Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?

[The Grand Nudger]

Incoherent positions are constantly posing normative structures.  Nutball cult leaders bank on it.  

-I'm- not the one making those normative staements.  I'm repeating them back to you.  They're what you told me a nihilist can't coherently do.  In normative semantics, these are ought nots. This because you asked me to explain my previous comments.

[SenseMaker007]

It may all be meaningless (in some meaningful way, lol),

if it's meaningless "in some meaninful way" then it's not meaningless.

but even meaninglessness can present a normative structure.

You are yet to demonstrate this.

It's more accurate to say that meaninglessness is incoherent. It's certainly not accurate, as you keep insisting, to say that an incoherent position is expressing something normative. An incoherent position can't express anything at all. If it could, it wouldn't be an incoherent position.

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Incoherent positions are constantly posing normative structures.  Nutball cult leaders bank on it.  

Still no examples of how it's even logically possible for something logically incoherent to express anything.

-I'm- not the one making those normative staements.  I'm repeating them back to you. 

You may think you are, but you haven't actually demonstrated or explained it. All you've done is dodged my questions.

I shall ask you them again: (1) How does a noncognitivist position express anything normative? (2) How is saying that all statements about morality are false express anything normative? (3) How can an entirely incoherent position express anything at all, let alone anything normative?

They're what you told me a nihilist can't coherently do.  In normative semantics, these are ought nots.  This because you asked me to explain my previous comments.

I think it's useless to discuss with you if you ignore all direct questions and just insist that I'm wrong without any counterarguments. This is not any sort of explanation. I am asking you how saying something is meaningless/incoherent is expressing that you ought to or ought not to do something and your response is to just to barely assert that it is. Regardless of what you claim, "Doing X is meaningless" does not mean "You ought to not do X."

This time are you going to answer my direct questions directly or am I going to have to deem discussing with you a complete waste of time?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not arguing for or against nihilism, insisting that nihilism is coherent, or anything like that.  I'm giving you examples from your own comments about nihilism that present themselves as normatives.  You're building a list of what a nihilist can and can't do, here.  Obviously they can say incoherent things, as a matter of practical ability.  So this list of can and can'ts isn't a description of our abilities, but what restrictions are placed on the set of propositions that can be affirmed from nihilism, properly understood and held to be true.    

-I'm not disagreeing with you-

Only suggesting that this minimal set of normatives is derived in the same way as any other set and potentially ubiquitous to moral comments. Normatives don't have to be coherent to exist, and they don't have to arise from a coherent position to exist. There's no requirement that normatives be cognitivist (in fact, if noncognitivism is true then all normatives are derived from non-cognitive states).

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This might help, it's a rehash of that earlier convo.  In Will to Power, Nietzsche commented that nihilism was -not only the belief that everything deserves to perish, but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plow; one destroys.

Why did he think as much?  Vulcan will have more to say here, but I think that at a minimum we can posit that he believed that even in his position from radical skepticism, he saw a set of minimal normatives.  The notion of desert and will to proper action (defined by the position itself) was a necesarry part of understanding nihilism and holding it to be true.   This quote gets sensationalized, but consider that the will to destroy can express itself as nothing more than providing legitimate criticism of moral structures in the hopes that they are reformed or abandoned.

There are things a nihlist shouldn't do, and things a nihilist should - or, if we prefer, things a nihilist can't do (properly understood and genuinely held) and things a nihilist had to do (properly understood and genuinely held).

[SenseMaker007]

I'm giving you examples from your own comments about nihilism that present themselves as normatives. 

Can you explain how any of those comments are actually expressing anything normative?

You're building a list of what a nihilist can and can't do, here. 

How so?

 Normatives don't have to be coherent to exist, and they don't have to arise from a coherent position to exist.

Did I say that normatives have to be coherent to exist or did I say that a position has to be coherent in order to coherently express something normative?

There are things a nihlist shouldn't do, and things a nihilist should

Does this imply that a nihilistic position expresses something normative or says that anybody ought to do or avoid doing anything?


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Does talking about what Nietzhere believed about nihilism actually answer my questions?

Have you given a single argument for how I've made any normative statements and how nihilism and Error Theory are implicitly normative? Have you merely asserted such things and failed to back those assertions up?

Have you answered a single one of my direct questions? Have I answered all of your questions?

I am going to keep responding in questions until you start answering them rather than avoiding them (because you either can't or won't answer them). If you continue to fail to answer then it's clear that you are just a timewaster and I should discuss this matter with somebody else instead, who is both able and willing to discuss it, no offense.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm giving you examples from your own comments about nihilism that present themselves as normatives. 

Can you explain how any of those comments are actually expressing anything normative?

Yes, but you don't need my help, you've explained it yourself in thread, here;

Not if you're correctly an Error Theorist or noncognitivst.

The normative statement here is that error theorists and noncognitivists should not or ought not, or can't x -presumably, because if they did, they would not be error theorists or noncognitivists correctly.

 Normatives don't have to be coherent to exist, and they don't have to arise from a coherent position to exist.

Did I say that normatives have to be coherent to exist or did I say that a position has to be coherent in order to coherently express something normative?

You asked me this question, here;

What's more, how can an incoherent position express normative function (or any function for that matter)?

Unless normatives must must be expressed by or derived from coherent positions then the coherence of the position has no relationship to whether or not normatives can be expressed by it or derived from it.

There are things a nihlist shouldn't do, and things a nihilist should

Does this imply that a nihilistic position expresses something normative or says that anybody ought to do or avoid doing anything?

That which we should and/or shouldn't do is the definition of a normative function.

Does talking about what Nietzhere believed about nihilism actually answer my questions?

