RE: Any Nihilists here?
August 24, 2023 at 10:56 am
(This post was last modified: August 24, 2023 at 10:59 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 24, 2023 at 8:24 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: I would say self-constructed meaning clearly exists, in the sense people have them (and they could be reduced to brain states). It clearly makes some people happy. The sensation of meaningfulness is a pleasant one.
Do they have an objective value? No. I don't think so.
Same with morality. Many people strongly feel murder is wrong. Society reflects and embeds this feeling, as does our language. Is it an objective truth? No, I don't think so.
Same with God. Some have a direct sensation of His existence and base their lives around that. Fo I think God objectively exists? I think it highly unlikely, no.
The objective case for murder being wrong would not rest on whether many people feel it, whether society deems it so. Those are..respectively, the subjectivist and/or noncognitivist.... and relativist cases. It could conceivably be the case that in a murderous society many people would agree to murder and the government could set up a murder quota that you have to fill. Nothing about those peoples agreement or the governments quota changes what -murder- is or does. It would still be the same act.
Thing is, if you ask someone why murder is wrong they're not likely to say "many people feel like it is" or "my society deems it so". They're going to give you a string of assertions to facts -about murder-. That's what moral objectivism is. Where a thing is wrong because of some fact about the thing, rather than some people, or a society. With the above in mind, consider yourself a citizen of MurderWorld, but..you being you, you're an objector to MurderWorld's ideology of murder. Would you be lying or mis-stating asome fact when you describe what murder does? Probably not.
If we translate these as genuoine opinions (rather than error theory framing) an issue becomes clear. The answer to the question "is something wrong" is actually asking different things for each system. Is murder wrong can be "do many people feel icky about murder?" or "does society prohibit murder" or "is there some bad about murder".
Similarly, when people claim they can feel the presence of god - you may say that god does not objectively exist - but that's not actually a response to their claim - which is about what they feel. God not existing is not a problem for people experiencing the sense of the numinous. Atheists also feel this. It a ubiquitous human trait - and I think that we probably do exist.
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