Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?

[SenseMaker007]

Okay, so if it's not identical, then what's the difference? How does non-natural knowledge differ from a priori knowledge (and perhaps I can just ignore my quibble regarding the impossibility of entirely a priori knowledge, for the time being).

It's not that it's non-natural knowledge per se, it's that goodness refers to a non-natural object. ie... goodness is not identical with happiness (Happiness is a natural object.)

The chapter began by dividing the views to be criticised into (a) those which, supposing good to be defined by reference to some supersensible reality, conclude that the sole good is to be found in such a reality, and may therefore be called Metaphysical, (b) those which assign a similar position to some natural object, and may therefore be called Naturalistic.

http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-...chapter-ii

So if you assign any value to an object without connecting it to subjective experience does it always qualify as non-natural, then?

What if you said "Mountains are good even if nobody benefits from them". What's a non-natural object? Aren't all objects natural?

I understand that happiness is a natural object but I'm struggling to think of anything else that isn't also a natural object.

I mean, let's put it this way:

I think that the totality of all existence refers to the universe (or multiverse). Do you agree?

I think that the universe is wholly natural. Do you agree?

If the universe wasn't wholly natural then parts of it would have to be supernatural. Do you agree?

The universe is made of things and nothing but things. Do you agree?

Things and objects are the same. Do you agree?

I want to see how we get to the existence of anything non-natural.

[The Grand Nudger]

You haven't heard my reasoning for rejecting nihilism  or what I think it's most damning potential incoherence revolves around, to know if it was full of contradictions in need of your correction, in the first place.  I've told you umpteen times that I'm not giving you one or arguing for or against the coherence of nihilism and yet here you are fixating on whether or not an argument you've never heard that I have no interest in making is adequate.

That out of the way. 

a statement that isn't truth-apt or coherent can't possibly express anything normative because a statement that isn't truth-apt or coherent doesn't express anything at all.

This is a direct reassertion of the non rule we already demonstrated to be false with Blackburnes Hooray and Boo.  Non truth apt statements and positions can and do express normatives and imperatives.  Even more to the point and additionally-

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One of a logic's principal concerns is logical validity. It seems that arguments with imperatives can be valid. Consider:
P1. Take all the books off the table!
P2. Foundations of Arithmetic is on the table.
C1. Therefore, take Foundations of Arithmetic off the table!

However, an argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises. This means the premises give us reason to believe the conclusion, or, alternatively, the truth of the premises determines truth of the conclusion. Since imperatives are neither true nor false and since they are not proper objects of belief, none of the standard accounts of logical validity apply to arguments containing imperatives.
Here is the dilemma. Either arguments containing imperatives can be valid or not. On the one hand, if such arguments can be valid, we need a new or expanded account of logical validity and the concomitant details. Providing such an account has proved challenging.[citation needed] On the other hand, if such arguments cannot be valid (either because such arguments are all invalid or because validity is not a notion that applies to imperatives), then our logical intuitions regarding the above argument (and others similar to it) are mistaken. Since either answer seems problematic, this has come to be known as Jørgensen's dilemma, named after Jørgen Jørgensen (da).
While this problem was first noted in a footnote by Frege, it received a more developed formulation by Jørgensen.[1][2]
[quote]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_logic

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The bolding is mine.  Can you explain how the statement above doesn't or can't express anything normative on account of how it isn't truth apt?  How about this similar statement.

Don't hit your brother!
Steve is your brother.
Therefore don't hit Steve.

Vanilla icecream is the best!
You should only eat the best icecream!
You should only eat vanilla icecream.

Don't affirm realist moral postulates.
Hedonism is a realist moral postulate.
Therefore don't affirm hedonism. 

[quote]
Is moral nihilism a morality? No. I think that it can be. That it possesses normatives, and possibly even considerations of desert.

Is moral nihilism a normatively ethical position? No.

As before, I think that it can be.

Does a statement have to be truth-apt to be meaningful? Yes.

Disagree.  My simply saying "Yuck" is meaningful...there isn't anyone reading this that doesn't know what yuck means.....but it's not truth apt.  

