[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[emjay]

Does that mean Nietzsche was some sort of Idealist? 

Depends what you mean by Idealist, I guess. Platonic idealists are the opposite of Nietzsche, holding that there is an eternal realm of ideas. German Idealist -- maybe so, in a kind of extreme way. 

But I'm not clear on how we should use "Idealist" here.

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.

Seems a pretty extreme position to hold. 

Probably safe to say that any sentence beginning "Nietzsche believed __________," could end with "which was a pretty extreme position."

Yeah, I gathered. 

We wouldn't be here if there wasn't at least some reliable causal structure to the universe.

I think so too. So, as the OP is asking, we'd want to inquire as to what those unchanging and reliable causal structures are exactly.

Well I don't have much to say on that, beyond accepting the fundamental natural laws as brute facts. I'm currently (slowly) reading On The Origin Of Time by Thomas Hertog (who worked with Stephen Hawking until his death), which is expected to maybe have something to say on these issues. 

There's no doubt that his ideas have been way more influential in the social sciences than in physics. As Rev. Rye said, the Ubermensch is reinventing values. Not laws of mechanics. The sorts of causal structures we tend to question today are more societal, traditional, and cultural -- or thanks to Nietzsche we see that what used to be called science is now seen as culture, and therefore may be questioned. 

So post-Nietzscheans have made careers on the challenging and reinterpretation of things that were once taken as objective science, but which they showed to be definitions or values that might in fact change. Foucault, famously, attempted to demonstrate that human sexuality and mental illness are far less physical/scientific fields and more related to power dynamics and tradition.

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.

The whole trans debate that's going on now is a descendant of Nietzsche's provocations. For a long time people thought that maleness or femaleness were objectively determined by anatomy or, later, chromosomes -- hard science. But now people have declared that this objective science has no value, and that a person can overrule anatomy through feeling. Basically, will overcomes anatomy.

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.

[Belacqua]

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

[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.

[Belacqua]

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 agree that when Nietzsche posits chaos as the real state of the world, as an assertion about physics, then he can't be right. There is an important sense, though, in which he says important things.

We live almost entirely in a human world. It is made, tended, valued, organized, by people. The vast majority of what this world means to us is created by people. 

So think of a diamond ring, for example. It is a physical bit of stuff, and the gold and diamond are physical substances with scientifically knowable traits. But it isn't those traits we buy the ring for. What's important are:

~ the beauty, which is in the eye of the beholder.
~ the meaning, which is a social tradition: "we're engaged." 
~ the use value, which is to show social status.
~ the price, which comes from social relations.
~ the emotional value, which is purely from individual associations. 

If there were no more people in the world, all those things -- which are the important things about the ring -- would no longer exist. It's in this sense that the world is meaninglessness or chaotic unless and until people create mental phenomena. And if we were to suddenly lose our sense of all those things in the world as a whole, then (as he says in Tragedy) we would find life not worth living at all.

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.

The God question is one of the big ones of course. I should probably work harder to reach some sort of conclusions about that. 

But also moral and aesthetic judgments. I think we can say things like "it's morally bad to kill infants for fun," or "Proust is better than Dan Brown," and reasonably hold that these are true statements. Not provable by science, but still true.

[Rev. Rye]

You don’t, but evidently Neo does.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that logical mechanics are in more trouble from quantum mechanics than logical absolutes are from philosophical nihilism. But, sure, now we have three. I think there are absolutes in morality, I think there are absolutes in logic. I guess this is unsurprising since I think the two are either the same thing or very closely related. I also feel the sense of the numinous, which doesn't strike me as an absolute, but it was put on the table. Four if we count "reality" as an absolute. Really, any time we talk about facts of any kind we're playing with absolutes. It's the last one, I think, that illustrates my thoughts on the matter of the OPQ the best.

We believe in things like facts, and describe things as fact alike. Even when we are not describing actual facts. Whether there really are facts, whether reality is...or not. The OPQ relies on the unspoken assumption that there is something amiss between atheism and a belief in absolutes - but even if there ever were.....I think we'd find that a great number of atheists..being people...would manage to believe in them anyway. I think we'd find the same in theist demographics. If there were something amiss between theism and absolutes - theists would still believe in them. The challenge is not for people who believe in facts like "earth exists" to explain that belief. It's for the theist who thinks there's something amiss to explain why that statement is only true or false with respect to a gods existence.

