where intelligent life has evolved. What of their Gods and their religions?

[popeye1945]

Iam,

No society embraces moral nihilism, morality is a basic necessity of community. I have never met a person who claimed to embrace moral nihilism. Only a world devoid of conscious life could be meaningless because biology is the measure and the meaning of all things. All societies share a base morality to ensure the security and well-being of their citizens, it is an expanded concept of the self that ensures the protection of the individual, the individual self. I think Nietzsche's fear for humanity was in realizing that the physical world is meaningless in effect he felt he knew that humanity could not survive without its delusions to live by, religiosity for example. Moral relativism or disagreement about morality is largely due to the influence of the individual's society and environmental context, we adapt to context or parish.

Again, you will either go here...

What does this really have to do with "moral nihilism pertaining to our day to day interactions with others that come into conflict over value judgments"?

Again, in these threads...

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/moral ... live/45989
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... lity/30639

...I attempt to encompass moral nihilism as it pertains to my fractured and fragmented views on the ethics of abortion. You'll either go there yourself given a moral conflict that is of particular interest to you or you won't.

Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, you are just one more philosopher here who prefers to discuss human morality up in the theoretical -- philosophical -- clouds.

As for moral nihilists, we live in a world that is bursting at the seams with them. Those who own and operate the global economy, for example, with their amoral "show me the money" mentality. Those like Putin and Xi sustaining their own draconian state capitalist regimes.

Then the moral objectivists among us who pursue their "kingdom of ends" by embracing nihilism in regard to means: anything goes. All the way up to re-education camps and gulags and holocausts.

And you completely ignore the distinction I make between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world.

I see the error of my ways!

Sorry for the inpatients. Quite simply there is no ought, things of this world just are. "Only to man is there right and wrong, to god all things are right and good." Only the frailties of man's psyche and his defining context/s determine right or wrong, both of which do not occur in nature but in the formation of societies. You look for consistency where there is none. Perhaps if there were just one social context for all of humanity we would see a little more consistency, but never full agreement, that just is.

[Belinda]

Again, you will either go here...



Instead, from my own "rooted existentially in dasein" frame of mind, you are just one more philosopher here who prefers to discuss human morality up in the theoretical -- philosophical -- clouds.

As for moral nihilists, we live in a world that is bursting at the seams with them. Those who own and operate the global economy, for example, with their amoral "show me the money" mentality. Those like Putin and Xi sustaining their own draconian state capitalist regimes.

Then the moral objectivists among us who pursue their "kingdom of ends" by embracing nihilism in regard to means: anything goes. All the way up to re-education camps and gulags and holocausts.

And you completely ignore the distinction I make between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world.

I see the error of my ways!

Sorry for the inpatients. Quite simply there is no ought, things of this world just are. "Only to man is there right and wrong, to god all things are right and good." Only the frailties of man's psyche and his defining context/s determine right or wrong, both of which do not occur in nature but in the formation of societies. You look for consistency where there is none. Perhaps if there were just one social context for all of humanity we would see a little more consistency, but never full agreement, that just is.

It would be a terrible responsibility to be an all powerful deity , an individual Who can intervene in nature including the natural history of humanity!

As it is, Satan did the Deity a good turn by taking humanity out of His jurisdiction and making humanity responsible for everything including morality.

[iambiguous]

Ethics explainer: Nihilism
from the Ethics Center

Though he wasn’t a nihilist himself, Friedrich Nietzsche is the poster-child for much of contemporary nihilism, especially in pop culture and online circles.

Here, of course, everything comes down to the assumption that nihilism can be, what, defined objectively? And once rationally defined then, what, rational deductions can be derived from it?

On the other hand, take away Nietzsche's assumptions regarding the existence of the Übermensch, and how is he not in turn a moral nihilist? For me, it all revolves around the assumption that we live in a No God universe. No "transcending font" and mere mortals are left squabbling over which of the hopelessly conflicted secular One True Paths To Enlightenment all rational men and women are obligated to sustain themselves. Given that objective morality is within the grasp of philosophers or scientists.

Nietzsche wrote extensively on it in the late 19th century, speaking of the crisis we find ourselves in when we realise that the world lacks the intrinsic meaning or value that we want or believed it to have. This is ultimately something that he wanted us to overcome.

Cue the Übermensch, right? It may not equal the intrinsic meaning embedded in an omniscient and omnipotent God, but if you can convince yourself that how you "overcame" nihilism with your own "my way or the highway" rendition of "one of us", it really only matters that you believe it.

Then this part again...

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.

Still, "behind" all of this are the actual existential realities of the individual lives we live. One way or another [and "for all practical purposes"], whether you are a moral nihilist or not, if you choose to interact with others socially, politically and economically in a community you must take any number of existential leaps to one or another assessment of what human relationships mean. You are just unable to demonstrate how and why what you believe "here and now" does reflect the optimal frame of mind.

Or the optimal government policies?