Why would we need a word for something to do with propositions and they way they link up with other things that targets something we can't even do or "make contact with" so to speak?

What do we call this type of proposition? — Michael

To me part of the relevance of relativism is to call into question the persistent use of 'we' in talk like this.It is a rhetorical device often used to imply that all us right-minded people will think the same way; but do we?

It also threw me off in the one earlier response, because he was asking "What do we call" and then all of a sudden he said, "I'm positing a scenario where there's only one person."

Well, if the scenario is that there's only one person, then the question should be, "What does that person call . . ."

That's why I responded with, "If you're asking "what does the person in question call the proposition . . . "

Why would we need a word for something to do with propositions and they way they link up with other things that targets something we can't even do or "make contact with" so to speak? — Terrapin Station

Because rather than say "this proposition refers to a state of affairs that doesn't actually obtain" we can say "this proposition is X". It's simple utility.

"this proposition refers to a state of affairs that doesn't actually obtain" — Michael

But you can't say that without it being a judgment on your part, and we already have a word for that. "False."

Again, you're wondering why there isn't a word for something we can't do.

But you can't say that without it being a judgment on your part, and we already have a word for that. "False."

Again, you're wondering why there isn't a word for something we can't do. — Terrapin Station

I'm not making a judgement about any particular proposition or any particular state of affairs. I'm saying that we can have a term "X" that is defined as "referring to a state of affairs that actually obtains" and a term "Y" that is defined as "referring to a state of affairs that doesn't actually obtain". These can be distinguished from the term "true" that you've defined as "referring to a state of affairs that is judged to obtain" and the term "false" that you've defined as "referring to a state of affairs that is judged not to obtain".

...to try to keep things simple via a different question, if person A believes in human caused global warming and person B believes that global warming is a hoax, will the future of this planet be different for the grandchildren of person A and person B … this at the same time? If (objective) reality (as compared to the intersubjective realities of cultures, etc.) is relative to beliefs and feelings, how does this resulting absurdity not obtain? — javra

What we will have in the future are descriptions of states of affairs. These descriptions are going to vary depending on the overall beliefs and feelings of the people concerned. If the ostrich somehow survived alive, and miraculously received the gift of speech in the shock, it is going to have a different account of itself than the accounts of the people who advised it to run.

I think there's a good example in the thread across the way about Putin, where I claimed that the Soviet Union fell in 1991, and Agustino claimed it didn't. There are various facts about what happened to the former Soviet Union in 1991 and subsequently, but they don't resolve themselves into a simple 'future of this Russian-dominated bit of the planet' as far as human discourse goes. Actually, humans rarely bother over much about the outcome of forecasting, because we're largely terrible at it on any scale. it's amazing we've achieved such precision on smaller scales under controlled conditions.

I too, from a political standpoint, think there are a lot of ostriches with their heads in the sand about anthropogenic climate change. But in 150 years' time if, say, New York and London have been flooded and Bangladesh destroyed in the meantime, there will be some people who will say, 'It remains to be proved that anthropogenic climate change did this.' They will host chat shows and have followers. Just you wait and see.

I'm saying that we can have a term "X" that is defined as "referring to a state of affairs that actually obtains" and a term "Y" that is defined as "referring to a state of affairs that doesn't actually obtain". — Michael

But don't the interlocutors have to agree on criteria for what it means for something to obtain?

But don't the interlocutors have to agree on criteria for what it means for something to obtain? — mcdoodle

You'll have to ask Terrapin. He's the realist who argues that facts are objective and obtain independently of people (except facts about people, of course).

Sure you could have that, but again I'm wondering why anyone would bother with a word for that, especially because it's not anything that anyone can do.

There are countless things we can do that there isn't even a word for. For example, there's no word for eating a dozen donuts rather than a half dozen.

Sure you could have that, but again I'm wondering why anyone would bother with a word for that, especially because it's not anything that anyone can do. — Terrapin Station

I don't know why, but I'd argue that we have them; "true" and "false". For the most part, it seems that when people say "X is true" they mean to say that the state of affairs referred to by "X" actually obtains, not just that they judge it to obtain. That's why scepticism is a thing; according to the sceptic, given that we can never access these objective states of affairs, we can never know if a proposition is true (even though we can and do make judgements).

Of course, you're free to use the terms however you like, but it'll make for difficult conversation with the many who use them this way.

they mean to say that the state of affairs referred to by "X" actually obtains, — Michael

Definitely, but what are they doing? They judging that to be the case. Hence why trying to make the distinction is pretty pointless.