It provides you with the background.  I'm not the first or only person to notice that nihilism can provide normative functions.  Nietzsche noticed it, and contemporary ethical theorists wonder whether any comment on morality, even a metaphysical position, can be completely divorced from normative functions such as should/should nots and desert properly understood and genuinely held.  What you call correctly.

Consider this.  If an error theorist is compelled by their position to deny the truth of the moral statement "x deserves y for z" - they have stated that x does not deserve y for z. A negative assessment, but, ultimately..still a comment on desert.  This is, possibly, why Nietzsche thought that nihilism contained impulse to destroy.

[SenseMaker007]

The normative statement here is that error theorists and noncognitivists should not or ought not, or can't x -presumably, because if they did, they would not be error theorists or noncognitivists correctly.

The statement doesn't say that they should or ought not to do X. It doesn't say that they would be in error normatively. It just says that the position is logically incorrect and logically incoherent. There's no normative statement there at all.

Unless normatives must must be expressed by or derived from coherent positions then the coherence of the position has no relationship to whether or not normatives can be expressed by it or derived from it.

Normatives can still exist regardless of what metaethical position somebody holds, whether cognitivist or noncognitivist, coherent or incoherent. I am not claiming that normatives can't exist at the same time as somebody holding an incoherent position. I'm saying that an incoherent position can't coherently express something normative and therefore can't express something normative because an incoherent expression isn't expressing/communicating anything.

That which we should and/or shouldn't do is the definition of a normative function.

That doesn't answer the question.

We may have normative function without being able to express it. And we can't express it without coherently expressing it. So my question was how an incoherent position can express anything normative. I didn't say that we can't have it without having a coheren position... I said that an incoherent position doesn't express anything normative. Incoherent positions and incoherent statements don't express or communicate things.

It provides you with the background.  I'm not the first or only person to notice that nihilism can provide normative functions.

What do you mean when you say that nihilism can provide a normative function?

I'm not saying that morality can't objectively be real regardless of whether you hold a coherent position on the matter or not. I'm not saying that nihilism can't be moral or immoral. I'm not saying that nihilism can't be normatively correct or incorrect. I'm saying that from the metaethical point of view of moral nihilism nothing is being normatively expressed.

If an error theorist is compelled by their position to deny the truth of the moral statement "x deserves y for z" - they have stated that x does not deserve y for z. 

You don't understand at all. Saying "X deserves Y for Z" is already a normative position, rather than a metaethical one. So obviously a normative position is already normative, that doesn't explain anything.

The metaethical position of "moral statements have no meaning" and the metaethical position of "moral statements are false" doesn't imply that anybody ought to do, ought to avoid doing, deserves or doesn't deserve, anything. That's the point. Those statements don't express anything normative. If I say "Morality is meaningless" my position may itself be meaningless, but then that certainly doesn't mean that I am expressing something normative because if it did mean that then I wouldn't be saying that morality was meaningless, because I'd be giving normative meaning to it. Incoherent positions can't say anything ... it takes coherent meaning to say something meaningful. There's no such thing as incoherent meaning.

[The Grand Nudger]

The normative statement here is that error theorists and noncognitivists should not or ought not, or can't x -presumably, because if they did, they would not be error theorists or noncognitivists correctly.

The statement doesn't say that they should or ought not to do X. It doesn't say that they would be in error normatively. It just says that the position is logically incorrect and logically incoherent. There's no normative statement there at all.

In what way is this normative of logical correctness and coherence different from a moral realists normatives?  Or any other normatives derived from any other meta-ethical position?  
Nietzsche believed that his own normatives could be derived from nihilism in that fashion.

[SenseMaker007]

In what way is this normative of logical correctness and coherence different from a moral realists normatives?

I never said that it was "normative of logical correctness". I wasn't talking about something being normatively correct. I was talking about something being logically correct. Saying that something is morally right or wrong is not the same thing as saying that something is logically correct or incorrect.

 

Or any other normatives derived from any other meta-ethical position?  
Nietzsche believed that his own normatives could be derived from nihilism in that fashion.

This still has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. What about the statement "moral statements are meaningless" says that you ought to do or not do anything? The answer is nothing.

When I say moral nihilism is logically incorrect, incoherent and false I am not saying "moral nihilism is morally wrong." That's not what "logically incorrect, incoherent and false" means. I have made no normative statements, regardless of what you say.

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You just did.  You just announced it impermissible to label things permissible.

This is still false because I didn't do that at all, regardless of what you say. I never said that it was impermissible to label anything permissible.

[The Grand Nudger]

Is there a difference between normative and logical correctness in moral realism?

[SenseMaker007]

Is there a difference between normative and logical correctness in moral realism?

Yes, because the latter only deals with metaethics. Saying "moral realism is false" doesn't mean "moral realism is morally wrong" and saying "moral realism is true" doesn't mean "moral realism is morally right." Those would be additional normative statements added on top of the metaethics. You'd at the very least have to also believe that the truth is morally good, and falsehood is morally bad, in addition to that, first.

Moral realism can be true, and you can, therefore, be correct to believe in it (logically correct, not morally correct), without you making any normative statements. And moral realism can be false, and you can, therefore, to be correct to not believe in it (logically correct, not morally correct), but you can still make normative statements. A nihilist can make a normative statement and say "I ought to do X", despite the fact that it contradicts their own position and a moral realist can refrain from making normative statements, and never say anything like "I ought to do X", or anything similar, regardless of the fact that they're a moral realist. Whoever is right and whoever is wrong doesn't change who is making normative statements and who isn't.

What I actually said was that saying that moral nihilism is logically incorrect and incoherent isn't making a normative statement or saying that nihilism is morally wrong.