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Nothing for Soylentils: On Nihilism
Recent journal talk has brought things on SN to a head. It is time we had a talk about absolutes again, about truth, and justice, and beauty, all the big things. Mostly it is khallow, again, but fustakrakchich as well, that have been spouting some pretty, philosophically, fascist stuff. Perhaps it is time we had "the talk". The talk about Nothing.
What makes philosophy itself so confusing, and so reviled by the, um, less intellectually curious, is that it deals with foundations. And it deals with foundations by questioning them. For the edices that stand upon these foundations, this is tantamount to sabotage, and indeed it is. Perhaps everything we know is wrong? Maybe Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" or the Wachoski (former) Brothers Matrix, are true representations of our "reality", and we are actually living in a dream world. Of course, the real question, is what happens when we wake up from that world of appearences? Is there a world of reality, like Plato's True Sun, waiting to blind us with the blazing truth of reality? Or, is it possible that behind the world of appearence, there is nothing, or worse a crappy hovercraft with the same old slop everyday that is supposed to taste like Tasty Wheat? And more bad Matrix movies? *shudder*
We are here right now to understand the relation between the two paths. Not so much as the red pill vs. the blue pill, but the red pill versus no pill. It is one thing to reveal that experienced reality is not really all that real, we all know that to a certain extent, but we expect the shimmering water of a mirage to become a solid roadway by the time we get to it. It is another to find onself hurtling through empty space, when the pavement ends. But either of these is an exercise in sublation. We take what we see, and we subsume it under a larger understanding, erasing its significance as mere phenomena. And this sublation may be the real point, regardless of what we use to do it.
Now the point came up in a journal by acid andy, purportedly attempting to get away from politics. He cited a very common worldview, what is some times called "Realism" or in political science, Realpolitik, the idea that everyone is selfishly motivated:
"We want Tribe X to get more money, power and/or freedom, at the expense of Tribe Y."
[cite] I pointed out that this is a common presumption by certain political views. And of course, there was a response.
Here is khallow's scathing obvious rebuttal, such as it is:
"We want Tribe X to get more money, power and/or freedom, at the expense of Tribe Y."
This, in a nutshell, is the Libertarian/Republican/Fascist view of human nature.
Or in other words, your view. Ideological nihilism only says something about you.
Followed by my response:
Oh, noes! I have "touched" khallow! You are so deep into the nihilism you cannot see outside it?
Nihilism trouble appeared in a comment by by fustakrakich (#1080231):
Why do you hate nihilism?
To which I replied,
Nothing there to hate! Why do you think there is? Are you empty inside, Fusta?
And thus it begins.
So our question is, what is "nihilism", and why does aristarchus hate it so? What provoked all this talking about nothing was my original comment on acid andy's "Tribe X" comment.
This, in a nutshell, is the Libertarian/Republican/Fascist view of human nature. Was just reading an interesting review of the alt-right fascination with the fascism inherent in Dune, over a the The L. A. Review of Books [lareviewofbooks.org], how the inferior races are incapable of delayed gratification, and so we need aryan heroes to rule over the rest of us.
As you can see, the nihilism originates with khallow, which is strangely appropriate. And he is not wrong. Nihilism, as a philosophical position, has a long and varied history, but is often connected to eras of dissolution and disillusionment. Thus the Dune reference: the failing Empire calls forth a super-hero? But this is predicated on a recognition that the values of the past are corrupt, decadent, and in a word, not real. And this is the real kicker: if those values were not real, then no values can be real, and the only thing that matters is power. Relativism is the first step, fascism is the end result. But the use of state power to enforce values that the enforcers themselves admit are unreal never ends well. But this leads us to the connection between "standing up for values" and nihilism.