Re skepticism you can't know with certainty, but it's silly to worry about that in my opinion.

Knowing whether something is true has nothing to do with knowing things with certainty.

Definitely, but what are they doing? They judging that to be the case. Hence why trying to make the distinction is pretty pointless. — Terrapin Station

And when I say "you're fat" I'm making a judgement, but "fat" doesn't mean "judged to be overweight"; it just means "overweight".

I'm not using "judgment" in anything like a value judgment sense.

I'm using it in the sense of "the forming of an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion, as from circumstances presented to the mind"

So am I. When I say "you're fat", I am forming an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion about your body weight. But when I say "you're fat" I'm not saying "in my opinion, you are overweight". I'm just saying "you are overweight".

But when I say "you're fat" I'm not saying "in my opinion, you are overweight". I'm just saying "you are overweight". — Michael

Right, so "You're overweight" isn't a conclusion you've reached from circumstances presented to your mind?

Right, so "You're overweight" isn't a conclusion you've reached from circumstances presented to your mind? — Terrapin Station

I didn't say it wasn't a conclusion. I'm saying that "overweight" doesn't mean "judged to have an unhealthy amount of fat". And so by the same token, "it is true" might be a conclusion, but "true" doesn't mean "judged to correctly describe the facts". And "you're a moron" might be an insult, but being an insult isn't part of the meaning of "moron".

I didn't say it wasn't a conclusion. I'm saying that "overweight" doesn't mean "judged to have an unhealthy amount of fat". — Michael

I wouldn't say that either, but it is an act of judging to be overweight, or "fat" if one takes that to be synonymous with "overweight."

"A conclusion you've reached from circumstances presented to your mind" is sufficient for "judged."

"true" doesn't mean "judged to correctly describe the facts".

I wouldn't use the word "means" in any event if we're getting down to brass tacks, but I wouldn't say that, either. What I say is that truth-value functionally amounts to a judgment about the relation between a proposition and something else. The "something else" depends on the relation the person in question considers the pertinent relation a la correspondence, coherence, etc.

But in 150 years' time if, say, New York and London have been flooded and Bangladesh destroyed in the meantime, there will be some people who will say, 'It remains to be proved that anthropogenic climate change did this.' They will host chat shows and have followers. Just you wait and see. — mcdoodle

I get the part about disagreements. Thanks for the humorous reminder. What I don’t get is the part about whether or not there occur states of affairs irrespective to what sentience may believe or feel. We can ask this of the proposition, “I exist/am,” when we address it to our own individual selves as we can ask this of the proposition, “Elvis Presley has died”.

What’s worse to me is the proposition that, “because some believe that he has and some believe that he hasn’t, Elvis is both dead and alive at the same present time and in the same way”.

I invite you to consider the absolute of the present moment (that is, the moments of your life). These moments are temporary with respect to passing time, but the moments themselves are permanent. If a thing is well done, or done as well the moment allows, and you know it, that's really all the epitaph that matters, Comparisons are conjectural, memory unreliable, only the moment is real; self reflecting on itself is the ultimate beauty and monument. — tim wood

I have no objection to the edifying intention of this passage, but the moments are by definition not permanent. We are also anticipating and remembering creatures, so present moments are often anything but present in another sense.


Still, I can relate to the notion/experience of the self-justifying moment. I can relate with making peace with impermanence. Indeed, I think there is a "feel good" aspect to nihilism as I described it. It articulates and strives to accept the futility of the all-too-human desire to escape time and chance. So my version of the nihilist (unless he is still green and angsty) would have to agree with the spirit of your post already in some way to endure his metaphysical vision of ultimate but not general or practical futility. A person can be an overachiever and a nihilist at the same time. Doing a job well for the beauty of it, for the self-consciously temporary narcissistic pleasure perhaps, is quite conceivable. But nihilism only really makes sense in terms of a metaphysical rejection of (metaphysical) absolutes. We are all practically dominated by (our actions manifest) various values and moral principles. But some of us might decide that various candidates for absolutes are grounded finally by the hope and fear of pleasure and pain, both of which are at best or worst temporary.

I don't hate this formulation, but I think it's a bit cute. It avoids the main issue with verbal sleight of hand. The scope of nihilism, as normally discussed, doesn't deal with things happening billions of years from now. It deals with human lives now and especially human values and institutions. — T Clark

I think I can guess what you mean, but consider the OP: "Nihilism (I define here): the belief and attitude that ultimately nothing matters, nothing has any ultimate or absolute value or significance."

