↪Pattern-chaser
nihilism is accepting the uncertainty. It has no bearing on how we deal with it as there is no should in nihilism. Nihilism doesn't say: it all doesn't matter so you shouldn't care. It just says: it doesn't seem so far that any of it matters — khaled

My understanding of this nihilistic realism is of throwing our toys out of our pram. :smile: We discover that there is no (Objective) proof of anything, and we are injured and upset. So we say to ourselves that there is no proof, so none of it matters. We throw out the baby, the bathwater and the bath, to misuse the old proverb. :wink:

There are guidelines, rules of thumb, that we can use. They aren't perfect; they don't always work. But they are tried and tested, and they work more often than not. Mostly. :smile: There is no reason to abandon all hope, once we recognise that our world is uncertain. We just need to accept and deal with uncertainty.

Think of it this way: at least you aren't fantasising, as Objectivists do, that there really is certainty, and that we really do have access to it. We don't. We can throw a tantrum (Nihilism) or we can make-believe (Objectivism) or we can accept what we have, and work with it.

Just my two pennyworth. Do with it as you will. :up: :smile:

I'd put "accepting what we have" as nihilism and "throwing a tantrum" as suicide/passive nihilism. Nihilism as I define it is just that accepting what you have

Nihilism as I define it is just that accepting what you have — khaled

Good. :up: Then accept it and move on. Find things that work for you, even though you know you won't be able to prove them correct. :chin:

it's still not math because it's 1 am here and I'm in bed and I still don't know what I'm doing but hoping this makes slightly more sense for now

Assumption that's not a definition so I couldn't put it under definitions:
The application of logic preserves truth (conclusion is true if premises are true) and is the only way to do so

Definitions:
Premise: A sensical statement with a truth value of true or false that is verifiable logically
Self evident: A premise that suffices as evidence for itself or a premise that follows logically from a premise that suffices as evidence for itself
(ex: I am conscious. This statement cannot be false as to have an illusion of consciousness requires a conscious observer. Thus it can be said that the premise is sufficient evidence of itself in of itself)
Objective: Self evident to all observers
Pivot: A premise that is taken to be true despite it not being self evident and that is not derived from a self evident premise

P1: the use of logic requrires premises
P2: to prove a conclusion true, one needs to use true premises to reach it (restatement of above assumption)
P3: only self evident premises can be known to be true before any application of logic
P4: self evident premises and pivots exhaust all options for true starting premises for arguments (one is defined as true premise with proof the other true premise without proof so they exhaust the options by definition)
P5: there is no self evident premise known to man that can be used to prove practical conclusions (knowledge, morality, value) (because most self evident premises are true a priori for example "a bachelor is not married". They do not tell us anything about the world)
P6: man is only left with pivots to use as starting points for arguments.
P7: there is no way to logically choose one pivot over another (because the choice of which pivot to use is pre logical and logic is the only thing capable of retaining truth)
C: which pivot to use is up to man's choosing or in other words, there is no objective morality/value/knowledge

Please elaborate on this "if". What do you mean nothing is distinguished from anything else. — khaled

Always happy to pontificate.

Understanding, n.: a cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. — Ambrose Bierce

I believe in certain circles, a horse is distinguished from a pony according to size, but for children and philosophers, I will stipulate that here at least, when I say 'horse' I mean pony or horse, but not mule or other hybrid. (stipulate means 'because I say so'). I also mean not a house, a hose, or hospitality.

Likewise, when I say 'everything' I exclude incomplete collections - some things, or even most things. So in general, a term has meaning by means of distinguishing what it is from what it is not.

But I foresee an objection. We understand that a 'unicorn' is a horse-like beast with a single horn protruding from its forehead. And we want to be able to say, "nothing is a unicorn". Yet I am claiming that when you say "nothing is objective", it is meaningless.

And the difference is in the definition; 'unicorn' is defined as a compound of 'horselike' and 'horn', both of which are meaningful in my sense of carving the world into 'horns' and 'non-horns'. and 'horses' and 'non-horses'. Likewise, conveniently for mathematicians the notion of 'the largest prime number' is a compound of ideas, 'largest' and 'prime' that are well understood so we can use the term in a proof that there is no largest prime.

So if you can provide such a compound of independently meaningful terms that define 'objective' then, and only then, I will allow that you are saying something meaningful with the claim that 'nothing is objective.

@Jeremiah Stop trolling.
@khaled Please ignore him.