[brewer]

I will absoletely not believe in religious god(s) until concrete evidence is provided. No philosophy needed.

The idea that we should only believe things for which we have concrete evidence is a philosophical idea.

You're already doing philosophy, like it or not.

At least it's not a bullshit philosophy.

[emjay]

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 agree that when Nietzsche posits chaos as the real state of the world, as an assertion about physics, then he can't be right. There is an important sense, though, in which he says important things.

We live almost entirely in a human world. It is made, tended, valued, organized, by people. The vast majority of what this world means to us is created by people. 

So think of a diamond ring, for example. It is a physical bit of stuff, and the gold and diamond are physical substances with scientifically knowable traits. But it isn't those traits we buy the ring for. What's important are:

~ the beauty, which is in the eye of the beholder.
~ the meaning, which is a social tradition: "we're engaged." 
~ the use value, which is to show social status.
~ the price, which comes from social relations.
~ the emotional value, which is purely from individual associations. 

If there were no more people in the world, all those things -- which are the important things about the ring -- would no longer exist. It's in this sense that the world is meaninglessness or chaotic unless and until people create mental phenomena. And if we were to suddenly lose our sense of all those things in the world as a whole, then (as he says in Tragedy) we would find life not worth living at all.

Wow, that actually really does sound interesting, so that's just bumped Tragedy to the top of my reading list.

Are you saying though that he's talking conditionally... ie 'counterfactually'; if if the world was different than it is, ie not social... not populated, then it would be meaningless? I would indeed really like to read this to see what sort of picture he paints, to see if I'd agree with his overall conclusion, in that situation. But as a (perhaps) roughly similar concept, I've often thought if you had say your visual field but no perception of meaning or beauty or anything, then no matter what maelstrom of inputs were presented to your senses, your experience would be meaningless. And indeed AFAIK in Buddhism one form of advanced meditation aims to get to a roughly similar state where objects are not even identified, ie to be able to recognise your visual field as shapes and colours etc rather than identified objects for instance, but don't quote me on that, that's just something I vaguely remember, and I don't know how plausible it is in practice.

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.

The God question is one of the big ones of course. I should probably work harder to reach some sort of conclusions about that.

Maybe that would be a good idea, yeah Given your leanings, then depending on whatever conception of God you end up settling on, He may be more or less forgiving of your sitting on the fence for so long... especially if you get caught with your trousers down so to speak Ie I don't know what it would be like for the classical God, that you seem to lean towards the most, but for the sort of God I believed in, there were certain requirements, maybe being baptised, as well as accepting Jesus, so you'd want to be squared away on those issues to feel comfortable  

But also moral and aesthetic judgments. I think we can say things like "it's morally bad to kill infants for fun," or "Proust is better than Dan Brown," and reasonably hold that these are true statements. Not provable by science, but still true.

Well hopefully this thread as a whole will explore these issues in more depth.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I agree that when Nietzsche posits chaos as the real state of the world, as an assertion about physics, then he can't be right.

Why not? What assurance is there that we are not just in a pocket of proximate order within a cosmic chaos. That is not a question for you, but rather for those atheists willing to express what they are for and not just what they are against. I could have started a thread like "Atheism is Nihilisitic" but instead I choose to ask the question and give members of the forum the opportunity to present me with their opinions about how a strictly atheistic philosophy justifies its claims. Can it be foundationalist?

@Belacqua, I often hear how classical demstrations for god have been refuted many times. The proported refutations generally challenge the validity of classical philosophy's assumptions. But after dispensing with all the foundational principles of classical philosophy to what does the debunker appeal to as foundational knowlege?

[emjay]

I agree that when Nietzsche posits chaos as the real state of the world, as an assertion about physics, then he can't be right.

Why not? What assurance is there that we are not just is a pocket of proximate order within a cosmic chaos. That is not a question for you, but rather for those atheists willing to express what they are for and not just what they are against. I could have started a thread like "Atheism is Nihilisitic" but instead I choose to ask the question and give members of the forum the opportunity to present me with their opinions about how a strictly atheistic philosophy justifies its claims. Can it be foundationalist?

If I'm reading you right, I personally don't think there is any such assurance, as I said to Bel. Ie we exist because whatever 'subset' - or in your terms, 'pocket of proximate order' - of reality can sustain us, but it doesn't tell us anything about what may or may not lie beyond that.