Any Nihilists here?

[The Grand Nudger]

So they don't skullfuck infants, is what you're saying? Well shit man, you got me all excited.

[FrustratedFool]

None that I've met.
Why would you expect otherwise given what I've said in conversation?

No doubt some people from all manner of POV do, but most people have an evolved/innate disgust for such actions and therefore have a preference to not do so. They prefer vanilla, others prefer chocolate.

Which academic athiests are you thinking of that hold to moral realism? Sam Harris does, of a sort. I don't know about any others. But I'm not very well versed, it's true.

[The Grand Nudger]

I would expect people who truly believed that things don't mean anything to act differently than people who thought that things do, truly, mean something.

Wouldn't you?

[FrustratedFool]

No, not much really.

I've agreed they would act slightly differently, but also already explained they would not act very much differently.

In my own experience, I have changed my opinions and behaviours to a small degree since becoming a nihilist, but not much.

Subjective selfishness, evolved altruism, and so on, adequately explain human actions without any recourse to objective morality.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd settle for some slightlys, but we haven't even seen that. That's troubling, that even with the most permissive bar we still can't positively identify a genuine nihilist.

You keep telling me about subjective selfishness but this is meaningless. I don't even know what you're trying to say, because it has no meaning. Nothing explains human actions. They have no explanation, they just are. There's no underlying meaning to them, or anything else.

[FrustratedFool]

I can certainly identify some 'slightlys' in my life. They are noticeable to those who know me in my personal life.

I don't believe words are devoid of semantic meaning, but their referents will lack moral or 'ultimate' meaning (in that they are reducible to the absurdity lying beneath reality).

For example, my subjective preference for X can be explained (as far as we can tell) by brain states, explained in turn by such things as evolutionary biology, chemistry and physics, which in turn are explained by the nature of the universe, which seems to be a brute fact, which is an absurdity (brute facts have no reason for being). In that chain of explanations (which terminates in meaninglessness) there is no objective value or morality or freewill.

None of this strikes me as controversial, or an uncommon belief (amongst physicalists and athiests, whether lay or academic), and is quite banal. As the IEP notes, it could be said that nihilism is quite pervasive and trivial in the 21st c in that many live as nihilistic hedonists without much fanfare or issue.

Again, you seem to be somewhat doggedly holding onto a rather extreme form of nihilism as the only nihilism, which believes that nothing whatsoever has any meaning whatsoever. You seem emotionally animated in your criticise of this form (windmill?) of nihilism in terms of it not producing the consequent behaviour you expect from it, and don't really seem to care that not everyone would expect the same resulting behaviour, nor care that you apply an inconsistent standard to other worldviews. Which strikes me as somewhat odd. But you do you, I guess.

When I describe myself as a nihilist I mean only that I hold to a certain set of statements (outlined prior). This assent has changed my behaviours and opinions on some things, but made no huge differences. I wouldn't expect it to. You may feel this is not real nihilism. That's up to you, but in the absence of a better term I will use nihilism regardless.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's that negotiation. Nihilism denies meaning, but you're only willing to deny "ultimate" meaning. As a matter of convenience you will not argue against meaning.

I also don't believe in "ultimate" meaning - but that doesn't make me a nihilist. I remember the description you gave. It wasn't nihilism, but...honestly, they're just words. You know what you think about this and that. What I think, is that many atheists identify themselves in a christian context. So to say that you're a nihilist because of the reasons you listed might sound "truthy" to a christian, but it doesn't sound particularly nihilistic to me and I won't find it difficult to tease out values that you possess which nihilism would reject. Not believing in those things doesn't identify you as a nihilist so much as an objector to christian dogma.

Do you know the biggest fucking nihilists? The people who believe that life has no value but the value which god assigns it. Now that...is nihilism. Where even our own subjective values are declared to be fundamentally meaningless, and worthless. Where we're busted sinners who don't deserve it. It's all this one superdudes thing. Nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with any thing, in particular.

[FrustratedFool]

So that's a definition thing: you think nihilism means X, I think it means Y.

It's not a matter of convenience, I do genuinely believe Y not X.

If you define nihilism as a self-defeating or incoherent thing, then yes, I agree it will be self-defeating. But that wouldn't affect the kind of nihilism I hold to.

Laying aside whether or not I am a nihilist, we were having a nice chat about moral realism. It seems we made headway on that. Do you accept I reject moral realism? I assume you are a moral realist, yes?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, absolutely. You know it wouldn't be moral realism if people couldn't disagree.

[FrustratedFool]

Can you explain what moral realism means to you?