Does a statement have to be coherent to be truth-apt? Yes.

Disagree.  An incoherent statement is a statement that doesn't follow.  Statements that don't follow can be truth apt.  

Mammals have hair.
John has hair.
Therefore John is married

is incoherent...but every single statement there is truth apt..and..if john is married, true.  This is another attempt to create a non rule, as with non cognitivism and it's inability to meaningfully express normatives.

Can a position that, from its point of view, doesn't acknowledge the existence of anything normative, express anything normative from its point of view where such normativity doesn't even exist? No.

In fact it can, and does, -and neither of us disagree that it does..remember, you contend that the normativity is logical rather than moral..not that it doesn't exist or can't be expressed.  

In any case, non cognitivism doesn't deny that normatives exist, it posits that they aren't about what they purport to be about - that may be true.  Nihilism doesn't posit that normatives don't exist, only that normatives (and normativity) are baseless in some specific way (depending on the variant) - that may also be true. All that one must do to be coherent with nihilism is to contend that, likewise..if such normatives could be derived from nihilism they too would be similarly baseless for whatever reason.

Pick a "nihilism" and stick with it, no single response I can give you is going to apply to every variant.  If you want to explore nihilism and normativity through the lens of noncognitivism I'll refer you to Blackburne.  If you want to explore nihilism and normatives through the lens of truth aptness, I'll refer you to imperative logic.  

Imperative logic is a completely unsuitable response to non cognitivism, and Blackburnes formulation is a completely unsuitable response to truth aptness.  Perhaps this is why you;re convinced them I'm spouting off crazy incoherent shit? 

Some of these questions are ludicrously trivial and obvious ... but considering that from my point of view they're ALL ludicrously trivial and obvious and yet you still can't seem to grasp them ... I thought I'd put them all out there.

I limited my responses to things we have a meaningful disagreement on.

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one goddamned quote tag that won't work, lol.

[SenseMaker007]

You haven't heard my reasoning for rejecting nihilism  or what I think it's most damning potential incoherence revolves around, to know if it was full of contradictions in need of your correction, in the first place.

It was hard to make sense of anything you were saying because it wasn't clear. When are you going to address the fact that a non-normative theory doesn't express anything normative from its own non-normative point of view?

The thing about this truth-apt conversation is ... you've merely moved onto it because you couldn't defend yourself on the other matter. Is that what you do? When you can't explain X you move onto Y and when you can't explain that you move onto Z.

If you're struggling to explain X you should stick to trying to explain it or admit that you're unable to rather than moving onto something else. Just because you want to move on without addressing your mistakes doesn't mean I do.

  I've told you umpteen times that I'm not giving you one or arguing for or against the coherence of nihilism and yet here you are fixating on whether or not an argument you've never heard that I have no interest in making is adequate.

You told me a few times at most. I've told you far, far more times that I'm not making any normative statements and yet you still insist that I have without demonstrating it. You have also insisted that ethical nihilism implicitly makes normative statements but you haven't demonstrated it (because you can't).

This is a direct reassertion of the non rule we already demonstrated to be false with Blackburnes Hooray and Boo. 

You've demonstrated absolutely nothing.

Non truth apt statements and positions can and do express normatives and imperatives.  Even more to the point and additionally-

You can't just assert things and expect them to fly. You have to back them up. Especially when you contradict yourself.

One of a logic's principal concerns is logical validity. It seems that arguments with imperatives can be valid. Consider:
P1. Take all the books off the table!
P2. Foundations of Arithmetic is on the table.
C1. Therefore, take Foundations of Arithmetic off the table!

I am well aware that imperatives can be valid and getting from that to the conclusion that something can be meaningful without being truth-apt is a non-sequitur.

However, an argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises. This means the premises give us reason to believe the conclusion, or, alternatively, the truth of the premises determines truth of the conclusion. Since imperatives are neither true nor false and since they are not proper objects of belief, none of the standard accounts of logical validity apply to arguments containing imperatives.

