[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[emjay]

What I personally meant by it was the view that there is no physical reality beyond the perceptions of the mind, which sounded like what you were describing.

As I understand it, Nietzsche would say that there is real stuff beyond our mental phenomena, but that it is in eternal chaos. As we perceive the chaos and translate it into mental images, our "Apollonian" faculty creates an order for it. 

Right, well when you put it like that, I definitely disagree with him; it can't be chaos, or at least not total chaos, out there because our very existence relies on reliable causality, even if it's only a subset of the whole.

I think I'd need to read Nietzsche directly to get a better idea of what you're talking about here. Funnily enough he is on my bucket-list so to speak but for a different reason; I've started learning German, and I thought it would make a nice goal to aim for to eventually be able to read it in German... but that's a long ways off, if ever. Doesn't mean I can't still read it in English obviously, and I might do if this all grabs my interest enough, but just saying about that secondary goal. 

I would love to read the original German! Good luck to you -- it's a worthy goal. 

To me, the one to start with would be The Birth of Tragedy. His earlier works are pretty much boilerplate Romanticism, and the later ones get way out there. Tragedy is the most accessible.

Thanks, I'll note that as a recommendation for the future then :-) 

I have to say I agree with everyone else here, gender is not the same thing as sex. I don't personally have any experience with transgender issues; ie I'm gay but I don't have any gender issues, but if I did... if I had a deep seated discomfort living in my own skin so to speak, and the strong cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria, then contrary to what you seem to be implying, I don't think that would be any more a whim, or a choice, or a fleeting idea than sexuality is. Ie not at all. Also I disagree with characterising it as the will overcoming anatomy/overrul[ing] anatomy through feeling; because that implies that they should always be perfectly aligned and/or that anatomy should dictate feeling/identity, but where it's blatantly obvious that that's not the case; the brain and its development is largely 'plastic', and factors both genetic and environmental influence our mental development.

I understand that. I have no trouble with that. I am not saying that gender is the same as sex; I am fully up to date on the correct belief. 

I'm not saying it's a whim. 

I am saying that it's not something that can be objectively, empirically, quantifiably determined. Therefore it's not a subject for science. If someone tells you that he's uncomfortable living in his own skin, there is no objective test for this. It doesn't show up in a blood assay. You take him at his word.

But please remember, that compared to many people here I am comfortable accepting that some things which are untestable, non-empirical, and unquantifiable, are still real. I am not one of those science-only types. 

The reason it's relevant to the post-Nietzsche change is that in the bad old days if someone with a dick said he wasn't a man, the doctors would have said, "No, you're confused. We have objective evidence. Look at your dick." Gender was thought to be a non-mental physical thing, subject to objective proof, biologically obvious. Now it isn't. What appeared to be objectively obvious has changed, demonstrating that our beliefs about these things have as much to do with society as with science.

Okay, I understand what you're saying (better) now. I will say though that even if we can't in practice objectively determine it beyond observing behaviour/asking questions etc, doesn't mean it can't in principle be objectively determined, because from a physicalist/materialistic point of view, any state of mind is physically represented in the brain. We may lack the tools to probe it at that level of intricacy... perhaps forever... but that doesn't mean that in principle it would not be possible. So from that point of view, it is still physically real, encoded in brain and body biology, just at a far deeper and practically less accessible level.

That may not have been relevant to what you mean though, except inasmuch as it refers to the point of 'accepting that some things which are untestable, non-empirical, and unquantifiable, are still real'. Ie God as untestable, non-empirical, and unquantifiable, even in principle, is I assume the sort of thing you're referring to? I can't rule it out entirely... it would indeed be unfalsifiable by such a definition... but no, as a materialist/physicalist, I certainly do not have the same 'comfort' with it as you do.

But anyway, we risk derailing the thread. Nietzsche is an extreme case because he thought that there are no transcendental, absolute truths. The more common type of atheist would say that science tells us truths that are really independently true. The question is: what do people here think are really, permanently true things? And how do we know these?

I'm going to guess that a lot of atheists would opt for: the law of identity, the law of noncontradiction, and the law of excluded middle. No doubt many people who don't believe in God hold to these.

Yeah, I don't particularly want to talk about that either. Yeah, I don't really know where I stand on other potentially transcendental, absolute truths, but those latter three seem reasonable from a cursory Google search... though perhaps less confident about the last one, because of the notion of fuzzy logic, but I don't know enough about them to make an educated appraisal. But as to how or why logical truths can be relied upon, is something I'll have to ponder.