There's this from a dictionary: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.

But what sense can we make of "meaningless" if we're not talking about ultimate "meaninglessness"? We all have preferences and fears and therefore constraints on our behavior. If I'm hungry, the sandwich is meaningful. If I burn my lips on hot coffee, that's meaningful. I care. As I see it, most humans are dominated by spatio-temporallylocal hopes and fears most of the time. But the metaphysical urge is to articulate the imperishable (to do math in a wider, wilder set of concepts). We might also think of God as the image of the invulnerable perfected human. Man qua man is the desire to be God, one might say. Since doing this is impossible, we settle for surrogates. We participate in godlike collective enterprises like science, social justice, a church that embraces the notion of itself as the "body of Christ." The saved person is a member of Christ, a finger or a toe. This is the general structure. We have to share the absolute, because we can't pull off the thing by ourselves unless we do it in the bubble of madness.

But maybe this is too grandiose. Maybe we are just afraid to age and die. Aging dims our glory and dying dumps out of all intellectual treasures and memories at once. The newborn in the same hospital is not us. We construct ourselves over the decades. If we do a good job and attain self-love, we don't want such a unique fusion to be erased. So we either deny that we will be or we accept surrogate crystallizations of this unique self that will survive the death of the body. The nihilist sees that even this plan B is flawed and has to adapt to the metaphysically absurd situation.

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My point is that while some (many) things are grounded via reference to something else, some standard, other things are grounded in reference to themselves. Perhaps I should say may be so grounded, but what I mean is when you get down to the bedrock of the matter, everything is so grounded. — tim wood

I think we actually agree more than disagree. Non-silly nihilism is made possible by (almost) "everything being so grounded." I like "all is vanity." I find a wisdom in it. It is of course easy to interpret the phrase in a cheap way (silly nihilism), but I guess that's the cost of pithiness.

The nihilist says nothing matters, while it seems to me that only in traversing nihilism is real value found. — tim wood

I can't make sense of this kind of nihilism. So for me it's a bit of scarecrow. I'd say that nothing matters in the long-enough-run but immediately stress that human concern fades out as it ventures further from the present. So Mr. Nothing Matters is 95% passionately invested in the same kinds of things as Mr. Something Matters Absolutely.

Nor is there any narcissism,which, to reclaim some precision, is just a personality disorder. — tim wood

I realize that narcissism is usually only pointed out in terms of an accusation (as a vice), but I have in mind the sane and healthy driving force that encourages us to finish med school for instance, because we want to be a "winner." What is the force that gets us out of bed after 3 hours of sleep in order to shape ourselves into our ideal self? What is the force that carves and edits this very ideal? We might call it ambition, too. Lots of words come to mind. Anyway, I suggest that nihilism is embraced to some degree as a realization of freedom. His ego ideal is pure (theoretical) freedom, perhaps. The reasonable nihilist enjoys a sense of himself as bound by no artificial principle. He stands without the usual crutches. Of course this notion of himself can be attacked, but such attacks are usually going to rely on some absolute that the nihilist doesn't recognize as authoritative. He doesn't offer much of a target. So nihilism also looks like a late participant in the rhetorical-moral arms race.

That is, calls into awareness a reality so vast that to mature thinking - and feeling - fear itself must dissolve in its presence. — tim wood

That's a beautiful line. I think I know what you mean, and I agree.

If there's difference in our views in these posts, it appear to me that you're fixed in in the practical and the transient, a tumbleweeds sort of a value system, which understands itself as being no value system at all, but an illusion of one. — tim wood

I would describe a process of "mind" becoming conscious of its own creation of its apparent masters. In earlier stages of this process, mind experiences principles as fixed, external objects. They are decrees of gods or sacred ancestors, for instance. Mind has not made its creative power explicit to itself. It lacks self-knowledge. But it comes to see the sacred objects outside it as its own projections. Finally it becomes conscious of this process itself. It becomes conscious of itself as process. In terms of what you wrote, we end up with a value system that is consciously in flux. It's not an illusion. It's a version that expects to be update, that even posits its own partial destruction as a value to the degree that this partial destruction allows for overall progress. What does seem to remain fixed is the idea of ascent or progress. But this is the bare skeleton or archetype. Our notion of the ideal and therefore of ascent is even self-editing. To posit truth as an absolute value might motivate us to question the sincerity or possibility of such a positing. Maybe "truth" is the mask of the will-to-status, for instance, etc.