And you honestly think that this means that imperatives can actually be neither true nor false?

Are you not aware that there is a whole branch of philosophy dedicated to theory of truth? This whole matter is in dispute among philosophers. It's not settled because you can quote part of one article from Wikipedia.

Can you explain how the statement above doesn't or can't express anything normative on account of how it isn't truth apt?  How about this similar statement.

Well, you made your whole post extremely awkward to quote by messing it up with a bunch of completely unnecessary color and font tags and I have to remove each one manually in order to respond without your post looking like a complete mess. It's really not worth my time or energy to clean up that mess for you when I'm still wondering if you're completely beyond hope when it comes to having a discussion.

Don't hit your brother!
Steve is your brother.
Therefore don't hit Steve.

This is not an example of something that isn't truth-apt.

Something is only ever not truth-apt if it is incoherent and coherence and meaning are the same thing.

Vanilla icecream is the best!
You should only eat the best icecream!
You should only eat vanilla icecream.

You completely ignored my response to this one already. As I said, saying that X is "the best" has no meaning without saying in what way X is the best.

I think that it can be.  That it possesses normatives, and possibly even considerations of desert.

And I'm not interested in your mere assertions that appear to either be completely faith-based or, if they have support, you're completely incapable of explaining what that support is.

Yes, we know. You think ethical nihilism, despite being a non-normative theory, expresses something normative even from its own point of view where statements aren't normative. Do you also think squares have 5 sides?

As before, I think that it can be.

It's absurd. Unless you mean something other than what I mean, but I've been very clear about what I mean ... and you have not only failed to address me ... but you've also said I've said things I haven't.

Do you at least retract your assertion that I stated something normative? If you're unwilling to retract your assertion that a non-normative position can be normative then you could at least retract the one where you said I said something that I didn't say, and you insisted that I did, but never backed it up.

Disagree.  My simply saying "Yuck" is meaningful...there isn't anyone reading this that doesn't know what yuck means.....but it's not truth apt. 

It's only meaningful if you assume it means, for instance, something like "That's disgusting!". And "That's disgusting!" is truth-apt.

It's only not truth-apt if we don't assume that it has any meaning similar to the one above ... and that's because meaning and truth-aptness, in this context, is the same thing. 

Disagree.  An incoherent statement is a statement that doesn't follow.  Statements that don't follow can be truth apt.  

That's not what an incoherent statement is.

Mammals have hair.
John has hair.
Therefore John is married

is incoherent...

That is not incoherent. The conclusion merely doesn't follow. There's nothing about that that we can't make sense of. It's perfectly coherent.

"Squares have 4 sides but also have 5 sides at the same time, to the same degree and in the same way" ... now that's incoherent.

"X is neither true nor not true" ... that's incoherent.

So contradiction is one way for something to be incoherent. Another way is for a concept to be incomplete. For example, the libertarian concept of free will fails to map onto reality even in an illusory way.

When a statement is incoherent it isn't stating anything meaningful.

"Mammals have hair, John has hair, therefore John is married" just means "because mammals have hair and John has hair it means that John must be married". It's perfectly meaningful ... it's just that the argument is invalid.

but every single statement there is truth apt..and..if john is married, true.  This is another attempt to create a non rule, as with non cognitivism and it's inability to meaningfully express normatives.

It wasn't incoherent.

Rather than jumping in with more fallacies and nonsense why don't you explain how a theory that denies normative expression can express anything normative from its own point of view where it denies normative expressions?

Can a position that, from its point of view, doesn't acknowledge the existence of anything normative, express anything normative from its point of view where such normativity doesn't even exist? No.

In fact it can, and does, -and neither of us disagree that it does..

Okay, I give up. If I clearly express how you're holding a view akin to a square circle, jumping in and saying that I also hold that same square-circle view and that I don't disagree with you is just the final straw of nonsense. You are completely incapable of having a discussion because you are completely incapable of addressing another person's point of view accurately, it seems.

remember, you contend that the normativity is logical rather than moral..not that it doesn't exist or can't be expressed. 

