nihilism

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

But we must be careful not to identify the overman with Nicholson’s gangster.

Unless of course the gangster himself [and most gangsters are men] quotes Nietzsche in order to rationalize his own behaviors.

Just as, say, the occasional Nazi quoted him, right?

Like Nietzsche, Costello finds that conventional morality has a hollow ring, but Costello is nothing more than a nihilist. Although we might admire his defiance, our admiration is rooted in the kind of resentment which Nietzsche takes to be the mark of slaves, who seek to hide their weakness and deny their suffering.

What to make of this "for all practical purposes"? If Costello is a moral nihilist, what's that make me? Instead, it just bespeaks the fact that like most things of this sort pertaining to value judgments, one size does not fit all. In fact, starting with the No God premise, moral nihilists can be found rationalizing behaviors that other moral nihilists would scoff at. I'm certainly no gangster. Though, had my life continued to unfold along the trajectory of those years [before I found God] when I was in a gang [my Burkleigh Manor years] I might well have become one.

And if despising thugs of Costello's ilk makes me a slave, so be it.

There is a lack of subtlety in supposing that God must be the source of moral value. Moral nihilism is not the only possible response to the death of God. Nietzsche calls for a different perspective. Ultimately, it’s a perspective which he supposes only a few of us can occupy.

The Übermensch?

Here, in my view, Nietzsche blinked. He knocks off God, but still feels compelled to put a few of us in His place. In other words, he reconfigures a might makes right world into a right makes might world by supposing this "philosophical" distinction between the masters and the slaves.

Then, whatever this means to each of us as individuals:

Aside from a few cynics, Nietzsche says we are still mostly good Europeans, paying lip-service to conventional notions of good and bad while teetering on the edge of a Godless abyss. In the first part of Beyond Good and Evil he condemns past philosophers for not pursuing the question of why we value truth at all. Must the falsity of a judgement lessen its value to us? This is his ‘dangerous maybe’ –that there need be no fact of the matter at all regarding true or false, good or evil. But this still does not have to lead to nihilism.

So, there's the Übermensch's superior perspective on this, alongside the Last Man's bleating conformity?

Again, for those who believe they grasp the True Nietzsche here, let's bring this down to Earth given a particular set of circumstances.

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

For Nietzsche, the relevant issue is whether a belief is beneficial to living, and the test of a life well lived is whether we can honestly affirm that we would live this life again, exactly as it was.

Cue the inherently superior Übermensch commandeering the world from the inherently inferior Last Men? And then living a life so exemplary he'd be proud to repeat it over and over again for all of eternity.

Nietzsche in a nutshell?

Or, perhaps, we should run "a life well lived" by these folks...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...just in case there might be an even more rational manner in which to grasp the human condition?

In affirming life in this way, we ‘become what we are’, free of any self-deceiving submission to slave-minded moral constraints imposed on us by fearful, weaker types. It is here that a notion of self-betrayal applies.

Of course, I've clearly betrayed myself here haven't I? In fact, run that by the serious philosophers, the FFOs and the Stooges here if you must know all the reasons.

Scorsese’s film plays out the struggle between two kinds of betrayals. There is an irony in Costello delivering his punning advice to Costigan, the police informer in his midst, who is struggling to maintain his act as a member of Costello ’s gang while driven by his own morality. Costigan betrays Costello, while Damon’s character, Costello’s informant Sullivan, betrays conventional morality. But from a Nietzschean perspective we must not see the characters as moral opposites so easily. We cannot so simply say which of them is ‘good’. Instead, we must distinguish them by what they betray. Which of them is self-betraying?

In fact, Costello and his ilk would no doubt be seen as betraying the "will to power" embodied by the Übermensch. Why? Because, when push comes to shove, they are really little more than thugs. Hoodlums, gangsters, goons who basically practice might makes right.

And, besides, what on Earth does betrayal mean to a sociopath? In turn, what on Earth does betrayal mean to those who own and operate the global economy? to those like Trump and Putin and Xi Jinping?

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment provides empirical evidence of how simple obedience to moral authority can be self-betraying. Participants were encouraged to give apparently lethal shocks to others on the authority of the person supervising the experiment. In short, 65% obeyed the supervisor’s orders, giving weight to Nietzsche’s thought that our conventional morality is only a surface veneer.

So much more to the point though are all of those who obeyed Adolph Hitler's orders. In fact, we can note throughout human history the truly ghastly things that men and women have done only because someone in authority told them to. And, given their own moral and political prejudices, they were behaving morally.

