Is nihilism the logical extreme of atheism?

[Exian]

Rather than saying that it means that you should just mope around (like half the people on this fourm do anyway) it means that my life is truly free for me to do whatever I like with it.

My bolding.

[Mudhammam]

Sounds like Alice needs to start taking her meds again.

I'm pretty sure it would quickly disprove this assertion:

Scientific process has no impact besides that which the individual feels it does...

But in all seriousness, this statement truly was the pinnacle of the LULZ in all of the dumb, ignorant things she said here today.

[Chas]

God is so good that the definition has to come from him. One thing you can be sure of.

Because you say so? Oh, sure. I'm soooo convinced.

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No, he is goodness, otherwise he couldn't be him.

That is circular, you silly hobbit.

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Just to be clear, my definition of nihilism is very broad: holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

This takes me to my third component needed to counter nihilism: significance.

Significance refers to the relationship between a signs, or signifiers, and that to which the signs refer (the signified). So when people say that life has significance, then they are essentially claiming that their being and actions are signifiers that point to something external to them.

Signs are physical and include material forms, like letters, images, and artifacts; structured events, like music and speech; or some combination of both. The meanings of the signs are what people assign to otherwise meaningless things. For example, in traffic a blinking red light means ‘stop’ only as a matter of convention. Physical things in and of themselves do not have meaning without an interpreter.

Every atheist I know assumes that the brain adequately serves as the interpreter of signs. There is a problem with this assumption. Brains are themselves sensible objects performing material processes and like all other physical things have no meaning.

Neural correlates are like abacus beads that require the interpretation of a knowing subject. The brain cannot act as the interpreter of its own physical states because that makes an empty self-referential circle. Nor can one part of the brain serve and the interpreter of another, since the first would itself require interpretation from a second, the second by a third and so on, i.e. an infinite regress. Nor can the brain, as a whole, can be broken down into smaller and smaller interpreters, each assigning meaning to lesser and lesser signs. Even the smallest sign requires an interpreter no matter how tiny. You cannot build something out of nothing.

The above is how a God or gods provide a basis for value that atheism lacks: value is contingent on [a] non-physical interpreter[s].

Not brains, minds. Minds emerge from the functioning of brains.
And it is not a closed, self-referential system; it is an open self-referential system, continuously updated with fresh input and fresh connections and patterns.

Your 'explanation' assumes the existence of that for which there is no evidence. Dualism is an incoherent concept.

[genkaus]

I'm an Atheist and Nihilist and I say yes. Atheists who are reject Nihilism are being intellectually dishonest.

Go ahead and prove it then.

That you feel that your life has meaning has no bearing on whether or not it actually does. You can supply meaning all you want but that doesn't mean anything. In 100 years all that meaning that you've convinced yourself of will likely be pointless.

That's like saying that since what you eat today, you'll shit tomorrow, you might as well not have eaten at all.

Rather than saying that it means that you should just mope around (like half the people on this fourm do anyway) it means that my life is truly free for me to do whatever I like with it.

Except you can't do whatever you like.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm an Atheist and Nihilist and I say yes. Atheists who are reject Nihilism are being intellectually dishonest.

The Wiki article is conflating objective meaning with intrinsic value. Simply because we supply our own meanings to our own lives, it doesn't follow that our lives are worthless.

My own answer is: no. I supply my own meaning to my own life.

That you feel that your life has meaning has no bearing on whether or not it actually does. You can supply meaning all you want but that doesn't mean anything. In 100 years all that meaning that you've convinced yourself of will likely be pointless. I think the mistake is in thinking that somehow nihilism means being whiney and depressed. I actually find power in being a nihilist. Rather than saying that it means that you should just mope around (like half the people on this fourm do anyway) it means that my life is truly free for me to do whatever I like with it.

History is littered with folks who not only defined their own lives for themselves in their lifetimes, but had those definitions accepted by others by dint of their actions.

In a hundred years I may not be around to think one way or the other about the meaning of my life, but, if lived correctly, others will think my life means as I intended.

I'm not confusing nihilism with crybabyism. I'm rejecting the idea that how I define myself must bow to your definition of me. You may think my life has no meaning. That, and three bucks, will get you a cuppa joe at Starbucks.

If you're not willing to assign meaning to your life, that's fine. It's no surprise that someone who finds their own life meaningless should cast aspersions upon the significance of others. Skating is easier downhill.

eta: Also, I've emboldened the passage where you're begging the question.

[Mudhammam]

Reiterate it. I didn't see any issue with whatever it was the first time, so clearly its importance in whatever it is has yet to be conveyed.

Okay. Moreover, I'll just watch while you argue with yourself.

