E.g. the largest controversy ongoing in biology seems to largely center around concerns that "teleology" or something like it, cannot be allowed to gain a foothold — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you give any sources that would demonstrate that this is genuinely a real controversy among experts in the field?

[edit] read some of this wikipedia page, it looks like the teleology controversy is mostly a matter of using teleological language. That makes sense.

They might not be putting people on trial, but people were certainly threatened with having their careers ruined for dabbling in quantum foundations through the 1990s, largely because such work challenged the dominant "anti-metaphysical" paradigm, which was considered to be "anti-scientific." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Totally. There's an interesting article from a few years back, Quantum Mysticism - Gone but not Forgotten (and published in phys.org, not some new-age website) which points out that the pioneers of quantum mechanics - Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr and Pauli, among others - were deeply cultured and philosophical thinkers (product of a classical European education, one might presume). But after the War, the research dollars and focus switched to the US, driven mainly by investments from the military-industrial complex, which is why the pragmatic approach of 'shut up and calculate' won out over 'I wonder what that means'. (Although that did indeed leave a very fertile field open for any number of new-age websites.)

Also an interesting article on a biologist who claimed that oysters somehow synched to the phases of the moon even when transported to a laboratory in the midwest and completely isolated from the outside world. He was ostracised, presumably for daring to proclaim the biological equivalent of 'spooky action at a distance'. There are many such mysteries in biology. (I love the story of the eels in a central Sydney park who, when the conditions are right, leave their ponds and make their way to the ocean, to breed in a marine trench near New Caledonia, 2000km distant, where the elvers mature for a few years before making their way back :yikes: .)

Positivist definitions of objectivity and in-itselfness are held out as the gold standard of existence, of thing's being not "mere illusion." But then evidence that this definition of objectivity is broken is rolled out as somehow being definitive on questions of meaning, rather than simply showing that the definition is flawed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, 100%. As I established in the 'mind-created world' OP, no empirical object can be regarded as having unconditional existence. But then Kant said that in 1781 and most of the world still hasn't gotten it.

@flannel jesus - As regards the question of teleology, also see the wikipedia article on teleonomy, a neologism invented to deal with the fact that all biology is indeed goal-directed. It is said to describe the apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of living organisms, in much the same way as Richard Dawkins talks of the appearance of design, which however is attributable to the 'blind watchmaker' which 'acts' with no purpose or intention whatever. All part of the materialist dogma, I'm afraid (one of whose leading exponents has recently begun to decompose.)

As I understand it, the issue with teleology, goal-directedness and purpose is that it was associated with Aristotelian physics, which was in turn associated with the Ptomlaic cosmology and which was completely demolished by Galileo and the scientific revolution. And I'm sure Aristotelian ideas of the 'natural place' of stones, and that motion will continue indefinitely unless something stops it, are thoroughly outmoded. However the question of intentionality in a general sense is not so easily disposed of, which is why it was used as a wedge by Franz Brentano, and which ultimately gave rise to phenomenology. And the issue of intentionality or at least goal-directedness is also responsible for something like a rehabilitation of Aristotle's 'final causation' which is starting to enjoy a comeback in philosophy of biology. (And really, all 'final causation' is, is 'why something happens', so it's forward-looking, rather than the backward-looking 'physical causation'.)

As I understand it, the issue with teleology, goal-directedness and purpose is that it was associated with Aristotelian physics... — Wayfarer

It seems to me that it is the association between teleology and the anti-intellectualism of modern day religious creationist, who attempt to keep people in a state of ignorance regarding evolution, moreso than any consideration of Aristotle.

All part of the materialist dogma, I'm afraid (one of whose leading exponents has recently begun to decompose.) — Wayfarer

If this means what I think it means, it seems awfully mean spirited. Are you mocking someone for dieing? Because they believe natural evolution is a good explanation for the origin of species?

Of course! Don’t know why I didn’t think of that.

Yes you’re right. It was inspired by the expression RIP, a religious sentiment that was incongruous in the context, but it was mean-spirited. But the point I wanted to draw attention to was the entry on teleonomy.

Do you feel this malicious towards people just because they have ideas you don't agree with? Or did he harm you personally in some way?

It was tongue in cheek, but agree it was in poor taste.