Premise: A sensical statement with a truth value of true or false that is verifiable logically
Self evident: A premise that suffices as evidence for itself or a premise that follows logically from a premise that suffices as evidence for itself
(ex: I am conscious. This statement cannot be false as to have an illusion of consciousness requires a conscious observer. Thus it can be said that the premise is sufficient evidence of itself in of itself)
Objective: Self evident to all observers

Premise: A sensical statement with a truth value of true or false that is verifiable logically — khaled

Logic only preserves truth. So if you want to verify a premise logically, you have to present an argument of which it is the conclusion, and that will require its own premises. So the only self-evident premises one can find are those whose negation is a contradiction. But this means they tell us nothing about the world except how we have decided to talk. You example is a case in point. To say, "I am unconscious" would be a contradiction, as it amounts to saying "I am conscious of being unconscious". However, one can certainly dream that one is awake, so the recitation does not actually tell me about my consciousness. But even if it did, it is not at all the sort of statement that is evident to all observers - a computer programmed to display "I am conscious" is not conscious, and you declaring that you are conscious does not prove to me that you are.

Objective: Self evident to all observers — khaled

But this is anyway not at all what is meant by 'objective'. Rather, it means 'what is the case regardless of what any number of observers say, think or believe', or whether it is known or not. Thus, for example, the Earth is round-(ish) no matter how many flat-earthers there are. It was the same shape even when no one was around to know it or dispute it.

The concept you are using is more akin to 'necessary', 'a priori', or 'analytic'. About which much ink has been spilt that I won't bore you with here.

P1: the use of logic requrires premises
P2: to prove a conclusion true, one needs to use true premises to reach it (restatement of above assumption).... — khaled

I revise my opinion. As you’ve gone to the trouble of spelling out your objection in such detail then I don’t think you’re writing nonsense but that you are actually endeavouring to deal with a difficult question, which I think @unenlightened has addressed with admirable clarity.

Logic only preserves truth. So if you want to verify a premise logically, you have to present an argument of which it is the conclusion, — unenlightened

That is the initial assumption in my argument and is restated in P2. I use premise and conclusion interchangeably because they are ontologically the same thing, a statement that can be true or false whose truth value can only be verified when logic is applied. There is a critical point in my definition of premise and that is:

Premise: A sensical statement WITH A TRUTH VALUE OF TRUE OR FALSE that is verifiable logically

I already admit of the possibility of an objective state of affairs with the capitalized part. The rest of the proof is to prove why that objective state of affairs is inaccessible thus making an objective knowledge/value/morality impossible

But this is anyway not at all what is meant by 'objective'. Rather, it means 'what is the case regardless of what any number of observers say, think or believe — unenlightened

Ok then I'll restate my objection as: an objective morality/value/knowledge is inaccessible and I'll tweak my proof slightly to make it easier to understand.

whose truth value can only be verified when logic is applied. — khaled

This is how you get down your rabbit hole., I think. Most of the stuff people are interested in talking about can be verified otherwise. I verify that the coffee has run out, not by applying logic to self-evident truths, but by lifting the lid of the pot and taking a look. If I was blind, I would do it by touch.

Here I'll be assuming an objective reality exists and showing how that still doesn't matter to a nihilist

Assumptions that are not definitions so I couldn't put them under definitions:
The application of logic preserves truth (the conclusion is true if premises are true) and is the only way to do so
Every premise has an objective true/false value

Definitions:
Objective: What is the case regardless of what anyone thinks/believes
Premise: A sensical statement with an objective truth value of true or false that is verifiable logically
Self-evident: A premise that suffices as evidence for itself or a premise that follows logically from a premise that suffices as evidence for itself
(ex: I am conscious. This statement cannot be false as to have an illusion of consciousness requires a conscious observer. Thus it can be said that the premise is sufficient evidence of itself in of itself)
Pivot: A premise that is taken to be true despite it not being self-evident and that is not derived from a self-evident premise

P0: An objective reality exists
P1: the use of logic requires premises
P2: to prove a premise true, one needs to use true premises to reach it (make it a conclusion) (restatement of above assumption)
P3: only self-evident premises can be known to be true before any application of logic
P4: self-evident premises and pivots exhaust all options for true starting premises for arguments (one is defined as a true premise with proof the other true premise without proof so they exhaust the options by definition)
P5: there is no self-evident premise known to man that can be used to reach the objectively true conclusion (knowledge, morality, value) (because most self-evident premises are true a priori for example "a bachelor is not married". They do not tell us anything about the world)
P6: man is only left with pivots to use as starting points for arguments.
P7: there is no way to logically choose one pivot over another (because the choice of which pivot to use is pre-logical and logic is the only thing capable of retaining truth)
C: which pivot to use is up to man's choosing or in other words, man fundamentally has no access to an objective morality/value/knowledge because of the way logic is structured

NOTE: This argument is still coherent even if P0 had been: an objective reality does not exist. There is no reason to assume either of these. It's a "pivot" if you will. That's why I don't think the question of whether or not an objective reality exists matters because we'll never know when we got it in the first place.