All positive claims are real. Almost all of them are ultimately false. I've no reason to consider my own positive claims to be any more true than anyone else's.
WRONG! My argument is that we can know *ANYTHING*. That act of knowing a thing does not the thing's correctness make

So, the following statements you're going to make are almost ultimately... false?

I'll reiterate:

Please.

understanding TRUTH for *anyone* is an inherently impossible task

Including... that. Like I said, self-refuting. You make this too damn easy.

We CAN know ANYTHING with ABSOLUTE certainty. We often do know more than we ought with relative certainty.

Are you high? Are you even reading what you write?

The reality is that probably we're not aware of 'the reality', and can only form our best guesses around whatever apparent consistency our experiences might have in common.

Ohhhhh. Because you received that "knowledge" about "reality" last time you took a hit of acid? Dreamt it in your sleep? The reality is that yes, mostly everything we *think* we know is an approximation of the truth, measured for its degree of accuracy--i.e. as a true representation of the objective world--by clear thinking derived by definitions that logically cohere, both conceptually and with multiple, varying perceptions of said world, which we furthermore test using tried and proven instrumentation developed through the trial and error that results from the scientific method. None of this has anything to do with faith in the traditional sense as belief in a proposition not sufficiently supported by evidence given in our shared experiences, and in spite of reasonable doubt.

This is why we have exceptions to rules, and not all-encompassing rules. Trying to get every relevant card nailed down into any one rule is impossible when we can't really tell which game we are playing. Is it cheating... or are we cheating?

That's like, so deep!

Faith is belief is confidence is knowledge.

Not in the religious usage of the word faith, which is precisely why I reject its appropriateness here.

You do have faith in the reasons and evidence you're using to support your beliefs, do you not? You'd have to, if you believe in the findings resultant from such things.

Nope. Faith is not required for existence. It does not require faith to understand and know beyond a reasonable doubt that "I exist" is a true statement. I do trust that when I talk to someone outside of my "self," they understand the words I am using and their correlation to the objects in the objective world that I am attempting to describe. That trust is established on the very success of that process in past experience, the source of all knowledge, though, I confess, it is rapidly eroding right now.

This is built upon layer and layer... there is no prerequisite for faith that states it is necessarily unreasonable. In truth, it is often quite the opposite... whether the reasons be good or bad, valid or not, is irrelevant to the process that is reasoning.

Obviously, we disagree on the usefulness or application of the term "faith" in the context of this conversation, none of which is dependent on logical principles or inferences not found in immediate experience.

Other minds exist. Whether they exist outside of my own head, on the other hand... that's why solipsists are incorrigible: there is literally no perceptible difference. They are only wrong when they suggest that everything does not exist... because insomuch as their thinking proves their being: a table's splintering proves it's being. In each argument, existence is already assumed, because nonexistence is inherently impossible through logic: if it doesn't exist, then there's nothing to be defined. Nothing to test, nothing to contest.

Of course. So many are so enraptured in what they know, that should their walls come crashing down: they'll be buried beneath the weight of their fancy.

Alternately, you could ignore me. That works for most people who are unable to defend their arguments

So glad you cleared that up for us.

That's all we've got in the end: what usually works for us. All reasoning is itself arbitrary,

No, wrong again, for the reasons I've already given.

the goal: whether or not it convinces a person of any particular thing.

A goal that effects our ability to survive and thrive.

Further, should justifications for a belief ultimately succeed in the establishment of persuasion... how strongly such convictions are held is affected by how enamored they have become within such.

Yes, tempered by the soundness of the reasoning and the evidence which is available.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Fucking Christ, I hate solipsism.

[Exian]

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If you're not willing to assign meaning to your life, that's fine. It's no surprise that someone who finds their own life meaningless should cast aspersions upon the significance of others. Skating is easier downhill.

eta: Also, I've emboldened the passage where you're begging the question.

He does give his life meaning. Nihilism, to him, means he's free to do what he likes. That's my issue with nihilism, it implodes on itself whenever I entertain the idea. Am I doing it wrong or is this a common experience?

[Thumpalumpacus]

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If you're not willing to assign meaning to your life, that's fine. It's no surprise that someone who finds their own life meaningless should cast aspersions upon the significance of others. Skating is easier downhill.

eta: Also, I've emboldened the passage where you're begging the question.

He does give his life meaning. Nihilism, to him, means he's free to do what he likes. That's my issue with nihilism, it implodes on itself whenever I entertain the idea. Am I doing it wrong or is this a common experience?

It's hard for me to escape the feeling that that is a semantic objection. Just because "nihilism" has a meaning doesn't mean that he assigns any meaning to his own life. What's happening here, I think, is that two different connotations of "meaning" are being equivocated.

I don't know that you're thinking wrong or right. I do know that this is a very rare experience for me -- a philosophical discussion that is interesting.

[Jenny A]

Find me a functioning nihilist if by that we mean one who doesn't believe in anything.