(August 30, 2023 at 6:58 am)FrustratedFool Wrote: I think we agree that things like religion, gender, currency, nations etc esit and are real, it's just that such personally inter-subjective socially created things (like meanings of words within a language system) would not qualify, I think, to be classed as objectively existing objects in the same way that rocks are. They are wholly dependent upon consciousness in a way that gravity isn't.
I think many nihilists (such a broad term) can agree that national borders exist independent of any single human mind, whilst also holding to the idea that they don't have objective existence in the sense of existing as concrete physicalist objects with no subjectivity involved at any point. And, far more importantly, that they have any objective value or meaning outside of that which agents give them (consciously or unconsciously).
When a nihilist of my stripe says, then, that no act or social system has objective value or the universe as a whole has no objective meaning or purpose, this is what I think they're referring to.
I think this a somewhat obvious and unavoidable outworking of materialism, and in many ways is a trivial and banal claim for the modern. It seems obvious that if materialist atheism is true then there cannot be objective moral facts, objective values, freewill, a purpose to the universe, or God.
Yeah, I think if we disagree on anything it's just how we're defining the word. To me, someone who accepts the cultural reality of e.g. national borders isn't completely nihilist. But as you say, the word is broad and I won't insist.
Here's a paper I've found helpful in thinking about this kind of thing:
https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resourc...pper80.pdf
Not exactly about nihilism, but it does think carefully about culturally-created things that have independent existence.
Using Popper's terms, I think you would say that for a nihilist, only World 1 is real. Whereas Popper holds that all three worlds are real, though in different ways.