Actually, I will respond in a bit more detail. It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the recent thread RIP Daniel Dennett. I felt the use of the expression 'RIP', meaning 'rest in peace' was incongruous in the context, as Dennett was well-known as one of the 'four horseman' of the so-called 'new atheism' which maligned and rejected religion, and as RIP is a religious expression, it is unintentionally ironic or ill-fitting. That's all it was a reference to, a point I clumsily tried to make by employing a more scientific expression, namely, decomposition.

Which actually segues back to the theme of nihilism. As far as we're concerned today, life begins at birth and ends at death. And considering the vastness of space and time, it is a mere blip. But that's all there is, and all there can be, as there is nothing on the other side of death, save decomposition, as everything material will always decompose.

Teleology is sort of at the heart of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis debate. It is far from being the only issue, but opponents of EES also often roll out "charges" of teleology (or the door being opened to teleology) as reason enough for dismissing the paradigm. Philosophical issues are not the only thing at stake but they show up front and center in many response articles. If minds, instead of mindless genes, might play some role in selection, then, so the reasoning goes, the "firewall" between the world of nature and the world of mind will be destroyed. This is often taken to be ipso facto bad.

I am not sure if this is even a warranted judgement. Barring epiphenomenalism, which comes with a host of explanatory and epistemic problems, it seems fairly obvious that organisms' minds and intentionality would play a role in their survival and reproduction. We rely so heavily on genes because it's easy to get information on them. But this is like looking for the keys under the street light because that's where you can see. Prima facie, if we actually had as good a way to fully catalog the phenotypes in some population, phenotype would be a better predictor of selection since it contains the meaningful variance in genotype + all sorts of additional relevant information. And if we could somehow catalog behavior too, this would be even more predictive. But behavior clearly has something to do with intentionality in animals.

It's clearly possible for mind to control selection, as simply looking at domestic livestock will tell you. Barring man being somehow unnatural or supernatural, human selective breeding of plants and animals represent an instance in nature of intentionality clearly interacting with selection. IMO, it certainly seems plausible that such interactions would occur on a sliding scale, rather than being a binary where man is the origin point of some fully sui generis difference in how selection works.

Inheritance Systems and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (2020) is a good introduction on EES. More broadly, teleology as "function" remains a fairly hot area in biology/the philosophy of biology. You can find all sorts of discussions on this issue. The Oxford Very Short Introduction to Philosophy of Biology has a decent overview (the Routledge handbook is very technical by contrast IIRC.)

I find it useful to zoom out on this issue to the physical sciences. Certain types of teleological explanation in physics and chemistry are ubiquitous in pedagogy and they tend to go along with "top-down" explanations, or those invoking a sort of "bigism" (i.e. constituent parts are definable/explainable only in terms of larger wholes / global principles). There has been a lot written on this. I found https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-022-00358-8 to be a helpful article.

I am of the opinion that the heavy preferencing of reductionism in biology and particularly in neuroscience comes from the dearth of good "top down" explanations of phenomena. There is no good theory of conciousness, so of course the field looks to what is better understood to explain things. Whereas, it seems like reductionism is far less popular in the physical sciences, and this makes sense given they have very many good "top-down," explanations and because unifications—the explanation of disparate phenomena in terms of more general principles— seem to have been far more common over the last century than reductions. You can even see this in the goals of the fields. In physics, the goal is "grand unification," whereas in neuroscience the goal itself is generally seen as involving some sort of reduction. The idea of emergence is particularly hard to grapple with if you only understand parts relatively well, whereas if you understand the behavior of the whole better than the parts (certainly true in chemistry), the idea of emergence is not so unsettling.

Anyhow, I think this ties back into to existentialism in a few ways. For man to be the sui generis origin point of all meaning we need that "firewall," in place. Reductionism, while not required, offers a bit of a bonus in making the world absurd, which allows for overcoming absurdity. What I find interesting though is how vigorously such a firewall is defended given it seems to clash with naturalism. IMO, the fact that we experience meaning and value entails that nature does produce meaning and value, provided man isn't supernatural in some way.

Whereas, it seems like reductionism is far less popular in the physical sciences, and this makes sense given they have very many good "top-down," explanations and because unifications—the explanation of disparate phenomena in terms of more general principles— seem to have been far more common over the last century than reductions. You can even see this in the goals of the fields. In physics, the goal is "grand unification," whereas in neuroscience the goal itself is generally seen as involving some sort of reduction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not seeing the things you're seeing. A "grand unification" looks like a reduction to me. I don't see what in the physical sciences would make you think they're not into reductionism - it looks to me like exactly the opposite.

