6 ms·

Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).

by adasdasdas 3y ago

CoastalCoder 3y ago
This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it. Would you mind sketching out your take on it?
- notnaut 3y ago
  The universe has no ethics. Humanity has no ethics inherent, besides that which is directly encoded in our dna. That doesn’t mean it’s not good/useful for people to have ethics. That doesn’t mean it’s not a meaningful pursuit, to people in a context. It’s just that the context holds the value, rather than the thing itself. I think nihilism often goes beyond this though.
- adasdasdas 3y ago
  It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering". A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I call it objective meaning. There is a single source of truth. An atheist might say, "I find meaning through living life, understanding the world, human connection, etc". This person will usually readily admit that what makes them happy might not make you happy. Hence, subjective meaning. A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself because there is not purpose in life. A fake nihilist will say, "I can make sense of my suffering" which makes them not a nihilist because they found meaning.
  - nateb2022 3y ago
    > A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I call it objective meaning. There is a single source of truth. This is a grossly uninformed misrepresentation. Some Protestants do espouse the idea of sola scriptura, however these groups are largely the minority of Christians. The Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, and Anglicans/Episcopalians vastly outnumber the Lutherans, Pentecostals, Calvinists, and Baptists. Catholic philosophy (Catholicism being the largest Christian group and approximately as large as all the other groups combined[0]) holds that faith and reason are the two pillars by which we can come to know truth. By faith is meant in general the knowledge received through revelation (e.g. the Bible). By reason is meant the workings of the intellectual processes, empirical evidence, and scientific knowledge. Through the working together of faith and reason, we can come to know the fullness of the truth. The Bible is not the sole source of truth to Catholics. See also Fides et ratio by Pope St. John Paul II. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination... (data as of 2011) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Thanks! Now I'm wondering what definition of "meaning" people are using for this issue. I wonder if the fuzziness of the term leads to people unwittingly talking past each other.
    - adasdasdas 3y ago
      100% agree, meaning in this context can usually be used interchangeably with, purpose, reason to live, value, etc.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    A "real nihilist" might kill themselves (hey, is anyone needs to hear this, don't kill yourself, and definitely don't kill yourself because of a thought experiment [1]), but most of the nihilists I've met have adjusted to their perspective and responded to it in a healthy way. (I'm not gunnuh engage in a Scotsman argument about whether that's disqualifying. But I'll grant there's an obvious survivorship bias there.) It turns out that believing in meaning isn't always necessary. [1] A friend mine put this very well once. We were talking about Meno, and Socrates' refusal to flee Athens, dying instead on the principle he'd entered into a sort of social contract (please excuse the ahistorical terminology) with Athens. "I've never heard Socrates talk about the social contract before," my friend said. "I refuse to die over a minor fucking principle." Dying for a thought experiment isn't romantic. Being rational in all things is actually undesirable, because not everything functions under rational principles (or we wouldn't need the concept in the first place, it would just be the air we breathe). In the same way that everyone can make a cryptosystem they themselves can't break, everyone can create a logical knot that they can't untie. It's a parlor trick, and not a reason to die.
    - adasdasdas 3y ago
      Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. In fact, the sentence kind of implies you are speaking of objective meaning which is what grinds my gears.
      - maxbond 3y ago
        > Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Let's suppose for a moment you're mistaken. How would you recognize evidence to the contrary, were you to receive it? If you met a nihilist, you'd dismiss them, right? It's an approximately unfalsifiable construction. > Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. It seems like you call it "purpose" and I called it "meaning?" I'm a bit confused on that point. Am I misusing terminology? > In fact, the sentence kind of implies you are speaking of objective meaning which is what grinds my gears. I meant meaning writ large, subjective or objective. If there's a different phrasing that wouldn't have contained this unintended implication I'm open to suggestions. An example of a line of thinking you might accept; a nihilist could decide go on living, just because they feel like it. It's entirely rational (and let me be clear, you don't need to avoid suicide on rational grounds anyway, it's entirely acceptable not to kill yourself for arational reasons) to decide you don't want to die because you're curious about what will happen if you don't, or because you think it would be an unpleasant endeavor, or because you've just adopted it as an axiom that you should go on living without any justification. There is no contradiction there. Really, presupposing that a life of suffering should be ended is asserting the existence of a meaning to life, just a negative one instead of a positive one.
  - YellOh 3y ago
    Seems like a weirdly stringent test for nihilism. If a nihilist believes there is no meaning in living but also no meaning in dying, why would they default to dying? A lot of built-in taboos (e.g. against bodily damage) make living a "default" human choice, and unless you're also burying the assumption that without meaning one should actively seek death as soon as possible(?), it seems like nihilists could keep riding the default until they got sufficiently bored of it.
