Any Nihilists here?

[FrustratedFool]

Well, for starters, it's unclear how we can deny a moral fact without at least calling into question any other mechanically similar fact or fact-alike utterance. It's likely, from my experience, that whatever justification we give for the acceptance of one class of facts will be the basis for my next purported moral fact. From the other end, it's quite a spectacle. I can sum the whole bit up in two lines.

Man, it's not like that!
-Man it's just like that.

I see statements about moral facts to be similiar in some ways to statements about God, and similiar in some ways to statements about cats, and different in some ways to statements about cats and God.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, I don't see all that either, but I do think that absurdism proceeds from the silent premise that the world could be, and should be, some other way. That what we mean when we say that life is (or seems) absurd is in reference to that conceptual entity or quality. That and, just, you know, throwing out a specter of absurdity to confuse the angel of death - a time honored magical traditional.

(you got me looking for what I'd call "good" stuff on absurdism - I've been looking to see if there's anything specifically about absurdism in myth and folklore.)

[Belacqua]

I guess the issue is that I never saw nihilism as requiring one be nihilistic on everything.  

As far as I could tell from my limited reading nihilism is just a family of viewpoints that hold to certain positions, and that if you hold to a set of those positions you are a nihilist.

As far as I can tell, the set of nihilistic positions I hold are consistent and coherent, and make me a nihilist.

As I understand it, one of the main issues among different nihilists, and a difference they have with absurdists, is the status of the meanings that we create for ourselves. 

That is, we're all atheists now we accept that the universe is cold and meaningless. There is no telos and in the end everything we know will just crumble away. But existentialists seem to think that a meaning created by people counts as real. Not detectable by microscopes in nature, but also not just a mirage on the horizon. 

Like people talk about "social constructs." Marriage, for example, is a social construct put together by tradition and culture. Marriage might be completely different, or even absent, in a different society, and it isn't written into nature -- but that doesn't mean that marriage is meaningless. Mine, for example, has a hell of a lot of meaning for the two people who are in it.

It was Kierkegaard who started the whole existentialist thing, and started talking about the absurd. But he also wrote about how the commitments we make construct meaning, and this meaning, for those who make the commitment, is very real. 

What's your take on this? Would you say that someone who holds the universe to be nihilistic also dismisses the meanings that people construct for themselves?

[FrustratedFool]

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 Grand Nudger]

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.

[Ahriman]

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.

God might not technically be real, but His presence will sure scare the fuck out of you just the same.

[FrustratedFool]

@the grand nudge

It seems a disagreement over terms rather than substance, then. Does God or morality exist in some external sense outside of the minds, feelings and opinions of agents in the same way rocks and cats do? No. Do prople have strong sensations and feelings which lead them believe they do? Yes. Do actions have physical consequences? Yes. Do these consequences have a property susceptible to the scientific method called badness? No.

[FrustratedFool]

@Ahriman
I have not had such an experience. I've expereinced religious ecstacy and things, but not that.

[FrustratedFool]

How do moral realists define evil?

[The Grand Nudger]

Evil seems to mean something like extrabad, or pointless bad. That's not really up to moral realism to define - just language. IDK whether or not evil exists, but at least with how permissive I tend to be it would seem like it only lived in the margins.

Additionally, moral realism doesn't tell us whether or not god exists. It works either way (to the nuts great discontent). It does say that the content we're describing when we talk about morality is external to us, and exists, though..yeah. I'd call gods entirely internal. The god we're describing (when we describe them) only exists in the mind, whereas the harm I describe (when I describe it) is out there in the world.

The commitment I make to realism in general... which is the source of my moral realism, also tells me that I can't really be agnostic about the subject. When I say gods don't exist, I'm also attempting to express a fact, rather than an opinion, about the world "out there" rather than "in here".