I am aware that that is the start of the rabbit hole but the problem is a non-logical way of verifying premises is fundamentally subjective. That does not give you an objective morality/value/knowledge. In other words, if you want to divorce truth from the logic you'd have a massive problem at your hands. All the cases you refer to (where people verify something by a nonlogical means) are what I define as pivots above. The central problem is P7, there is no way to logically choose one pivot over another because pivots are pre-logical. This admits of relativism

Pivots are unverifiable by definition. If you want to take a pivot A as true, I can't say no but you can't say no to me for picking pivot B instead. That's the problem. It's sort of like the split between materialism or idealism. Materialism and Idealism are both pivots and so one cannot show the other why it's wrong because they do not derive from anything. They are just taken to be true. This is where nihilism comes in. Nihilism is the recognition that all of human knowledge is built on pivots and not self-evident truths thus making it subjective fundamentally.

I don’t think the problem has anything to do with logic, but with affect. Hence, out of scope for philosophy as such.

you are actually endeavouring to deal with a difficult question, which I think unenlightened has addressed with admirable clarity. — Wayfarer

Well thanks, but I am just about at the end of my rope now.



What you seem to have shown, with a charitable interpretation, is that logic and language are inadequate to the world. Logic can structure our language, but cannot tell us what to say. And the way things are is largely independent of what we say or think. All of which I agree with.

Evidently, the coffee has run out, and seemingly I have little more to say. There is indeed no way to logically choose, because logic necessitates or does not, it never chooses. But I choose, and my choice is to go make some more coffee, and logic will have to deal with that or not.

yes and if I happened to choose I want to make some tea I wouldn't be wrong either. And if I happened to choose to denounce all culturally defined moral virtues and go on a killing spree you can only tell me I'm wrong relative to the culturally defined morale virtues I denounced (which is why it's near impossible to truly reeducate criminals). I just happen to keep those moral virtues and logical structures and there is no objective reason for me to do so (an objective ought if you will). Nihilism is, ironically, the closest thing we have to an objective state of affairs as I stated before.

I'm not sure which affect you mean but if you mean "emotion or desire as influencing behaviour" then I'd say that IS in the domain of philosophy especially as it deals with ethics. if you don't include affect then I don't understand how the results of a philosophical or ethical discussion can ever apply on people with different affects. It's like how if you have a mathematical law that works for real numbers that doesn't necessarily make it work for imaginary numbers. If you take affects away I'd say you trivialize any result of a philosophical discussion

And if I happened to choose to denounce all culturally defined moral virtues and go on a killing spree you can only tell me I'm wrong relative to the culturally defined morale virtues I denounced (which is why it's near impossible to truly reeducate criminals). — khaled

No, I can tell you you are wrong absolutely and objectively. You may not believe me and I may not convince you, but I could try... You see in my world, I can choose to make more coffee or not, but I cannot choose that it has not run out when it has run out. The coffee pot tells me about that, and ignores what I want. So I call the coffee running out 'objective', because it refuses to do what I tell it, and I have no choice in it.

If you take affects away I'd say you trivialize any result of a philosophical discussion — khaled

All I'm saying is that your 'argument' is a result of an affective issue - a matter of feeling, not of logic at all. I tried to illustrate that with the 'thought experiment' about being faced with a terminal illness. Predictably, your response was:

It makes a difference only because I decided it would and my decision it would is arbitrary. — khaled

Which is bullshit, because if you really were in that situation, you wouldn't be able to shrug it off. So this conversation really comes down to the fact that you think nothing matters. And nothing anyone can say here will change that, so again, it's pointless to continue. Until something matters, then you are indeed suffering from the affliction of nihilism, and one can only hope that something comes along which will show you the actual pointlessness of that attitude. Good luck!