    - adasdasdas 3y ago
      When I think of nihilism, I think of depressed people who can't pick themselves up to do anything because of a feeling of hopelessness, or a man experiencing a mid life crisis wondering what he's worked so hard for. These people often resort unhealthy coping mechanisms or even worse, suicide.
      - YellOh 3y ago
        You're equivocating between your stereotype of nihilism and what "real nihilists" "should" do to be considered a nihilist. Nihilism != depression, even if there is overlap, and it's useful to let the words have different meanings. There are a decent number of people who are nihilists without meeting your assumptions above (though they're probably less salient, as if someone seems functional & not-miserable, people don't usually bother to ask whether they're a nihilist). Nietzche defines nihilism (partially) as those who oppose the affirmation of life which is kind of related to what you say here... except the affirmation of life requires a "yes" to life such that "all of eternity [is] embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed,"[0] which I think plenty of (functional, happy-ish) people do not experience. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean_affirmation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean_affirmation [Footnote: Nietzsche is writing against the nihilism he saw in his own time, not in favor.]
        adasdasdas 3y ago
        I'm not equivocating anything, my test for nihilism is very simple, "do you have anything meaningful in your life". What I mentioned earlier are symptoms or forms of nihilism. What I hate is when people describe nihilism as "Well, I don't believe there is meaning but also I find satisfaction in the small things in life" or "There's no point in life, the point of life is to live". It's always the same pattern of rejecting objective meaning and thinking that's the same as having no meaning. Fwiw, I'm in favor of Nietzsche's definition too, but I don't want to introduce a whole host of loaded words to an already confusing topic
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lusus_naturae 3y ago
    > A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself Nihlism is acknowledging that many if not all aspects that result in "life" are pointless. I fail to understand how that equates to no will to live life. There is only irrationality to living while acknowledging the pointlessness of it. According to the nihilist, every other justification is flimsy at best, so justifying the pointless is equally irrational to them. Regardless, I think there are a lot of misjudgments about such philosophy, particularly with associating with some destructive impulse or depression etc.
    - dsmithatx 3y ago
      Agreed. I became a nihilist as a teenager and still believe life mostly has no meaning. Humans will all die and the earth will keep turning. I don't really believe in an afterlife. At the same time a person gets miserable going against the grain of society and thus you learn how to be content and how to keep your emotions in check. I do not see any conflict in these two things. I see it as the survival skills of a nihilist. Your natural instinct will be to prosper in this life, it doesn't mean there is a bigger meaning than farting and dying.
    - adasdasdas 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - lusus_naturae 3y ago
        You're encroaching on ideas of self and self-actualization now, all very different from attributing meaning to aspects that result in or are related to life. Neither wanting to protect yourself or others is against Nilhism per se, mainly I think because acknowledging the pointlessness of something does not immediately or unequivocally make something else reasonable or justifiable. For example, if I say I don't eat fish it doesn't necessarily mean that I am okay with you punching me in the face etc...though, it would make a nice Monty Python sketch.
        adasdasdas 3y ago
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    You're assuming it's natural to assign a negative value to living. If future suffering is a reason to die, why shouldn't future pleasure be reason to live?
- bamfly 3y ago
  There exist multiple good, free encyclopedias of philosophy online: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nihi https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nihi https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nihilism/v-1 https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nihilism/v-1 https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/ https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/ Stanford's is probably the best-regarded of the bunch—you'll struggle to find a better brief introduction to most topics, than it provides, especially for $0. Skipping e.g. Wikipedia and going straight to the SEP, for philosophical topics, is usually a good call.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jona-f 3y ago
Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? What you call nihilism, i might call radical nihilism or extreme nihilism. Yes, taken to the extreme, it would lead to total apathy, as there is no reason to do anything (Also no reason to kill yourself btw). But you can still have nihilism as the foundation of your philosophy. That would probably be a contradiction to you, cause you take nihilism very literal. And yes, by your definition any known nihilist is a fake nihilist, otherwise you wouldn't know them.
- adasdasdas 3y ago
  > Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? The word closest to rejecting objective meaning is just non-religious because objective meaning is mostly a religious phenomenon. What matters is that the alternative is NOT just nihilism, but also existentialism.
  - jona-f 3y ago
    Existentialism is one of those philosophies based on nihilism in my book.
    - adasdasdas 3y ago
      That's fine if you want use your definition, but most existentialists consider nihilism the common enemy in a society without object meaning.

Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).

CoastalCoder 3y ago

This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it. Would you mind sketching out your take on it?

notnaut 3y ago
The universe has no ethics. Humanity has no ethics inherent, besides that which is directly encoded in our dna. That doesn’t mean it’s not good/useful for people to have ethics. That doesn’t mean it’s not a meaningful pursuit, to people in a context. It’s just that the context holds the value, rather than the thing itself. I think nihilism often goes beyond this though.
adasdasdas 3y ago
It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering". A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I call it objective meaning. There is a single source of truth. An atheist might say, "I find meaning through living life, understanding the world, human connection, etc". This person will usually readily admit that what makes them happy might not make you happy. Hence, subjective meaning. A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself because there is not purpose in life. A fake nihilist will say, "I can make sense of my suffering" which makes them not a nihilist because they found meaning.
- nateb2022 3y ago
  > A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I call it objective meaning. There is a single source of truth. This is a grossly uninformed misrepresentation. Some Protestants do espouse the idea of sola scriptura, however these groups are largely the minority of Christians. The Catholic Church, Orthodox Churches, and Anglicans/Episcopalians vastly outnumber the Lutherans, Pentecostals, Calvinists, and Baptists. Catholic philosophy (Catholicism being the largest Christian group and approximately as large as all the other groups combined[0]) holds that faith and reason are the two pillars by which we can come to know truth. By faith is meant in general the knowledge received through revelation (e.g. the Bible). By reason is meant the workings of the intellectual processes, empirical evidence, and scientific knowledge. Through the working together of faith and reason, we can come to know the fullness of the truth. The Bible is not the sole source of truth to Catholics. See also Fides et ratio by Pope St. John Paul II. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination... (data as of 2011) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Thanks! Now I'm wondering what definition of "meaning" people are using for this issue. I wonder if the fuzziness of the term leads to people unwittingly talking past each other.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    100% agree, meaning in this context can usually be used interchangeably with, purpose, reason to live, value, etc.
- maxbond 3y ago
  A "real nihilist" might kill themselves (hey, is anyone needs to hear this, don't kill yourself, and definitely don't kill yourself because of a thought experiment [1]), but most of the nihilists I've met have adjusted to their perspective and responded to it in a healthy way. (I'm not gunnuh engage in a Scotsman argument about whether that's disqualifying. But I'll grant there's an obvious survivorship bias there.) It turns out that believing in meaning isn't always necessary. [1] A friend mine put this very well once. We were talking about Meno, and Socrates' refusal to flee Athens, dying instead on the principle he'd entered into a sort of social contract (please excuse the ahistorical terminology) with Athens. "I've never heard Socrates talk about the social contract before," my friend said. "I refuse to die over a minor fucking principle." Dying for a thought experiment isn't romantic. Being rational in all things is actually undesirable, because not everything functions under rational principles (or we wouldn't need the concept in the first place, it would just be the air we breathe). In the same way that everyone can make a cryptosystem they themselves can't break, everyone can create a logical knot that they can't untie. It's a parlor trick, and not a reason to die.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. In fact, the sentence kind of implies you are speaking of objective meaning which is what grinds my gears.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      > Well that's why I believe most nihilists aren't actually nihilists. Let's suppose for a moment you're mistaken. How would you recognize evidence to the contrary, were you to receive it? If you met a nihilist, you'd dismiss them, right? It's an approximately unfalsifiable construction. > Also, I don't think believing in meaning has anything to do with nihilism. It seems like you call it "purpose" and I called it "meaning?" I'm a bit confused on that point. Am I misusing terminology? > In fact, the sentence kind of implies you are speaking of objective meaning which is what grinds my gears. I meant meaning writ large, subjective or objective. If there's a different phrasing that wouldn't have contained this unintended implication I'm open to suggestions. An example of a line of thinking you might accept; a nihilist could decide go on living, just because they feel like it. It's entirely rational (and let me be clear, you don't need to avoid suicide on rational grounds anyway, it's entirely acceptable not to kill yourself for arational reasons) to decide you don't want to die because you're curious about what will happen if you don't, or because you think it would be an unpleasant endeavor, or because you've just adopted it as an axiom that you should go on living without any justification. There is no contradiction there. Really, presupposing that a life of suffering should be ended is asserting the existence of a meaning to life, just a negative one instead of a positive one.
- YellOh 3y ago
