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Alex Strekal Nihilism (philosophically speaking) is what happens when you took the
false philosophical categories seriously in the first place, and follow them to
their dialectical end point (self-dissolution). The affirmation of life is what
happens when you realize that the philosophical problems were the result of
accepting the ...false paradigm in the first place, either by examining language or
phenomonology.See More
11 hours ago — Comment — LikeUnlike — Dislike
Luke Clayborn Hopper and Andrew Quemere like this.
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Nihilism is the recognition that adopting nihilism makes
just as much (or little) sense as adopting anything else.
11 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
A completely pointless self-dissolution that has no relation to ordinary experience.
11 hours ago
Travis Ström
Travis Ström
nihilism is the realization that all reality, as i know it, only exists within my
mind. what is true for me may not be true for another. there are no absolutes.
10 hours ago
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
I wonder if we're talking about the same strands of nihilism, considering the
significant difference between moral, existential, epistemological, and ontological
nihilism.
10 hours ago
Roman Pearah
Roman Pearah
http://bit.ly/7KiAbm
10 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
All of them.
9 hours ago
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
How can someone who accepts the role of evolutionary coincidences in shaping our
“moral” sensibilities also accept the claim that there are discoverable,
mind-independent moral “truths?”
9 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
How can someone be a nihilist without it having been a result of originally
accepting bullshit philosophical categories and getting confused about language? See
Wittgenstein.
9 hours ago
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Could you answer my question first? d;
9 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
Your question is presumptive and carries bad philosophical baggage with it.
Mind-independance is just a confusing language game that wouldn't come about if we
stuck with ordinary experience in the first place.
9 hours ago
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
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I don't think so at all. Sure, it's jargon; but we could still easily apply it to
everyday experience. Debating whether Bach or Beethoven is more enjoyable to listen
to or whether blueberry or raspberry cobbler tastes better, it would be perfectly
valid to point out that no mind-independently true answer to said questions exist.
So is what we call... See More “morality” most comparable in the relevant ways to
the questions above, or to scientific questions like whether the Earth is flat or
shaped like a globe?
9 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
I don't accept positivism and verificationism to begin with, so the whole discussion
is based on premises that I don't take for granted. The fact that moral statements
aren't a scientific description of a material object is trivial, and most certainly
doesn't "disprove" them. In the end, high-strung philosophical arguments for both
moral nihilism and moral realism are moot in light of everyday usage of normative
language.
9 hours ago
Roman Pearah
Roman Pearah
It's simple: we are justified in accepting the way things initially seem to us as a
true picture of the world, despite the possibility that those beliefs are mistaken.
Whew, that was easy! Now let's climb some trees!
9 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
LOL @ Roman.
9 hours ago
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
Lysander L'amour ‫ﻣﻠﺣدﻛﺎﻓﺮ‬
... the point is that this raises the question, what ~are~ moral statements? doesn't
this put them in the category of questions like whether Bach or Beethoven was the
better composer?
9 hours ago
Danny Shahar
Danny Shahar
Ultimately, if it's all meaningless to you, then that's fine. The world is a
beautiful place filled with marvelous treasures and incredible people. Happenstance
has given you a window into it all; you can use it how you like. If you use it to be
a jerk or a lout, then you will be a jerk or a lout. I'd rather go climbing with
Roman (as long as ... See Morehe keeps the handsy stuff to a minimum).
Regarding the question Lysander asked about moral error theory, I'd suggest that
moral statements are a lot closer to the category of questions like whether Bach or
Lincoln was the better composer. But ultimately I think the answer is probably no;
they seem to involve different kinds of cognitive processes. Moral psychology seems
to be built more around several functions including regulating one's own behavior
and others', as well as choosing people with whom it will be rewarding to associate.
Some moral statements, then, will likely be closer to categories of questions like,
"How would I feel if I did that? Did they seem to feel the same way?," "What kind of
person would do that?," or "Did that person realize what she was doing?" And this
makes sense, given the kinds of things that would have been adaptive for the
developing hominids whose moral sensibilities we inherited.
7 hours ago
Benjamin Carruth
Benjamin Carruth
I agree that nihilism is an inevitable result of applied
deconstructionism/reductionism (which encompasses most of the presented Western
tradition), but it is not an end. Scoutie and I've had many a long conversation on
this: what happens when you turn the tools upon themselves? Not merely as abstract
exercise, but with rich emotional engagement? ... See MoreThe immediate impression
is one of void, that there is simply nothing left, not even a real sense of oneself
as observer, but this does not last. Like the adjustment of the eye to a dark room,
one realizes that beneath the gears and springs of thought ordered precisely to
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prescribed form is a teeming cosm conforming to no shared construct.
What can come of this is consideration of earlier affirmed axioms not as false, not
as metaphysically true, but contextual events akin to the coalescence of matter: it
has form and reliability within the scope of the event, but is a reflection of a
relation of forces not subject to direct analogy within its scope.
5 hours ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
Ben: I'm sort of reading late Wittgenstein (and, while I really haven't looked into
him as much as I should, to a lesser extent, Heidegger) as a brilliant refutation of
nihilism here, even if that wasn't necessarily his overall motivation. And the
particular manifestation of nihilism that I admit to being motivated against is more
along the lines ... See Moreof the nihilism that could be said to result from
positivism rather than deconstructionism (although one could say that something like
deconstructionism only came about precisely because something like positivism
failed). While I probably am irreparably biased against the baggage associated with
postmodernism (and, more specifically, poststructuralism), I'm more comfortable with
it than positivism, particularly with respect to the respective types of attitudes
likely to be taken towards science and various sub-divisions of knowledge.
18 minutes ago
Alex Strekal
Alex Strekal
I'm also suggesting something about the history of philosophy and the logical
progression of ideas. I'm tempted to more or less say that all initially constructed
philosophical roads lead to some sort of nihilism (for example, Hegel leads to
Stirner), and that you can escape that by defaulting to something that could be said
to be extra-...

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