This argument is still coherent even if P0 had been: an objective reality does not exist. There is no reason to assume either of these. — khaled

Actually, many people (myself included) believe that we can justify the existence of Objective Reality via Descartes' cogito. Despite the difficulties with who "I" might be, "I think, therefore I am" seems to demonstrate that *something* has Objective existence; therefore Objective Reality exists, and this something is all or part of it. But you can relax: this is the One and Only Objective Truth that a human can knowingly possess. :up: :smile:

But in your world why is there something wrong with murder? If you murder someone nothing will oppose you or tell you you shouldn't have. Also, just because something is immune to change regardless of what you think of it does not mean that what you think of it is actually the case. For example, Visual illusions consistently give you a false perception of reality. Now, if someone decides that the coffee pot is actually showing a visual illusion and that there is, in fact, more coffee in the pot that your perception will never register in any way because it is trying to be consistent with its visual perceptions you can't tell him he is wrong. You can only tell him that he is assuming way too much and based on no evidence but you cannot use your own pivot of "visual perception is reliable" (which you assume implicitly in order to say that there is no more coffee) to tell someone who doesn't assume it that they are incorrect. That is the problem

There ARE people that doubt the "therefore" in "therefore I am" and they make a pretty good case doing it.

Which is bullshit, because if you really were in that situation, you wouldn't be able to shrug it off — Wayfarer

What do you mean "shrug it off". I haven't shrugged anything off.

I said: It makes a difference only because I decided it would and my decision it would is arbitrary.

I very clearly said: IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

I just don't need to tie that difference to some metaphysical "truth" about the world for it to be meaningful is that so hard to imagine. I'm fine with just the subjective meaning. I'm fine with a cold universe.

You don't know that that's not what I would say in a real situation. In a real situation, I'd say "Of course it matters now gimme dat" but if you ask me why I think it matters I'd say "because I wanna LIVE" and if you ask me why THAT matters I'll say "because I said so now stfu I'm dying".

At least that's what I say in similar situations when people would keep asking why. It'd always end with "because I said so" never "because God/Metaphysical truth/Morality dictates it". And even if you say that someone could just ask "why do you believe in God/Metaphysical truth/Morality" and the only true answer to that is "because I said so". Nothing escapes "why". If you keep asking why you will eventually reach silence.

And nothing anyone can say here will change that — Wayfarer

I would change my mind if someone shows that "something matters" is self-evident as described above because if it isn't then both of us are just using different pivots and I have already established why that is irreconcilable. But notice here, even the divide between "something matters" and "nothing matters" is a matter of pivots and so you can always come to the nihilistic conclusion. If I can hold a different pivot from you on even the question of "does something matter" then that is proof that "nothing matters" is a more stable pivot. If you want to convince me to switch to the "something matters" pivot you'll have to make it self-evident to ensure there is no possibility of disagreement as any possibility of disagreement is evidence that "nothing matters" works better as a pivot.

This is why I keep saying "nothing matters" is a better pivot in terms of conformity with patterns you see in the world. Your position of "something matters (objectively)" demands that eventually, no one will be able to disagree but mine doesn't. The mere fact that I disagree with you reinforces my hypothesis (pivot) that "nothing matters"

The belief that an objective value/knowledge/morality is non existent — khaled

Considering it is very difficult (dare I say impossible) for a human being to experience objective reality, I would find that such beliefs are generally based upon shaky foundations.

There are those who may have glimpsed objective reality, like Gautama Buddha, but I doubt he would describe his experiences as meaningless.

Also, just because something is immune to change regardless of what you think of it does not mean that what you think of it is actually the case. — khaled

Of course not. I thought there was more coffee, but I was wrong. Having looked, and maybe tried to pour a coffee and drink it if I doubted my eyes or the room was dark, I was forced to change my mind. Since you are not here, if you do not believe me, you have no other evidence. You cannot see or feel or taste the coffee anyway, so it makes no difference to you, except as an exemplary tale. What is exemplary though is that there is no argument between me and the coffee pot; the pot does not argue that it s empty or prove that it is empty, it just is, and I just find out through the same senses that make me aware of there being a coffee pot. The whole thing might be an hallucination or a dream or a story I've made up, but it is a dream or story of an empty coffee pot, not one with coffee in.

It may be that this life is but a dream, but the dream is the dreamer's reality until he wakes, and he makes what sense of it he can, of necessity taking it for real, until his awakening. In the dream, the coffee pot is reliably empty until I dream making more dream coffee; this is not logic, this is just the way the dream goes - in this dream, coffee pots don't fill themselves.

I'm not going to even try and convince you about morality until I have convinced you about coffee pots.

