3 ms·

Trivial facts, yes. I like "1 second is the time needed for Cesium-133 to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times" or "the metre has been defined as the length of the path

Trivial facts, yes. I like "1 second is the time needed for Cesium-133 to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times" or "the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second", but who cares if the values were a bit different? What does a life well lived mean? Is there a god or gods? Which one should one worship if so? What does it mean to be a good or bad person? Where does one find meaning? I don't believe there are truthful answers to questions like that, and modernity seems to annihilate the answers that cultures have developed in past. I'm not particularly versed in Nietzsche, but I believe he said it as "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

dgfitz 2y ago
You're moving the goalposts. This seems to be happening a lot lately... You posited a lot of philosophical questions, and quoted a famous philosopher. "Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and value. These are questions that everyone asks" [0] If you're trying to say "we don't have answers to the philosophical questions of our time" I would agree with you. This would not be a salient point on your end, or even a useful one. This is an example of a well-established... dare I say... fact. [0] https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/departments/philosophy-anthropology-religion/philosophy/why-study-philosophy#:~:text=Philosophy%20is%20the%20study%20of,bad%20or%20right%20from%20wrong%3F https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social...
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I don't feel like I moved any goalposts, but I'll fully admit that I'm not among the best at using language here. Objective fact may be possible, but truth is a human value and I no longer believe that such a thing exists. It's actually rather simple to get there from just what you said above. If "Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and value." and "we don't have answers to the philosophical questions of our time", then it would seem to follow that we cannot agree on the nature of reality which would seem to me to mean that we cannot find a truth that all can agree upon. Believe me, I'm not happy about it either.
svieira 2y ago
Fortunately, Nietzsche was simply diagnosing a disease rather than expounding on the nature of health. Yes, many of us in the 20th and 21st centuries act like God is dead. But "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is" is something that people have recognized since ... oh, Socrates? And once you probe how something can be "right" even if "[everyone in society]" disagrees you find a law giver. That's when the rubber really meets the road.
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- ryandv 2y ago
  > "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is" is something that people have recognized since ... oh, Socrates? Something recognized since Socrates, whose death was foretold by Nietzsche, and finally rendered obsolete by the postmodernists a la Baudrillard (1981): All Western faith and good faith became engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could be exchanged for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange-God of course. To parse this idea properly it is important to define your terms, and lack of adequate definition is what leads to confusion especially as regards philosophical and especially religious discourse. "God" here should be taken to mean the belief in an absolute truth, a common, shared, objective reality from which our subjective realities are derived; metaphysics, spirits, ghosts, "energies," New Age quantum bullshit, and creationism all need not apply here (and are better dispensed with). It is the underlying reality to which all symbols refer; the concept of the pure simulacrum, the hyperreal, is a symbol with no reference to any underlying reality whatsoever, no referent, and thus untethered to any actual reality - atheistic and "without God." Language and rational discourse are based upon this principle - that when we exchange words or symbols with one another that refer to a thing, we have some hope in hell of referring to the same thing, such that I can represent an object in the "external world," or even a thought in my intellectual "internal world" or "soul", serialize it into a literate form, and have you deserialize that literate string into the same intellectual or cognitive structures that I beheld in my own soul when I put those words together and hoped to communicate to you. "The death of God" means that we can no longer guarantee this exchange of "meaning" between minds/souls (both of which I regard as terms that refer to exactly the same thing and are perfectly coextensive), because no symbols are tethered to an underlying objective meaning nor reality. Language and definitions are relative, malleable, subject to revision. Context and intent of language and expressions are irrelevant; the meaning of any string of symbols is now unilaterally determined by their impact or impression on the receiver, and thus any subjective meaning can be inferred from any expression. The condition of post-truth is a consequence of this rejection of objective reality, of the elevation of relativism to the highest degree, and the confusion of (hyperreal, manufactured) symbols with actual reality. There is no objective truth any more, only relativism, narrative, and belief.

dgfitz 2y ago

You're moving the goalposts. This seems to be happening a lot lately... You posited a lot of philosophical questions, and quoted a famous philosopher. "Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and value. These are questions that everyone asks" [0] If you're trying to say "we don't have answers to the philosophical questions of our time" I would agree with you. This would not be a salient point on your end, or even a useful one. This is an example of a well-established... dare I say... fact. [0] https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social-sciences/departments/philosophy-anthropology-religion/philosophy/why-study-philosophy#:~:text=Philosophy%20is%20the%20study%20of,bad%20or%20right%20from%20wrong%3F https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-arts-social...

silverquiet 2y ago
I don't feel like I moved any goalposts, but I'll fully admit that I'm not among the best at using language here. Objective fact may be possible, but truth is a human value and I no longer believe that such a thing exists. It's actually rather simple to get there from just what you said above. If "Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and value." and "we don't have answers to the philosophical questions of our time", then it would seem to follow that we cannot agree on the nature of reality which would seem to me to mean that we cannot find a truth that all can agree upon. Believe me, I'm not happy about it either.

svieira 2y ago

Fortunately, Nietzsche was simply diagnosing a disease rather than expounding on the nature of health. Yes, many of us in the 20th and 21st centuries act like God is dead. But "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is" is something that people have recognized since ... oh, Socrates? And once you probe how something can be "right" even if "[everyone in society]" disagrees you find a law giver. That's when the rubber really meets the road.

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ryandv 2y ago
> "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is" is something that people have recognized since ... oh, Socrates? Something recognized since Socrates, whose death was foretold by Nietzsche, and finally rendered obsolete by the postmodernists a la Baudrillard (1981): All Western faith and good faith became engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could be exchanged for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange-God of course. To parse this idea properly it is important to define your terms, and lack of adequate definition is what leads to confusion especially as regards philosophical and especially religious discourse. "God" here should be taken to mean the belief in an absolute truth, a common, shared, objective reality from which our subjective realities are derived; metaphysics, spirits, ghosts, "energies," New Age quantum bullshit, and creationism all need not apply here (and are better dispensed with). It is the underlying reality to which all symbols refer; the concept of the pure simulacrum, the hyperreal, is a symbol with no reference to any underlying reality whatsoever, no referent, and thus untethered to any actual reality - atheistic and "without God." Language and rational discourse are based upon this principle - that when we exchange words or symbols with one another that refer to a thing, we have some hope in hell of referring to the same thing, such that I can represent an object in the "external world," or even a thought in my intellectual "internal world" or "soul", serialize it into a literate form, and have you deserialize that literate string into the same intellectual or cognitive structures that I beheld in my own soul when I put those words together and hoped to communicate to you. "The death of God" means that we can no longer guarantee this exchange of "meaning" between minds/souls (both of which I regard as terms that refer to exactly the same thing and are perfectly coextensive), because no symbols are tethered to an underlying objective meaning nor reality. Language and definitions are relative, malleable, subject to revision. Context and intent of language and expressions are irrelevant; the meaning of any string of symbols is now unilaterally determined by their impact or impression on the receiver, and thus any subjective meaning can be inferred from any expression. The condition of post-truth is a consequence of this rejection of objective reality, of the elevation of relativism to the highest degree, and the confusion of (hyperreal, manufactured) symbols with actual reality. There is no objective truth any more, only relativism, narrative, and belief.