I thought of saying something about the "terminal malfunction of another moist robot," but I was concerned it would be mean spirited as well. But this is how Dan himself talked about his own mortality, and he seemed to think there was a benefit in accepting this view. So there is a bit incongruity here that I think says something about that approach to thinking of ourselves.



It might be useful to clarify. Physics might be seen as generally tending towards a sort of ontological reductionism. Grand unification's goal is to reduce the number of ontological entities down, ideally to just one. However, if this is ever successful, it will essentially mean abandoning the substance metaphysics in which methodological reductionism (all things must be explained in terms of their smallest parts) makes sense. If you just have one entity, then process does all the explanatory lifting.

Grand unification, as it is often posed, would be an attempt to explain everything in terms of properties of the whole of the universe, and so it runs counter to methodological reductionism. As Max Tegmark puts it, "everything can fit on a T-shirt." This is the opposite of smallism, the idea that all facts about larger things are fully explainable in terms of facts about smaller constituent parts, where the smallest things are said to be most "fundemental." It doesn't go along with the idea that "what things are" is equivalent to "all the building blocks that make them up." The "building blocks," instead are only definable in terms of the whole.

You might also consider how Tegmark and other ontic structural realists virtually always posit the entire universe as a single mathematical object, rather than a collection of mathematical objects.

Now, within physics, there also seems to be a slightly less popular, but still quite visible trend of pushing back on theory reductionism (new theories can explain higher-level phenomena in ever more "basic" terms).

Paul Davies presents a "proof" based on some principles in information theory, that tries to show that, if the universe is computable (and there are decent reasons to think it is), the complexity of life requires some sort of "strong emergence." But "strong emergence," might even be a bit of a misnomer here. You only need "strong emergence," in an ontology where things' properties inhere in their "building blocks." In most of its forms, pancomputationalism is essentially a process metaphysics where "more is different," an pancomputationalism seems extremely popular as an idea in physics. Wheeler's "it from bit," in most formats, particularly those with the "participatory universe," also don't go along with a broad theory reductionism, at least not one that would tend to define itself in terms of methodological reductionism (smallism).

What I'd suggest though is that smallism often tends to get packaged/smuggled into theory reductionism. But without smallism, theory reductionism just amounts to looking for "fundementality," with no obvious reason to preference parts or wholes. Defining "fundementality," is itself challenging, but leaving that aside, a lot of the problems that seem to be inherit in theory reductionism often turn out to be related to smallism.

If you just have one entity, then process does all the explanatory lifting. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's already the case, even now - I agree with you that it would be EVEN MORE the case, but it's already the case now. How do we explain chemistry? Via quantum processes. Sure, now there's more than one type of "quantum thing", but it's still the processes - the interactions of those things - that has the bulk of the explanatory power. I don't see that as anti-reductionistic - "What processes at a low level produce this high-level behavior?" is a reductionistic question to me.

As Max Tegmark puts it, "everything can fit on a T-shirt." This is the opposite of smallism, the idea that all facts about larger things are fully explainable in terms of facts about smaller constituent parts — Count Timothy von Icarus

Another thing we interpret in exactly opposite ways. I see that phrase as something entirely reductionistic. If you explain the smallest things in the universe, you explain everything - an explanation of the smallest things can fit on a t shirt. (I'm a big fan of max tegmark btw, and I would be genuinely surprised if he weren't a reductionist himself - the sorts of trains of thought that lead to a Tegmarkian idea of existence are, to my eyes, very very reductionistic)

All explanations of the world are going to be ontologically reductive in some ways, because you invariably face the problem of "the One and the Many." There is obviously a plurality of things in the world, most obviously a plurality of minds. However, it's also obvious that everything that exists interacts with everything else. Indeed, if there was some sort of second sort of being that didn't interact with our sort, it would be forever epistemologically cut off from us, and its existing or not existing could make no difference to us.

So, explanations need to somehow explain the unity of being, and this means there will always be a sort of reductionism in the ontological dimensions. However, they also need to explain the plurality.

When I said "the physical sciences are less reductionist," I meant that they are far less inclined to think that the ontological reduction can be done by pointing to "basic" building blocks that define all plurality.

When I said "the physical sciences are less reductionist," I meant that they are far less inclined to think that the ontological reduction can be done by pointing to "basic" building blocks that define all plurality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It looks to me like that's exactly what they do though.