I never said that normativity is logical rather than moral ... I said that just because I say that ethical nihlism logically incorrect it doesn't mean that I'm saying it's normatively incorrect. I contrasted normative incorrectness and logical incorrectness ... rather than conflating them. To say X is logically wrong is not necessarily to say that X is morally wrong. That is all that I was saying. It's an absolutely basic point and you can't even seem to grasp it.

Why is it so extremely difficult to communicate with you? You're the problem because I don't have this problem with other people I discuss with. Some people misrepresent what I say or fail to address what I say sometimes ... but they often get it right as well ... and I am able to explain myself and they listen to and understand my explaination even if they don't agree with it. You can't seem to get it right even once and yet you continue to insist that I agree with you. No, I don't agree with your claims that go completely against mine and are akin to saying that squares are circular. You are not worth my time unless when you come back you actually either retract or give an argument for your claims or you actually address what I actually said for once.

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't understand any of these terms, even ones you've been dropping every third line, and don't remember the things you've previously said, and don't realize that you're asking things I've been giving examples of in every post.

WTF am I supposed to do with that, lol? Sure, though, it's probably a me issue. I'm a nutbar for saying the things that ethical theorists say, to you, lol.

We disagree, ultimately, about the grand total of one thing - whether or not nihilism could qualify as a morality. This is a relatively simple disagreement, at least between us, that hinges on whether or not the distinction between logical and moral normativity is valid in some discussion of moral principles derived from meta-ethical positions. Again, neither of us denies that there is the potential for normative content in nihilism. One of us contends, only, that this normativity is not moral normativity.

I understand the contention of difference between the two, though we're having a conversation of pretty limited scope... so it doesn't help to say that sometimes they're different when I'm asking you to ponder the question of whether this might not be one of those times.

Understand?

Before getting into any of this again, understand that from a linguistic standpoint it;s very likely that meaning and content are essentially normative. It may be that we can;t help but do this even if we don;t want to and shouldn't (from the perspective of some limitation in any given moral framework, that is, don't read too much into it - but notice that normative language is here again? I literally can't express this to you without using it, any more than you were able to express your own view without drifting into comments like correctness and which position deserved what. Maybe it's a linguistic tick. But...

You will be hard pressed to find a morality that doesn't at least contend that it's statements are derived logically from it's principles. You may be unsatisfied with the logical or descriptive bridge into moral normativism, but that would be a dissatisfaction present in any such contention. If nihilism entails or embeds a set of normative statements that are derived logically from it it, in what way are those normative statements different from the others? Those other statements are -also- logically normative, which is the force by which their moral normativity - in the same statement, is argued. This is so even if we allow that the initial statement may be a non truth apt statement, like an opinion or a taste for or against this or that or just a pure expression of emotion. I use the exclamation point to describe potentially non truth apt statements and refer you back to the link on jorgensens dilemma in imperative logic - wherein, even if we side with the notion that these arguments don;t follow (assaulting our intuitions about them) and thus are incoherent - they still express content and meaning.

Hurting people is bad!
John is a person.
Hurting John is bad.

or

Don't hurt people!
John is a person.
Don't hurt John.

or this fun combo.

Hurting people is bad!
Don't hurt people!
John is a person
Therefore don't hurt john, that would be bad.

and Blackburnes formulation of a solution to content and meaning in a valid framework from noncognitivism.

(a) H!(B!p --> B!q)

Are you following me thusfar? Can nihilism produce such statements? Yes. Does it produce those statements by the ame means as the other candidate moralities? Yes. Is the production of those statements taken to qualify those candidates -as- moralities? Yes.

What reason is there, then, to place the wall of seperation between those candidates as moralities and nihilism as -not that-, other than some insistence that nihilism says so - which in point of fact it actually doesn't?

It's not due to the non rule of how noncognitivism can't produce such statements, either. Mostly because normative expressions can be derived from non cognitive statements.

It's not due to how they're logically normative statements, because those morally normative statements are also logically normative statements in moral realism, for example.