That is the initial assumption in my argument and is restated in P2. I use premise and conclusion interchangeably because they are ontologically the same thing, a statement that can be true or false whose truth value can only be verified when logic is applied. There is a critical point in my definition of premise and that is:

Premise: A sensical statement WITH A TRUTH VALUE OF TRUE OR FALSE that is verifiable logically — khaled

This is your problem right here Khaled. First, a conclusion is not ontologically the same as a premise, because the conclusion follows from, and is therefore necessarily temporally posterior to the premise. Second, we do not necessarily verify premises with logic. This would make all premises conclusions, but as the explanation above shows, we cannot make that reduction. Yes, some premises are conclusions, but not all. Therefore the truth or falsity (truth value) of premises relies on something other than logical verification.

P3: only self-evident premises can be known to be true before any application of logic — khaled

So, you introduce the "self-evident premise" as the "only" way that a premise can be known to be true, without logical verification (making it into a conclusion). Then you proceed to make your argument based on this premise. This appears to be the premise of yours, which the others object to. Self evidence is not the only way that a premise can be known to be true, without logical verification. For example, we verify premises with our senses.

The reason I chose logical verification is very pragmatic. It is because it is shared by everyone. The rules of logic can be taught and used by everyone however as I replied to unenlightened before if you divorce verification from logic you do NOT get an objective knowledge/morality/value but you leave people with much more leeway. The statements you have described above as "considered true without the use of logic" are what I defined as pivots and they are a central part of my argument. No pivot is logically better than another pivot by definition and so each person has completely free reign over which pivots to use. This is the definition of relativism

The rules of logic can be taught and used by everyone however as I replied to unenlightened before if you divorce verification from logic you do NOT get an objective knowledge/morality/value but you leave people with much more leeway. — khaled

You are using an unrealistic definition of "objective". You define "objective" as what is impossible for anyone to disagree with. But there is no such thing, because there's always someone who can honestly disagree with anything. The example of schizophrenia was already brought up. Furthermore, to define "objective" in this way, is to make objectivity a property of subjects, what subjects agree to. Therefore it is not a true objectivity at all, but a form of subjectivity, better known as inter-subjectivity.

Can we have clear definitions, such that "subjective" refers to of the subject, and "objective" refers to of the object? To deny objectivity is therefore to deny the existence of objects.

There is a bit of nuance here. I do not define objective as impossible for anyone to disagree with I defined it as "What exists regardless of what anyone thinks about it". I then proceeded to show that objectivity is impossible to achieve as one never knows when he has it as you said

there's always someone who can honestly disagree with anything. — Metaphysician Undercover

When I say "an objective knowledge/morality/value doesn't exist" that is a fault of mine. I really should be saying is "an objective knowledge/morality/value is unachievable to man". That is all my argument is about. Whether or not it exists I don't care because we will never achieve it

What is exemplary though is that there is no argument between me and the coffee pot; the pot does not argue that it s empty or prove that it is empty, it just is, and I just find out through the same senses that make me aware of there being a coffee pot. — unenlightened

This is the critical point. You say "I just find out through the same senses that make me aware of there being a coffee pot" but if someone (a schizophrenic for example) rejects those senses completely as hocus pocus. Now what? To YOU the coffee pot is empty because of 2 things

1-Senses are reliable
2-I sense a coffee pot

You use those two premises to come to the conclusion "there is a coffee pot". Now if someone WHO ACCEPTS P1 comes around and says that's a teapot THEN you can tell him that he is wrong and he will agree with you that he was since he also accepts P1. What I'm asking is what if someone DOESN'T accept P1. What if that someone is a severe schizophrenic. Is the schizophrenic "wrong" for seeing a teapot, Yes according to you but no according to him.

this is not logic, this is just the way the dream goes - in this dream, coffee pots don't fill themselves. — unenlightened

What I'm asking is if someone disagrees with you about "the way the dream goes". What if someone has a peculiar genetic disorder that makes him see coffee pots filling themselves and makes his entire perception consistent with that so if he sees a coffee pot tipping over, he will see and feel himself drowning in never-ending coffee (this is getting pretty funny but ok). Is that person objectively wrong for saying the coffee pot fills up? Ok now imagine instead of a genetic disease it was an airborne one that affected all of humanity. Is all of humanity objectively wrong then?

What you keep presenting is the most agreed upon reality to which I also happen to adhere BUT that is NOT an indicator of objectivity in the least. Even if we assume that coffee pots will continue to NOT fill themselves, for that person with the disease, he will never be convinced. Everything he sees and hears stands in opposition to it. This is what it means to have different pivots. They are irreconcilable by logic or by each other. The premise "coffee pots do not fill themselves" can logically prove that "coffee pots fill themselves" is false IF THAT PREMISE IS TRUE but with pivots you never know by definition