Again, however, the irony here being that often when they did these things it was because the authority was a religious text or a political ideology or a deontological philosophy or some draconian rendition of "biological imperatives".

Even Nietzsche seemed compelled to "think up" a philosophy of life that puts a few of us in the master class while the overwhelming preponderance can never hope to be anything other than slaves.

The moral conscience of participants in the experiment was easily dismantled, and their willingness to obey revealed instead either a strong or a weak will. Milgram’s results support Nietzsche’s claim that lip-service to morality hides moral weakness.

Well, that depends on how far removed the Übermensch were/are in regard to embodying a moral perspective. Or, instead, did Nietzsche himself connect the dots here between the bahaviors that we choose and biological imperatives? Some are, what, just born superior to others?

And to the extent that is the case, doesn't it put all of this largely beyond our control? After all, it's not like we can pick and choose the genes that we come into the world with.

Then this part...

Nietzsche does distinguish two moralities. There is the master’s morality, and there is the slave’s morality. Costigan has the strength to assert himself and become what he is – which is a person with his own values. He has stayed on the side of law and order; but his choice was not simply lip-service.

No less rooted in dasein, however. Unless, perhaps, the Übermensch really are the product of nature? Born that way? And the "good guys" here are also confronted with conflicting goods once we confront particular issues. Where does Costigan come down on abortion or gun control or capitalism or the role of government? Who are the "good guys" here?

He invented himself though his own attempt at asserting a set of values which originate in his own resistance to Costello ’s nihilism. In the final shoot out, he pays the ultimate sacrifice for his attempt to make himself the person he wants to be.

Again, though, Costello's nihilism is more a reflection of both a "might makes right" mentality, and that of the sociopath. Hardly in sync with Nietzsche's Übermensch.

[promethean75]

Comrade Trotsky's thoughts about the dynamite-man's philosophy of the superman.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsk ... tzsche.htm

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

By contrast, Sullivan is seduced from good to bad. So it is Costigan, the ‘good guy’ who is the Nietzschean versucher, the attempter, or free-spirit.

Again, all of this assumes that, as philosophers, we can make that crucial distinction between rational and irrational, moral and immoral behavior. And, in my view, that is why any number of members here react to me as they do. They refuse to accept that in a No God world objective morality may well be beyond our reach.

In other words, while some here may accept that and make their own leap of faith to Nietzsche and his Übermensch mentality, others may prefer the me, myself and I, dog eat dog, survival of the fittest mentality of the sociopath or the amoral "show me the money" mentality of the global capitalists.

Thus Costigan ‘acts accordingly’ by taking sides with moral order, and in his efforts he creates himself in a good Nietzschean way. Sullivan betrays everything good, including, crucially for Nietzsche, his own autonomy, because he only follows Costello’s lead.

Of course, this just assumes that in regard to Nietzsche himself, there is the "right way" and the "wrong way" to interpret him. As though this was, in turn, a task that "serious philosophers" alone can resolve.

And how do any of us not follow the lead of our parents and our communities and our cultures and our historical eras? After all, if philosophers were, in fact, able sift through the contingency, chance and change, rebut the Benjamin Button Syndrome, and include "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule" in their thinking, wouldn't they have now reached a consensus regarding a more or less definitive deontological moral philosophy?

Seriously, how do you explain this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

...other than given the manner in which I construe value judgments as derived largely from the points I bring up here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641

[promethean75]

Trotsky L. writes:

"More than once humanity has felt the need for a fundamental revision of its ethics, and many thinkers have accomplished this work in more radical and profound a fashion than Nietzsche. If there is something original in his system it’s not the transvaluation of values in itself, but rather the point of view that is at its origin: the will to power, which is at the base of the aspirations, demands, and desires of the superman. This is the criterion for the evaluation of the past, the present, and the future. But even this is of a doubtful originality. Nietzsche himself writes that in his research into the moralities that dominated in the past and dominate today he encountered two fundamental tendencies: the master’s morality and the slave’s morality. The master’s morality serves as the basis for the conduct of the superman. This dual character of morality traverses the history of humanity like a red thread, and it isn’t Nietzsche who discovered it."

(in defense of Fritz, his GOM was more in the descriptive mood rather than prescriptive mood. A history of the development of moral systems cultures and their conflicts. WTP is the more megalomaniacal work where he openly encourages might over right. But that's not what Trotsky L. is referring to with the phrase 're-evaluation of values', I don't think. He's not replying to sumthin he read in WTP or BGE. Shirley not.)