We could potentially, and to use your language from before, say that it's relatively empty. That there's not enough there, there, to qualify - but in truth we'd only be asserting that it were a relatively -small- morality, not that it doesn't meet the qualifications that other approved candidates meet, just that it does so in a minimalist way. There isn't alot therefore not enough of this content, in effect.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and in case you don't, in the event that your pigheaded silliness just can;t be helped, let's try an entirely different angle for why and how nihilism could qualify as a morality.  

You can moan about something marginally different for awhile. 

The combination of gibbords thesis and hares dictive indifference of logic.  Roughly, Gibbord concludes that for any complex sentence containing normative predicates in embedded contexts, we can replace all normative predicates with equivalent descriptive predicates.  Hare, for that part, concludes that there is no fundamental difference between dictive and imperative logic.  

In this view, any normative statement has an equivalent descriptive statement, vv, and the same logical operations can be carried out with or on either. They are content and meaning equivalent, and equally suitable to truth inspection through rational thought.

IOW, when a person says something to the effect of "you can't correctly be a nihilist and believe x" they are considering whether to affirm or endorse the rationality of holding some set of statements to be true with respect to their logical connections to nihilism. The equivalent normative statement from this would be "If you are a nihilist, don't believe x", or "if you are a nihilist, you shouldn't believe x.".

Let's try to rope Vulcan in again with his much more succinct description of nihilism and see what sort of crazy shit we can find. Moral nihilists assert, one way or another, that these moral features we refer to as being "out there" in the world simply aren't out there. That the world lacks moral features. Well, okay, but if that's so, it doesn't entail that nihilism lacks moral features anymore than the nihilists saying that there are no moral features in the world is a rejection of those moral features residing within us. That they exist as props in our head... but we're essentially making them up.

Is it consistent with nihilism to state that people and positions can possess moral features without those moral features being "out there" in the world. I think so. Hell, that's the central contention of nihilism in so many forms as it apprehends the moral landscape!

If that position happened to be nihilism, that wouldn't even be surprising from the perspective of nihilism, just another example of us making shit up. Nihilism is, at least, suitable for the same kinds of normative semantics that any other rational position would be. Even if it happens to have some metacomment on them.

[SenseMaker007]

You don't understand any of these terms, even ones you've been dropping every third line, and don't remember the things you've previously said, and don't realize that you're asking things I've been giving examples of in every post.

That you contradict yourself, dodge questions, go on irrelevant tangents and repeatedly make baseless assertions which you consistently avoid to substantiate doesn't mean that I don't understand the terms. When you're unable to explain A you move onto B and when you're unable to explain B you move onto C ... all the way through to Z. I'm not prepared to play that sort of game.

I *do* remember what I previously said but I didn't say what you said I said which is exactly why you can't substantiate your claims that I've said things that I haven't said. You're unable to substantiate that I said X because I didn't say X. The fact you wish to misrepresent what I said doesn't mean that I don't remember what I said. I just didn't say what you said I said. You keep making non-sequiturs and saying A implies B when it doesn't. I'm the one being consistent here and you're the one who just makes one baseless assertion of contradictory nonsense and then moves onto the next one when I try to get you to address it.

And with regards to the examples that you've supposedly given: I've already pointed out why your examples are erroneous but rather than addressing that you just move onto something else.

Are you following me thusfar?  Can nihilism produce such statements?  Yes.

Ethical nihilism cannot say that anything is good or bad in a moral sense or that anybody ought to do anything in a moral sense. That's the whole point of ethical nihilism. It's absurd that you claim that I don't understand any of the terms when you can't even understand the basic concept of ethical nihilism.

 Again, neither of us denies that there is the potential for normative content in nihilism.

And this is yet again another example of a misrepresentation of my position. My whole contention is that nihilism doesn't express anything normative. You keep insisting that I am saying the exact opposite of what I've said all along and pretending that I agree with your contradictory and baseless nonsense when I've opposed it throughout this whole discussion. You've done this repeatedly.