IDK, my reading might be biased, but I do read a lot of popular physics. Smallism doesn't always come in for explicit attacks (although it certainly does in several places I can think of), but generally the view of fundementality laid out isn't consistent with it. The role of information theory in physics seems to play a fairly large role here. Within that context, not only does process seem more essential, but context is also essential in defining "things." By contrast, I've seen a lot more heartburn in biology over the introduction of information theory into the field, with outright denials that it is useful to speak of "biological information," precisely because it might introduce teleology, perspective, or mind into the mix.

Thus, a core difference here seems to be with comfort in abandoning the "view from nowhere/view from anywhere," in favor of a view were perspective is essential. Because of work in quantum foundations and the influence of information theory, a sort of perspectivism seems to be somewhat widely accepted, if not particularly well defined. Whereas in biology, qualms with "information," arise in large part due to difficulties squaring it with both the "view from nowhere," and ideas tied to smallism and substance metaphysics.

I'm not sure entirely how to sum up the difference, but one way might be contrasting "things are what they are made of," which tends to present discrete things "in-themselves," and "things are what they do," which tends to bring in external context in defining entities. There is also the difference between "more is different," and the "more is just more that can be arranged differently," that one gets when comparing computational versus "building block," models (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405471222003106). And still another major difference would be "perspective is something that emerges sui generis to minds and will ultimately not play a role in explaining nature," versus "perspective (and context) is, in a way, essential to all interactions."

Maybe a helpful parallel might be Hegel's ontology. We could say all being gets contained in a single concept, the Absolute, but this is the most developed concept. Things proceed from lower levels, following on necessity, but this is more of an "ascent" than a reduction, even though it is an explanation that tries to get at "the most general principles" and a sort of fundementality/necessity. IDK, maybe more confusing that helpful, but I wouldn't consider Hegel a reductionist in any sense, even though he is looking for unity through "the most general."

I personally think one of the big confusions in these conversations comes from the assumption that 'more is different' is not what reductionists think. In fact the guy who invented the 'more is different' phrasing explicitly worded it in a compatible-with-reduction sort of way.

I find that it's very, very common for people who argue against reductionism to have placed reductionistic thinking into too small of a box. It actually allows for much more than its detractors realize.

:up:

Yes, that's why I tried to clarify with the reference to methodological reductionism and smallism. Like I said, I think some sort of broadly defined "reduction," ends of being essential due to the age old problem of "the One and the Many." Also because of the very nature of our intellect and finite limits on comprehension—there is a sense in which plurality has to be reduced in order for an explanation to be helpful to our understanding.

In general, when people attack reductionism, what they seem to focus on is the smallism it generally has packaged with it, and what this entails. E.g. "everything is atoms, atoms lack intentionality and experience, therefore intentionality and experiences never play any causal role in the world (causal closure)."

I think there are a host of problems with this position, not the least being that the empirical support for this flavor of reduction seems not particularly strong— certainly not strong enough to be assumed true until proven otherwise, which is what advocates often want to presume.

For me, reductionism would only not be true if genuinely Strong Emergence was the case - if small things *stopped behaving like themselves* because they somehow "knew" they were a part of a bigger thing - like if an atom of oxygen no longer behaved like oxygen atoms normally behave once it knows it's inside a human brain, or something.

As far as I can tell, there's never been any experimental evidence that small things behave fundamentally differently based on things like this. Molecules behave like they behave, if they're in a brain or not, if they're part of a human or not. Small things *are not aware* that they're part of some bigger thing, and so they just do the things small things do. I don't see any indication that most experts in the physical sciences disagree with this, but I do see indications that many do explicitly agree.

If they did, I would be going back to the drawing board myself. I care what experts think, and if it somehow WERE true unambiguously that all physicists said "strong emergence is the case, we have these scenarios where we've seen small things that stop behaving like they normally do because of this bigger thing they're a part of", then... you know, I would care about that. I care what experts think.