"Nietzsche became the ideologue of a group living like a bird of prey at the expense of society, but under conditions more fortunate than those of the miserable lumpenproletariat: they are a parasitenproletariat of a higher caliber."

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

In acting as he does, Costigan creates moral value, and thereby life, because it’s the self-creation of a moral life which distinguishes us as persons.

So, this really comes down to how each of us as individuals comes to acquire a sense of identity in relationship to value judgements.

Maybe this sounds too conservative a view of Nietzsche. From his higher perspective, Nietzsche says a genuine philosopher sees that truth is grounded in our will to power.

I would of course be interested in exploring Nietzsche's assessment of a "genuine philosopher" grounding his or her behaviors in their "will to power". How, in other words, those here who do believe they understand him, might react to the arguments I make here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/a-man ... sein/31641

My own considerably more fractured and fragmented account of human morality.

But this still involves a notion of obedience, self-discipline and creativity.

Okay, but how many advocates of one or another Ism do not have their own moral and political renditions of these things? Then back to dasein here from my frame of mind.

And it is precisely in moving beyond a notion -- "a conception of or belief about something" -- of these things that involves taking them down out of the theoretical clouds. Why one Ism's understanding of them and not another's given this or that moral conflagration?

As for this...

He is explicit that the essential characteristic of the new philosopher’s morality is: “Thou shalt obey, someone and for a long time: else you will perish and lose the last respect for yourself. ” (Beyond Good and Evil) In a world whose essence is will to power, it is self-betraying to suppose anything goes, because that’s only a cynical response to the absence of God and objective truth. And we must avoid the deterioration of the human spirit which results from supposing anything goes.

Is it even possible to take Nietzsche any higher up into the philosophical clouds? What on Earth might this have meant to Nietzsche himself in regard to his own behaviors? His own understanding of will to power and eternal recurrence or mine? or yours?

The human spirit? Okay, given a particular set of circumstances, and conflicting "notions" regarding the "will to power", how exactly would philosophers go about pinning this down?

[iambiguous]

The Departed
Eric Wills reveals how Nietzschean morality is displayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie.

It is the willingness to live one’s life over and over which is Nietzsche’s test of a life well lived. This still allows us to find examples in other peoples’ lives. But what happens in someone else’s life is up to them.

This assessment reminds me of a...horoscope? It's vague enough such that almost anyone can make it applicable to themselves. Then back to the world we live in...a world in which over and again what some call a life "well lived" others call a wasted life...or even an "evil" life. A way of life the powers that be may even be intent on ostracizing. A part of their own "final solution".

Nietzsche tells us to care for our own souls. We have to work it out for ourselves.

Then those like the Nazis and the Objectivists come along historically and reconfigure their take on Nietzsche into their very own ideological or philosophical dogma. Then those like me who, in grappling with it morally and politically, find themselves fractured and fragmented.

But Billy Costigan offers us an example. Moral ‘truth’ may be an illusion, but we are moral beings when we act according to our natures. Only the stronger type of person is capable of that. The rest are a ‘herd’, for whom the ‘truth’ is merely a comfort because they lack the strength of will to be truly moral and self-creative. And in this they stand in danger of being led astray by ignoble nihilists such as Costello ’s gang-land boss, as Sullivan was.

And here I suggest that any number of Nietzscheans with their "Übermensch" and their "will to power" and their "eternal recurrence" become just another herd themselves. They might become something analogous to Satyr's clique/claque here: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

The emphasis is always on the individual. But, ironically enough, in regard to virtually all things social, political and economic, everyone is expected to think exactly as Satyr does. Just as the "rugged individuals" in the ARI parrot everything that Ayn Rand ever said about everything.

Then it's just a matter of how they enforce their own rendition of "or else".

And I still basically see Costello and his ilk as more in sync with thuggery -- my way or the highway sociopaths -- than the manner in which nihilism is understood by those of my ilk here.

[iambiguous]

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

What is the meaning of life? In the twentieth century most analytic philosophers either ignored the question or dismissed it as meaningless. This may be largely attributable to the influence of the school of thought known as logical positivism.