Until you can learn to correctly address somebody else's position then nobody should bother discussing anything with you. Now that is me making a normative statement.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

Do you not remember this?  Does nihilism say that moral realism is false?  Yes it does.  

Even more embedded, is saying that nihilism is logically incorrect and incoherent - false, a normative statement?  Yes. It imposes a set of restrictions not on what can be - as we both agree that a nihilist or some nihilist position -could- offer..say an incoherent semantics, but instead as a comment on what should be, if we're to do nihilism correctly or to do logic correctly.

There is normative content in nihilism, and normitive content in your statements about nihilism.  You think that it's logically normative, rather than morally normative.  You simply don;t acknowledge your normative statements as such.  The latter is unimportant but actually was half of my original contention.  The former is what you've spent so much time waffling over since.

Our only disagreement is as to whether this normative content, which we both acknowledge to exist, can be expressed as morally normative content, I suppose, consistently with the framework of nihilism.

I think that it can, or at least could, for the reasons addressed at length. It is not clear what the distinction between nihilisms normative content and moral realisms normative content (as examples of how normative content is produced) is supposed to be in principle...and coming at it from a less generous angle I'm just not wedded to the idea of denying this statements truth aptness and truth value in order to avoid the consequence of nihilism rendering itself logically incoherent with respect to whatever it is you're discussing, nor can I be sure...again for reasons stated at length, that doing so would actually prevent that consequence from arising.

That would be nihilisms problem, not mine - and not your,s either. Not ours. I'm only wondering and asking you to wonder whether the normative content in nihilism is, genuinely, qualitatively different than the normative content in moral realism, such that distinguishing between the two sets of normatives in this conversation starts to make some sort of sense beyond the inistence of what one or another position claims about itself or the other positions.

I do think that between nietzsche, blackburne, frege, jorgensen, moore (courtesy of vulcan), Hare and Gibbord you have plenty to chew on and could understand what I'm expressing if you chose to dig into any of those examples. Ive assumed that your description of nihilism is an accurate one (which i don;t believe) and I;ve assumed that your assessment of nihilism's coherence is accurate (which I can agree with, but don't believe). You could do me or any of these gentlemen the same courtesy by imagining that maybe, just one piece of all of this might have some truth to a bit of it, lol. Right?

We have this one area of disagreement, and unless we can find at least a tiny smidgeon of common ground in all of that, a basis of shared facts- we're not going to be able to reach a point where you could say - "I don't believe that, I entirely reject your reasoning - but I understand why you or any other nominally rational person would/could believe that" - are we?

[SenseMaker007]

Do you not remember this?  Does nihilism say that moral realism is false?  Yes it does.  

I never denied that I said that. I just denied that nihilism says that moral realism is morally false. Moral nihilism doesn't say anything morally. If it did then it wouldn't be morally nihilistic! Something you have completely failed to acknowledge yet!

Even more embedded, is saying that nihilism is logically incorrect and incoherent - false, a normative statement?  Yes.  

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, completely wrong. Come back when you know what a normative statement is. Get these basics right first; then return to the discussion.

You think that it's logically normative, rather than morally normative.  You simply don;t acknowledge your normative statements as such. 

And, as I said, you can't make that move from the perspective of moral nihilism. You're still looking at it from a moral realism angle if you think that ethical nihilism implies anything that isn't ethically nihilistic. My whole contention is that ethical nihilism itself doesn't express anything normative because from its perspective there is no normativity to express.

Our only disagreement is as to whether this normative content, which we both acknowledge to exist, can be expressed as morally normative content, I suppose, consistently with the framework of nihilism.

We both agree that they exist but moral nihilism doesn't, that's the point. How can X say that Y functions as Z if X doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Y? Something has to exist before it can do anything.

We have this one area of disagreement, and unless we can find at least a tiny smidgeon of common ground in all of that, a basis of shared facts- we're not going to be able to reach a point where you could say - "I don't believe that, I entirely reject your reasoning - but I understand why you or any other nominally rational person would/could believe that" - are we?