My point is that while some (many) things are grounded via reference to something else, some standard, other things are grounded in reference to themselves. Perhaps I should say may be so grounded, but what I mean is when you get down to the bedrock of the matter, everything is so grounded. — tim wood

As has been demonstrated throughout this thread, there are those of us who don't think everything is grounded the way you say.

If there's difference in our views in these posts, it appear to me that you're fixed in in the practical and the transient, a tumbleweeds sort of a value system, which understands itself as being no value system at all, but an illusion of one. — tim wood

I like your use of "tumbleweeds" in this context. Really gets your point across with visual punch. Which doesn't mean I agree the alternative to your view is "no value system at all, but an illusion of one."

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This comes very close to my personal theology. That "god" refers to, can only refer to, human possibility, broadly considered — tim wood

Right. For me there can be no god that isn't anthropomorphic. If there was such a god, we couldn't make sense of it. We'd have no motive to worship or incarnate such a god. But there are divine "predicates" like love, wisdom, power, beauty that we always already revere. So a certain conception of nihilism is impossible, excepting perhaps rare moods of intense demotivation. Another conception of nihilism is that of the man awake to his "divinity." He has completed the iconoclastic journey through a sequence of projections that he once mistook for an alienated or distant version of the divine. Like anyone he still reveres the predicates, but these predicates recognized as such are therefore as ideas possessed already by the mind that might otherwise covet them.

I'm trying to paint a picture of "incarnate freedom" becoming conscious of itself as such by means of a dialectical process. We might call it "The Birth of Spirit from Agency," where agency is the general structure of the alienated state. The agent serves a distant or external divinity that is not simply his own ideal possibility. Then "Spirit" is incarnate freedom conscious of itself as such. It understands itself to have created itself dialectically (in an long, painful debate with itself and others about who it ought to be). But in my view this essentially terminal state is no substitute for the living of life, nor does "Spirit" stop learning and sculpting itself. It just continues its self-sculpting self-consciously, having accomplished what is likely its greatest triumph in the spiritual/intellectual realm, the winning of its theoretical if not practical freedom. The increase of practical freedom involves that "living of life" that is only illuminated but not performed by theory. We might say that we are only just fully born as we become conscious of ourselves as "incarnate freedom."

On the other hand, I'm well aware that this vision doesn't (as a rule) appeal to others. As I experience it, I'm a cheerleader for "spirit" who is always verbally grinding against cheerleaders for this or that agency. I wouldn't be very free if I needed agreement. But I have found variants of these ideas in some of the more famous philosophers, so I know my "brothers" in "spirit" (fellow devil-worshippers) are out there. And I paint my positronic graffiti on the wall like a muted post horn. I'd be delighted if you could relate to even 80% of this little sketch. By all means, point out what I left out or didn't account for or even the 20% that you can't relate to (an optimistic estimate on my part.)

This continues the thought of the above post but replies to no one in particular. The reasonable relativist is conscious that basic pre-rational investments close or open the possibility of various intellectual/moral positions. The reasonable relativist has been around long enough to recognize the futility of trying to reprogram those who are in error relative to his own vision. The reasonable relativist is not making some metaphysical point. He's just wisely acknowledging that in fact we have to deal with those we consider "irrational." And we most effectively do so (if persuasion is preferred to force) in terms of how those to be managed are motivated and understand the world. This is something like an extra-metaphysical perspective that metaphysics tends to misunderstand. It's a gesture that points at the futility of a certain game that can only register within the game (for those who live in the game) as another move in the game. It's more or less the same with the "reasonable" nihilist. The reasonable nihilist/relativist doesn't forget that he's a self-asserting personality among self-asserting personalities. He doesn't forget that sentences are tools in the hand (or rather mouth) of a person who likely enough is practicing seduction and/or intimidation. I try to convert you to my household god (I get to be high priest), and you do the same with me. This is "ugly" subtext, not the entire text. I suggest that this is the lower (that never vanishes) on which the higher blossoms. A "good" person is (in my view) more aware than most of that which is "evil" in them. If this view is ugly or cynical to some readers, then I myself tend to find opposite views unrealistic or sentimental.

The reasonable relativist is conscious that basic pre-rational investments close or open the possibility of various intellectual/moral positions. — visit0r

I've read that sentence at least six or seven times now, but I can't any sort of grasp on what the heck it might be saying, exactly. What is a "pre-rational investment" first off?

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