"Logical positivism: a form of positivism, developed by members of the Vienna Circle, which considers that the only meaningful philosophical problems are those which can be solved by logical analysis." dictionary

"Logic is often seen as the study of the laws of thought, correct reasoning, valid inference, or logical truth." wiki

So, in regard to exploring, teleologically, the meaning of life when does logic segue into correct reasoning? In other words, for most religious fanatics, that all revolves around God. But what if there is no God? The rules of language are applicable to all of us. But when those words become intertwined in moral and political conflagrations [going back now thousands of years] we find we are confronted with anything but assessments applicable to all of us.

Continental philosophers were always somewhat more tolerant of the question, even though they rarely put it in those familiar terms; Heidegger came close, however, with his discussion of the meaning of ‘Being’.

Next up: Heidegger's answer? Instead, we get a philosophical tome that is firmly anchored in theoretical clouds.

Whatever that means...teleologically?

The logical positivist idea that the question is meaningless seems to have filtered into the public consciousness with the idea that what is most bewildering about the question is not how it should be answered, but rather what it is asking.

And then the part where, however questions pertaining to being and becoming are posed in regard to the meaning of life, I suggest that identity and value judgments, rooted existentially in dasein, are ever and always evolving and changing over time. That there may well be no essential meaning at all. And then those who clearly do believe in both asking the right questions and providing the right answers, who seem entirely contemptuous of those who insist it's their own One True Path instead.

Douglas Adams picked up on this nicely in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with his plot about the planet Earth being a supercomputer designed to work out what the question means – the answer having been much easier to determine. (For the few people reading this who won’t know, the answer is 42.)

Indeed: “The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!”

On the other hand...

"In the Book of Revelation...the number 42 is associated with the 42 months that the Antichrist will rule over the world. In another instance, 42 is the number of generations from Abraham to Jesus Christ."

Also, in baseball, the number 42 was permanently retired in 1997.

[popeye1945]

Nihilism is the loneliest song, played by a life form intelligent enough to know despite what is apparent to it, that, that which is apparent is the melody a meaningless world plays upon it. The organism as its instrument plays a melody heard only by the human form, and its loneliness echoes through time and space unheard. Have a good one--------lol!!

[iambiguous]

Nihilism is the loneliest song, played by a life form intelligent enough to know despite what is apparent to it, that, that which is apparent is the melody a meaningless world plays upon it. The organism as its instrument plays a melody heard only by the human form, and its loneliness echoes through time and space unheard. Have a good one--------lol!!

I won't ask him what this means if he promises not to tell me.

[popeye1945]

Nihilism is the loneliest song, played by a life form intelligent enough to know despite what is apparent to it, that, that which is apparent is the melody a meaningless world plays upon it. The organism as its instrument plays a melody heard only by the human form, and its loneliness echoes through time and space unheard. Have a good one--------lol!!

I won't ask him what this means if he promises not to tell me.

This is an unusual stance for a philosophy site, I don't want to know. 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. Reality is only apparent reality to us, it is not ultimate reality, it is a biological readout of the effects of the physical world or the energies that surround us. It is unique to the biology experiencing it, it is subjective as in an island onto itself. Because we share the same biological form we somewhat experience it the same way but you do not experience it for me. It is a lonely situation and our means of communication are not up to the unity of experience. There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself, but only concerning a conscious subject. Nihilism is the true state of the physical world, utterly devoid of meaning.

[iambiguous]

Nihilism is the loneliest song, played by a life form intelligent enough to know despite what is apparent to it, that, that which is apparent is the melody a meaningless world plays upon it. The organism as its instrument plays a melody heard only by the human form, and its loneliness echoes through time and space unheard. Have a good one--------lol!!

I won't ask him what this means if he promises not to tell me.

This is an unusual stance for a philosophy site, I don't want to know.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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?

Reality is only apparent reality to us, it is not ultimate reality, it is a biological readout of the effects of the physical world or the energies that surround us. It is unique to the biology experiencing it, it is subjective as in an island onto itself. Because we share the same biological form we somewhat experience it the same way but you do not experience it for me. It is a lonely situation and our means of communication are not up to the unity of experience. There is nothing in the world that has meaning in and of itself, but only concerning a conscious subject. Nihilism is the true state of the physical world, utterly devoid of meaning.

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.

[popeye1945]

I won't ask him what this means if he promises not to tell me.

This is an unusual stance for a philosophy site, I don't want to know.

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.

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. [/quote]

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.

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. [/quote]

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.

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".
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. 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.

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

[iambiguous]

This is an unusual stance for a philosophy site, I don't want to know.

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 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.

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?

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 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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.