Nihilism, as most sources will tell you, is from Latin "nihil", or "nothing". English has the word "nil" remaining, as well as the related name of everyone's favorite dev/null. So Nihilism is the view that Nothing is, or to put it more correctly, "there is nothing". (Either of these, as existential claims, are problematic, as you can see.) Often this "nothing" is divided up into different types, political nihilism, moral nihilism, epistemological nihilism, and so forth, but really what it all comes down to is the idea that there is nothing. This may seem strange to many, but, if you seriously consider reality, it is vastly over-rated. I mean, what evidence do we even have that reality exists, outside of our own experience? It is a live possibility that everything we think we know and experience is wrong. And the real question is, how do we prove it is not. I like the call the the "possibility that we are Massively mistaken" hypothesis. And it scares the crap out of some people.
So, maybe there is nothing. It is possible. The real question, however, is why would anyone ever maintain that? What is to be gained by "nothing"? As they say, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!". As a negative, one purpose of nihilism is to counter something-ism. "Something-ism" is what the Hellenistic Greek Pyrhonnists referred to as "Dogmatism". "Dogma" derives from "doxa", or opinon, but the Latin word "doceō", to teach, gives the meaning of dogma in English: a teaching. The Stoics were of the opinion that reality is real, and that the proper discipline could lead to actual knowledge of reality. If you are going to teach (being a "doctor") you had better have something to teach, even if you have to make it up! It was the claim to access to the ultimate reality, to the objective truth, that riled up the Skeptics, and caused them to come up with a counter-program.
So what do you do with someone that is convinced they have a handle on the truth? Well, you have to disabuse them of that notion. The Skeptics did this by developing argument forms, called "Tropes", that were aimed at countering Stoic claims to knowledge. Their point was not to prove the Stoic claims false, but to show that a counter-position was equally plausible, leading to a draw, an ἐποχή ("epoche"), a suspension of belief, or a recision of a the truth claim. But this brings us to the crux.
"Realists", used loosely as a term of deparagement for those who think there is an objective, extra-experiential reality, are bothered as much by sceptics as they are by nihilists. In the inaugural episode of Neil de Grasse-Tyson's resurrected "Cosmos" series, he goes right to the issue. Copernicus basically discorvered that the Ptolemaic model of the universe was clunky, and that a Heliocentric model was much easier mathematically. To which I said, "duh!!" I do that a lot. But it was not until Italians read Copernicus's book that trouble began. And, the trouble ended up not being so astronomical in origin, as philosophical. Giordano Bruno read not only Copernicus, but also Lucretius, a text that was on the Index Librorum Prohibitoum, De rerum natura, or "The Nature of Things. Now Lucretius work was neither sceptic nor Stoic, it was instead, materialistic. The Greek atomist school is pre-Socratic, and as Lucretius lays out, denies the divine, the supernatural, the post-biotic existence of persons. So here is our first irony: The church sought to ban the consideration that physical reality might be all there is.
Now we are at the heart of the matter, so to speak. Scepticism opened up a range of doubt, materialism went whole hog with a non-metaphysical theory, but that is not the point. The point is, nihilism. Materialism has many advantages, in terms of scientific exploration, and technological development, but it promotes, or even asserts, a partial nihilism. What exists, exists, but it has no reason to, existence is meaningless. Now, scepticism is not so sure about this, being, after all, skeptical. Religion, then, is opposed to both the admission of doubt, and the assertion of a reality that doubts those things that religion claims to know. In other words, the Church was afraid of the possibility of nihilism.
The skeptics, after all, are not so worried about nihilism. You tell me that the chair I am about to sit down on is only a figment of my mind, that perception is no indication of reality. As a sceptic, I say, maybe, maybe no, the only important thing is that when I sit, I sit. But the nihilist says, but how do you know the chair exists outside of your perception of the chair? We could be in a Matrix-like virtual construct! And the sceptic says, "Yeah, maybe, so what? As long as I can sit down." It is, however, much worse for the realist. They say, "But, you are sitting on a chair! How is that possible, unless there is an objectively existing chair that existed underneath your preception of the chair, and in fact both the cause of your perception, and your not falling on your arse?" To which the sceptic responds, "Maybe, maybe not." See? This is the problem. Do not try to sit on the chair, because obviously that is impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth, there is no chair.