  Seems like a weirdly stringent test for nihilism. If a nihilist believes there is no meaning in living but also no meaning in dying, why would they default to dying? A lot of built-in taboos (e.g. against bodily damage) make living a "default" human choice, and unless you're also burying the assumption that without meaning one should actively seek death as soon as possible(?), it seems like nihilists could keep riding the default until they got sufficiently bored of it.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    When I think of nihilism, I think of depressed people who can't pick themselves up to do anything because of a feeling of hopelessness, or a man experiencing a mid life crisis wondering what he's worked so hard for. These people often resort unhealthy coping mechanisms or even worse, suicide.
    - YellOh 3y ago
      You're equivocating between your stereotype of nihilism and what "real nihilists" "should" do to be considered a nihilist. Nihilism != depression, even if there is overlap, and it's useful to let the words have different meanings. There are a decent number of people who are nihilists without meeting your assumptions above (though they're probably less salient, as if someone seems functional & not-miserable, people don't usually bother to ask whether they're a nihilist). Nietzche defines nihilism (partially) as those who oppose the affirmation of life which is kind of related to what you say here... except the affirmation of life requires a "yes" to life such that "all of eternity [is] embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed,"[0] which I think plenty of (functional, happy-ish) people do not experience. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean_affirmation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean_affirmation [Footnote: Nietzsche is writing against the nihilism he saw in his own time, not in favor.]
      - adasdasdas 3y ago
        I'm not equivocating anything, my test for nihilism is very simple, "do you have anything meaningful in your life". What I mentioned earlier are symptoms or forms of nihilism. What I hate is when people describe nihilism as "Well, I don't believe there is meaning but also I find satisfaction in the small things in life" or "There's no point in life, the point of life is to live". It's always the same pattern of rejecting objective meaning and thinking that's the same as having no meaning. Fwiw, I'm in favor of Nietzsche's definition too, but I don't want to introduce a whole host of loaded words to an already confusing topic
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lusus_naturae 3y ago
  > A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself Nihlism is acknowledging that many if not all aspects that result in "life" are pointless. I fail to understand how that equates to no will to live life. There is only irrationality to living while acknowledging the pointlessness of it. According to the nihilist, every other justification is flimsy at best, so justifying the pointless is equally irrational to them. Regardless, I think there are a lot of misjudgments about such philosophy, particularly with associating with some destructive impulse or depression etc.
  - dsmithatx 3y ago
    Agreed. I became a nihilist as a teenager and still believe life mostly has no meaning. Humans will all die and the earth will keep turning. I don't really believe in an afterlife. At the same time a person gets miserable going against the grain of society and thus you learn how to be content and how to keep your emotions in check. I do not see any conflict in these two things. I see it as the survival skills of a nihilist. Your natural instinct will be to prosper in this life, it doesn't mean there is a bigger meaning than farting and dying.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lusus_naturae 3y ago
      You're encroaching on ideas of self and self-actualization now, all very different from attributing meaning to aspects that result in or are related to life. Neither wanting to protect yourself or others is against Nilhism per se, mainly I think because acknowledging the pointlessness of something does not immediately or unequivocally make something else reasonable or justifiable. For example, if I say I don't eat fish it doesn't necessarily mean that I am okay with you punching me in the face etc...though, it would make a nice Monty Python sketch.
      - adasdasdas 3y ago
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  You're assuming it's natural to assign a negative value to living. If future suffering is a reason to die, why shouldn't future pleasure be reason to live?
bamfly 3y ago
There exist multiple good, free encyclopedias of philosophy online: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nihi https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/#Nihi https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nihilism/v-1 https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/nihilism/v-1 https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/ https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/ Stanford's is probably the best-regarded of the bunch—you'll struggle to find a better brief introduction to most topics, than it provides, especially for $0. Skipping e.g. Wikipedia and going straight to the SEP, for philosophical topics, is usually a good call.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jona-f 3y ago

Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? What you call nihilism, i might call radical nihilism or extreme nihilism. Yes, taken to the extreme, it would lead to total apathy, as there is no reason to do anything (Also no reason to kill yourself btw). But you can still have nihilism as the foundation of your philosophy. That would probably be a contradiction to you, cause you take nihilism very literal. And yes, by your definition any known nihilist is a fake nihilist, otherwise you wouldn't know them.

adasdasdas 3y ago
> Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? The word closest to rejecting objective meaning is just non-religious because objective meaning is mostly a religious phenomenon. What matters is that the alternative is NOT just nihilism, but also existentialism.
- jona-f 3y ago
  Existentialism is one of those philosophies based on nihilism in my book.
  - adasdasdas 3y ago
    That's fine if you want use your definition, but most existentialists consider nihilism the common enemy in a society without object meaning.