Any Nihilists here?

[FrustratedFool]

In what way are you using the word evil when you use it?

[The Grand Nudger]

God might not technically be real, but His presence will sure scare the fuck out of you just the same.

You're a mindless troll on your best days, but sometimes you do manage to accidentally express something profound.  Gods would be terrifying, wouldn't they, for all of the possibilities they open and close.  Anyone who wouldn't be scared shitless by a god is a moron.  We used to know that.  Go read the descriptions of mere angels in magic book.  They're not good guys.  It's not all white flowing robes and well managed hair.  They're murder machines.

When we see them, shit is about to go entirely sideways.

[The Grand Nudger]

In what way are you using the word evil when you use it?

......................?

Evil seems to mean something like extrabad, or pointless bad.

Like that.

[FrustratedFool]

That just begs for further definitions since you just seem to be defining using synonyms.

Fair enough. I think I have come to understand moral realism more and why I reject it as nonsensical.

[The Grand Nudger]

The word cat "just begs further definitions" too. If you continue to insist that it's nonsensical then I can say, objectively, that you have not come to understand moral realism.

I think it's just easier to say that you think it's wrong. That morality is something else. Moral realists would agree with you there, amusingly, as an item of descriptive accuracy. In large part, when we make moral utterances, even though they seem like fact alike statements, we often get them wrong or are making factual statements about ourselves (rather than murder) - when we even manage to make fact-alike statements (things that don't reduce to yuck! and yum!).

[FrustratedFool]

The word cat "just begs further definitions" too.

It can be given a definition without recourse to synonyms, and can reach a point where there was virtual universal agreement, and many questions about cats be addressed in terms of the scientific method.

The same can't be said of the way you're treating the word evil.

Again, the idea that evil and cat are basically the same sort of word and concept and thing suggests to me that moral realism is nonsensical. At least, as you you have presented it in this thread.

I honestly believe moral realism as you've presented it to me here strikes me as irrational. I might be wrong in that, of course.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're underestimating the difficulty of cat, my friend.

Moral realism has all of the same problems as any other realist idea, including cat realism. That can mean that, at some point, if you want to know what a cat is as a direct experience without narration and synonyms and communicative explication, I just have to take you to a cat. GE Moore said something similar in his explanation of non natural realism. That, ultimately, if you want to know what evil is, and know it in that way, I'd have to take you to see a group of adults stomping an infant and say "there - that, do you see?"

[FrustratedFool]

I think the glaring difference is that the cat being pointed to is an external measurable object, whereas the infant stomping doesn't point to evil but rather expects that I have an emotional reaction to the stomping.

I can describe the stomping event without ever invoking the sense that people ought not to do that or a disgust reaction to it, and by doing so I'd be judged as having not apprehended the evil itself.

Additionally, the cat pointing is specific. That thing there is a cat. But when you point to stomping and say that there is evil you expect the word evil to apply to a infinite number of other potential events. Its not a synonym for stomping. Its something else. A property of the stomping. A property that cannot be observed, measured, described, tested, falsified, verified, or defined and about which many people disagree.

That's a huge difference, and one which you seem to not deal with. Hence why your position seems unreasonable to me.

[The Grand Nudger]

It hardly matters to me whether you have an emotional response to infant stomping. Doesn't matter to the infant, either, they're getting stomped whether you do or don't. Thing is, like cat, if there was any real confusion about what I'm talking about with either thing, that demonstration is the bottom of it. It's literally not possible to give a more direct or less complicated demonstration of anything.

So lets posit you don't have an emotional reaction to infant stomping - fine? You've still been given an example of what I'm talking about, so you know what that is and can assess my moral statements for their factual status accordingly.

Is this the point where I suggest that you're not really a nihilist, just amoral? That you can see and understand the meaning - you just don't have an emotional response to any of it? Or do you, like me, think.."well, if bad is stealing a baby's sucker evil must be stealing a sucker from the corpse you made by stomping the baby to death."

"A property of the stomping" is actually a very good way to explain the difference between subjectivism, relativism, and realism. If you accept that what I'm talking about is that kind of thing, you've accepted the basis of moral realism.

[FrustratedFool]

I disagree. See my post.