Ok, who is more the moron, the "realist" or the nihilist? On the one hand, both of them claim knowledge of ultimate reality in a way that is demonstrably impossible for humans. On the other, the claim that something exists is something more a positive claim that saying that nothing exists. At least with "nothing" you are either totally wrong, or totally right, right? So the Realists, like the Stoic Dogmatists, are the ones with more exposure. And this is where I suggest that they are actually the greater Nihilists? This will take a moment to explain.
Realists claim that some reality exists. They claim this "reality" has certain characteristics. And from these characteristics, they derive policy. Not all that different than the program of the Stoics. But, at a certain level, these claims are groundless, based on pure supposition. Take for example, our beloved khallow. He knows that the world works on greed and accumulation of wealth. Ergo, redistribution or social justice programs are doomed to fail. Of course, true by definition, an example of petitio principii, but the point is, by being so locked up in unestablished assumptions about reality, this is tantamount to a nihilism. If my ontological presuppostions are accepted, my policy prevails. If not then some other set of equally ungrounded presuppostions will prevail, and then they will be right, because they have won. Yes, culture wars. Not a matter of who is right, but only of who wins. And that, of course, is nihilism pure an simple. If your presuppostions are losing, you burn it all down, since that is all there is.
So, I call upon my fellow soylentils, ponder the nature of reality, and the utility of denying the existence of anything at all, and the perfidy of claiming to know what reality really is. In Greek we call this "ὕβρις", overweening pride, and we follow it with the observation that, Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive MAGA"
More original source, and links!
Fusta gets accused of nihilistic centrism! Oh, the huge Manatees! https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=40886&page=1&cid=1082923#commentwrap
Nihilism, by Nolen Gertz in Aeon, 27 February 2020.
Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, By Jordan S. Carroll
And, Breaking!! New Resource: Three Therapies for the Affective Nihilist: Talking to Kaitlyn Creasy, By Andy Fitch at the LA Review of Books, 12/26/2020, if anyone needs more Nietzsche.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:58AM (24 children)
Disclaimer: these are the axioms I base my worldview on, in the full knowledge that they may very well be such because of the physical limits of human information-processing architecture and perception. I can say that they work well for their intended purpose, but can make no guarantee that they are a reflection of absolute reality; they are as arbitrary, if as useful, as the Peano axioms underlying basic arithmetic.
Basically, I try to have as few axioms as possible, for the simple reason that they're the epistemological equivalent of a public, global-scope const variable. They're all-encompassing groundwork assumptions and have by definition no way to check for consistency outside themselves, since all the tools one might use to do the checking are descendants/dependents of said axioms. Even the rule of "have as few axioms as possible" is prior to these axioms. I try to only hold axiomatically what I would have to assert in order to deny.
And, surprisingly, this reduces down to the old Aristotelian triad:
1) Law of Identity, A is A, a thing is itself, however you want to phrase it. You have to assert this to deny it.
2) Law of Non-contradiction: A is not not-A. Again, you have to assert this in order to deny it.
3) Law of Excluded Middle: $THING is *either* A *or* not-A but *not* both at once. Ditto.