However the question of intentionality in a general sense is not so easily disposed of, which is why it was used as a wedge by Franz Brentano, and which ultimately gave rise to phenomenology. And the issue of intentionality or at least goal-directedness is also responsible for something like a rehabilitation of Aristotle's 'final causation' which is starting to enjoy a comeback in philosophy of biology. (And really, all 'final causation' is, is 'why something happens', so it's forward-looking, rather than the backward-looking 'physical causation'.) — Wayfarer

If we trace the concept of intentionality from Brentano to the myriad fields he influenced, such as cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis and phenomenology ( Freud, the Gestalt psychologists and Husserl were all students of his), my guess is we will uncover uses of the notion of intentionality that lie on the ‘other’ side of positivism than the one you would like to champion. We could call their versions of it ‘left’ intentionality as opposed to your ‘right’ intentionality. Whereas positivism rests on unexamined metaphysical presuppositions underlying their notion of objective causality, the ‘left’ intentionality of poststructuralism and enactivist cognitivism relies on the ecological holism of reciprocal causality.

The nature of causes is not pre-supposed beforehand but emerges from the context of interactions within a biological and social system. What gives intentionality its purposiveness is that biological and social systems organize themselves normatively, which means that they are anticipative. Sense making is guided by expectations emerging from patterns of interaction. What ‘right’ intentionality seems to have in common with positivism is the need to ground the normative purposiveness of intentional behavior in a metaphysical a priori.

Which is interesting because, if there is a considerable correlation between a person's specific state of mind and a school of philosophical thought that they lean toward, perhaps other philosophies reflect other mindstates? — Benj96

Certainly.
However, there appears to be a crucial difference between professional philosophers and philosophical amateurs.

Professional philosophers can juggle their theories all day long, and then set them aside and go have a beer as if nothing happened.

Philosophical amateurs are not capable of such detachment; what they (try to) think about philosophically really gets to them. They bet their life on those theories.

It seems that professional philosophers generally arrive at their theories by a process of rigorous thought. In contrast, amateurs start off with a certain feeling, emotion, or general attitude toward life which they then try to put into words.

I worked for many years closely with people practicing in the Catholic Church. If you want an example of depressives, try there. Of all the folk I've known, these were amongst the most miserable I've ever seen. — Tom Storm

Sure. Roman Catholicism has one of the most, if not the most strict dogma with eternal, irrepairable consequences. Per said dogma, a person is capable of forsaking God even on their deathbed, with their last breath, even after a life of piety, and thus enter eternal damnation, eternal suffering. I've known people who converted from Roman Catholicism to some school of Protestantism because they found it too unbearable to constantly live in a state of not knowing whether they are/will be saved or not.
It's hard not to be miserable if one knowns Roman Catholic dogma. Supposedly this misery can be mitigated with sufficient humility ...

I think it you already tend to look at life negatively, this might be your conclusion. For me, as a nihilist, I find the idea that there is no transcendent meaning rather joyous and exciting and one full of possibilities. I am unencumbered by dogma and doctrine and need not concern myself with following any preordained path.

The question is how you have arrived at this nihilism.

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. Perhaps it's because I've had practice? I've been a nihilist for close to 50 years. Of course, as meaning making creatures, we can't help but find or make meaning wherever we go.

Those who can't do this probably have some survival deficits. — Tom Storm

Braggart.

Camus insists on seeing Sisyphus happy. Is this something approaching my position? Am I, perhaps, an absurdist too? — Tom Storm

So far, I don't see reason to think so. I think you were just really fortunate not to have had your spirit crushed early on. From what you've said so far, I surmise you can't take credit for being a happy nihilist.



Not to focus on you in particular, but we could use you as a case study in how happy nihilists come about.

If this means what I think it means, it seems awfully mean spirited. Are you mocking someone for dieing? — flannel jesus

Why? Whence this emotion?
He said he was a robot.

Which actually segues back to the theme of nihilism. As far as we're concerned today, life begins at birth and ends at death. And considering the vastness of space and time, it is a mere blip. But that's all there is, and all there can be, as there is nothing on the other side of death, save decomposition, as everything material will always decompose. — Wayfarer

I think this isn't actually a problem. It can become a problem if one's default is a, let's call that "traumatic attachment to a religious view". Emphasis on "traumatic".

Because whether nihilism will seem depressing or not depends on one's vantage point. If one comes from the position of a tense, anxious, insecure attachment to a religious view, then nihilism will seem like a threat. From the perspective of a secure attachment to a religious view, nihilism will seem deplorable, but not experienced as any kind of direct or indirect threat to oneself.

The entire concept of "strong emergence," only makes sense in a metaphysics where things are the sum total of their parts though. But that's the very idea that doesn't go along with pancomputationalism or process metaphysics more broadly—there is no need for "strong emergence," to explain the sort of phenomena strong emergence is normally brought in to explain. The concept itself requires that you already accept some other metaphysical presuppositions, namely that thing just are their constituent parts (and so their parts must act differently for them to act differently).