The common ground is that we are both moral realists but I'm far more interested in who has the more coherent, more relevant and less contradictory reasoning on the matters in which we disagree. You may see it as a small quibble but it's not small if you're doing the akin to saying that the logically impossible is possible. A view that says X does not exist can't be saying that X does anything.

 You could do me or any of these gentlemen the same courtesy by imagining that maybe, just one piece of all of this might have some truth to a bit of it, lol.  Right?

That isn't an argument. No, there can be no piece of truth in the view that X can be deemed to function as Y whilst also being deemed to not exist. As I said: Something has to exist before it can do anything. When you're up against a wall you resort to total illogic. It's infinitely more likely that you've misunderstood intelligent thinkers than it is that they agree with you that the logically impossible is logically possible. And, even if they somehow all did, they'd obviously be wrong in that case. An argument from authority is a fallacy rather than something that can trump the law of identity.

[SenseMaker007]

@Gae Bolga Your claim is that ethical nihilism implicitly makes a normative statement. Ethical nihilism is divided into noncognitivism and Error Theory. Noncognitivism is the view that all normative statements are meaningless and Error Theory is the view that all normative statements are false. For your claim to be true then both the statement "All normative statements are meaningless." and the statement "All normative statements are false." would have to be normative statements in their own terms. If you agree with this then it leads me to wonder if you understand what a normative statement is. You are implicitly making two arguments:

Argument 1:

Premise 1: Noncognitivism says that normative statements are meaningless.
Premsie 2: Noncognitivism is true
Conclusion: Therefore noncognitivism is making a normative statement.

Argument 2:

Premise 1: Error Theory says that all normative statements are false.
Premise: Error Theory is true.
Conclusion: Therefore Error Theory is making a normative statement.

These arguments are both invalid because the conclusion, in both cases, is an obvious non-sequitur.

Now, I am well aware that you aren't explicitly saying that either of these views are true because you are a moral realist and you haven't offered any arguments that they're true. But you keep claiming that ethical nihilism makes normative statements even in its own terms and even from its own perspective. That is implicitly saying that even if ethical nihilism is true it still makes a normative statement. This is absurd because, as you can see, there is nothing embedded in the premise of ethical nihilism that leads to the conclusion that ethical nihilism is making a normative statement.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're making up another non rule.  No, for normative content, functions, implications, imperatives, or dictives to be possible from nihilism, neither of those two statements need to be normative, any more than the statement "goodness is a natural property" needs to be normative for natural realism to possess normative content.

If you took the time to explore the dictive indifference of logic or jorgensens dilemma you would have immediately realized that any of those three statements, your two and my own, might actually have dictive equivalents for each descriptive suitable for the same types of truth inspection as any other proposition, though.

Non cognitive nihilism states that moral proclamations are not propositions.  Not that they're meaningless, in any case.  That they are not truth apt.  This in itself cannot prevent the valid expression of normative content as propositions as blackburnes boo and hooray operators show.

It -may be- that nihlism is not a morality, or that it cannot possess or express normative content - but not for ny of the non rules you've been creating. It may also be that any morality or normative content from nihlism validly derived makes nihilism self defeating in some way - but that's neither of our problem. It may also be that normative content not only can be derived from nihilism, but that this content is not in any genuine contradiction with nihilism.

For example, the dictive equivalent from above "don't affirm the meaningfulness/truth of normative statements" is embedded in "normative statements are meaningless/false". That's a normative. It can be couched in imperative logic in what seems to be a valid form even though it's not a truth apt statement. Nihilism could produce an endless list of normatives, and so long as nihilism posits that these normatives are exactly like the others (a bunch of boos and hissing) then it's not in genuine contradiction on it's own terms. Normatives pose a much greater problem for cognitivist nihilism, in this context, than for non cognitivist nihilism.

Cognitivism doesn't have a strong theory for how a true statement could validly follow a false or non truth apt statement, which is pretty much the antithesis of cognitive truth evaluation, lol. Recall, also, that if non-cognitivist theories are true - then all moral normatives simply -are- non cognitivist.