Other than that, I don't take anything as axiomatic. Which means, yes, damn near everything I know counts as an emergent idea with one or more of these as its parent process, like daemons spawned from init(1).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:19AM (7 children)
I am slightly confused. Do you hold the law of non-contradiction to be axiomatic in nature or the law of double negation? You identify the former but roughly provide the latter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @08:11AM (6 children)
I should probably also note that there is probably some other axiom you have hidden somewhere. The system of axioms you posited on their own is not complete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @08:49PM (5 children)
And how do you propose to deal with Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem? With self-shaving barbers? Or Bootstrapping Genii?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @11:45PM (4 children)
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (there are two after all) only apply to calculi that are axiomatic systems and meet a number of other requirements. Most reasoning is not done within such. Therefore, depending on the particular situation, I rely on Post's or Gödel's Completeness Theorems, or Priest's Dialetheia, or Gentzen Consistency, or a number of other systems that are even lesser known to the laymen but do not suffer that problem. But for most people, we usually model and reason using a propositional or first-order predicate calculus that does not suffer from the problem of incompleteness as suggested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:02AM
That last sentence should be, "But for most people in most situations, we..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:28AM (2 children)
But you are glossing over the undecidability of first-order logic, as proven by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in response to Hilbert and Ackermann as regards the halting problem, not to mention the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, which implies an incompleteness of predicate calculi. Your axiom system is either incomplete, or relies on hidden ontological presuppositions. And, like Camelot, "it's only a model".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @06:08AM (1 child)
Of course I did. Regardless, the answer is similar to the one offered to the complaint raised about incompleteness in systems where GIT apply. They usually do not matter to human discourse. Most things we are presented with do not require the use of logical systems where undecidablity is an issue. Either the theorem doesn't require first or higher order systems at all, or it is not of the kind of first or higher order system that is undecidable, or it meets the human element. You see that humans are finite and will only expend so many resources until they assign a "don't know/don't care" or an approximate value to something or take some other short cut. So yes, there are many undecidables and incompletes out there, but pragmatically they do not come up very often in our day to day lives and when they do we don't see them all the way to the bitter end before we use a cut operation or heuristic. Rather than hidden ontological presuppositions, it is an acknowledgement that I don't need a fuzzy, MVL, modal, higher-order, relational system that can do a certain amount of arithmetic while operating on infinite sets and infinite domains of discourse for most things. The closest axiom that would be so "hidden" is that even if I did for a particular situation, approximation is usually sufficient or necessary.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @10:17AM
So, siding with the Nazis, just because they might be right about the white supremacy thing? Data, you know, doesn't lie, and most crime is white fucks in RVs blowing up Nashville, AK, for no good reason. I question your sanity, well after I question your scientific methodology!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @02:46AM
Over intellectualizing aside, I don't think I've seen many people on the left cite Aristotle. Stoicism with it's roots in Aristotelian virtue is something I see discussed almost entirely on the right but it's a newer lonely stoicism that firmly rejects the collectivist aspirations of Aristotle and early Stoics. In the words of the great Oscar Wilde, "Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals".
You're a renaissance woman Azuma, stop infering people wanting to be left alone are callous ("I got mine") and there's hope for you yet ;P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 28 2020, @03:52AM (5 children)
There's fuzzy logic and quantum mechanics, both which break this axiom, indicating that particular axiom doesn't universally hold.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 28 2020, @11:23AM (4 children)
I will respond here to khallow, both because he is a target of this journal, and he is a easier target. Excluded middle! Hah! Not just fuzzy and quantum, but Paraconsistent Logics. But do not let that detain us here. Hazuki seems to not be aware of Dialectics!
In a Dialectic logic, A = ~A, thus all those other axioms do not hold. And the reason is, as Azuma Hazuki has correctly pointed out, things are not just what they are, they are emergent properties. Now it dialectics, this is the simple premise that what ever is, is what it is not, or it would not be that. Principles if Identity, and Non-contradiction blown out the window. Exlcuded Middle? Depends on how you look at it. For Hegel (ow, you knew we were going there, sooner or later!) what is, is what it is what it is not, because only by such a conjuction of opposites, would Becoming be possible. Just think of that, what would make becoming possible.
Now we go into Buddhist metaphysics, as promised, but perhaps pause: Being is the being of not-being, which allows being to become. But is there were not being, becoming would never be? On the necessary other hand, if not-being never was, becoming could never come to become. Interesting.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nostyle on Monday December 28 2020, @04:03PM (2 children)
Let me rephrase your final line another way.... (borrowing a materialistic metaphor, since, materially, the only discernible existence is packets of energy - aka light)...
...light is the existence of not-darkness, which allows light to appear. But if there were not light, appearance would never exist? On the necessary other hand, if darkness never existed, appearance could never come to appear.