You might also consider Hendry and Primas contentions about molecular structure being strongly emergent. At the very least, a century on, chemistry certainly has not been reduced and seems very unlikely to be in the medium term. But if reduction has failed for a century straight such that the basics of chemistry, and even some aspects of physics itself are given as examples of "strong emergence," I am not sure how that is supposed to denote strong evidence that reductionism is true. The big response I've seen to these claims re: molecular structure rely on the environment interacting with molecules to fix their structure. Yet even if this solution ends up working out, it paints a picture of a reduction where things' properties are not reducible to their constituent fundemental parts. Rather, a thing's relation to external entities remains essential to what they are and explaining what they do — things properties to do inhere in their constituents.

Likewise, emergent fusion in entanglement neither fits with definitions of "strong emergence" nor with the view that all phenomena are totally explainable in terms of their discrete parts. This in turn calls into question the entire substance metaphysics/superveniance based framework, which is partly why you get a shift away from supposing that those sorts of models should be "assumed true until proven otherwise." In general, I think it remains the "default" sort of view only because no one paradigm yet exists to replace it, and it's considered "good enough for the laity." But it has considerable consequences for how people see the world.

At the very least, a century on, chemistry certainly has not been reduced — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand the case to be exactly the opposite to this - we in fact can quite literally simulate chemistry using nothing but quantum mechanics. Chemistry is one of the most explicitly reducible things there are.

I understand the case to be exactly the opposite to this - we in fact can quite literally simulate chemistry using nothing but quantum mechanics. Chemistry is one of the most explicitly reducible things there are.

No, far from it. Even the biggest advocates for "reducibility in theory," wouldn't claim it has been reduced. There are all sorts of ad hoc work around in quantum chemistry and you can't derive periods from physics, etc.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chemistry/

If minds, instead of mindless genes, might play some role in selection, then, so the reasoning goes, the "firewall" between the world of nature and the world of mind will be destroyed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The Cartesian division of mind and matter, and the fundamental duality of self and world, primary and secondary attributes, Whitehead's 'bifurcation of nature', all stem from the same source. A snippet I often quote from Thomas Nagel: 'Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception - were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world.' The next step is to then account for the nature of mind in those terms - as the product of these objective forces and principles, none of which display intentionality. (I've been reading Terrence Deacon's attempt to bridge this gap but I'm not there yet.)

my guess is we will uncover uses of the notion of intentionality that lie on the ‘other’ side of positivism than the one you would like to champion. — Joshs

:chin: I thought I've always been critical of positivism.

From the perspective of a secure attachment to a religious view, nihilism will seem deplorable, but not experienced as any kind of direct or indirect threat to oneself. — baker

Sure. But you can still be critical of it from a philosophical perspective.

I thought of saying something about the "terminal malfunction of another moist robot," but I was concerned it would be mean spirited as well. But this is how Dan himself talked about his own mortality, and he seemed to think there was a benefit in accepting this view. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I regretted my remark, but the basic point stands. 'Rest in peace' is a superstitious hangover, from the materialist point of view. It harks back to belief in troubled spirits and the like which Dennett would want no part of.

From the perspective of a secure attachment to a religious view, nihilism will seem deplorable, but not experienced as any kind of direct or indirect threat to oneself.
— baker

Sure. But you can still be critical of it from a philosophical perspective. — Wayfarer

Said Tom Storm:

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. Perhaps it's because I've had practice? I've been a nihilist for close to 50 years. Of course, as meaning making creatures, we can't help but find or make meaning wherever we go. Those who can't do this probably have some survival deficits. — Tom Storm

How do you counter? Especially on his point on "survival deficit"?

Said Tom Storm:

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. Perhaps it's because I've had practice? I've been a nihilist for close to 50 years. Of course, as meaning making creatures, we can't help but find or make meaning wherever we go. Those who can't do this probably have some survival deficits.
— Tom Storm

How do you counter? Especially on his point on "survival deficit"? — baker

If one is able to find joy in day to day experiences, then one is not finding these experiences to be meaningless in themselves, and thus one is not nihilistic about the continent flow of life. Only if one ties the value of those day to day events with some overarching or absolutist meaning of life, and rejects such an absolute, is one a nihilist about concrete experience.