Have I got that correct? (Total philosophy newb here.) I rephrase only to suggest that your original phrasing seems to use "being" in the dual sense of "existing" and "appearing" which leads to nonsensical phrases and constructs. But perhaps I am simply confused.
I note this distinction because while darkness has no measurable qualities (location, intensity, ...etc.), light does. Still one might posit that darkness (aka the void) is a necessary matrix wherein light might appear (and its creation was necessarily the zeroeth task of the creator).
---
Can you give me a car analogy?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 29 2020, @02:51AM (1 child)
OK! A Lexus is not a Toyota. But it is a Toyota. Yet, what really makes it a Lexus, is that it is not a Toyota. It is also not a Mercedes-Benz, which also makes it a Toyota. But it is actually a Mercedes-Benz, just Japanese, so it not a Toyota. I hope this clarifies everything.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nostyle on Thursday December 31 2020, @07:28PM
Some people think that nothing is better than a brand new Bentley.
Most people though, would agree that a used Fiesta is better than nothing.
Whereby we conclude that a used Fiesta is better than a brand new Bentley.
---
The existence of atheists is an unfortunate accident.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 28 2020, @04:25PM
Except, of course, when that isn't so. There's no standard, much less formal rules, for what dialectic logic is supposed to be. And in a system where all A = ~A, you have no ability to distinguish individual statements ((A!=B)=(A=B)) and can't even make statements about the system that you can apply a logic of any sort to.
Emergent properties of what? Emergent properties by definition comes from some system which doesn't have the emergent properties as an explicit property of the system. That system is another thing(s). Even if you go with the turtles all the way down argument (that there is no fundamental thing from which all these emergent properties are emerging) or some sort of not-being proto-thing, we still have that the preconditions of emergent properties are things.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 29 2020, @06:44PM (8 children)
I would be wary of the law of the excluded middle, of only because it's so easily disproven.
For example, glass is solid. And yet, over the course of 100 years, panes of window glass flow so that they're thicker at the bottom. >p> This "creep" is observable in many solids, just need to make the time scales longer. Some people try to argue it away by saying glass is just an extremely viscous liquid, but that would mean many solids are liquids. Which is not the case - solids permanently deform or shatter on impact, liquids spatter and then reform.
Silly Putty - deforms when you pull on it slowly, shatters when you hit it with a hammer. Hold a big glob of it by one end and it oozes like maple syrup, another liquid.
Various animals that change sex depending on conditions. And of course sexual orientation - same sex, opposite sex, both? Take the case of Ellen Page, lesbian married to another woman. Now Elliott Page. That makes him a and his wife a straight couple. But only because the law of the excluded middle seems to disallow anything other than straight, gay, or bi.
It's one consequence of the law of the included middle :-)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @05:03AM (7 children)
The problem you are pointing out is not with the Law of the Excluded Middle. Instead, it is a common shortcoming when trying to apply an axiom from a bivalent calculus to claim translated from our everyday informal and MVL system.
What usually ends up happening is that the accuracy and precision of language used in the expression is the problem. As you are switching perspectives on whether items are solid or liquid or animal sex or sexual orientation, you run into issues where you are either not being accurate in what you are describing or you are not being precise in usage. A common example I use for class is gender. The first day of class I give a sheet where I ask people to put the negations and one is "Man or _____" almost everyone puts "woman." Later on I point out the problem. Regardless of how you define it, the proper negation is actually "not-man." After all, the computer I am typing on is not a "man" but it is not a "woman" either. Rather, it is a "not-man" and a "not-woman" as most usages of such a language would be understood. This also suggests the importance of defining terms being used before translating to a logical calculus of any type.
But another consequence of the MVL system we live in is that the law of excluded middle isn't false. Its just not always or only true, but depends on how you look at it. It many ways it really depends on the accuracy or precision of the language you use to describe whatever it is you are naming "the Law of Excluded Middle" and "True/False."
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 31 2020, @04:32AM
we fucked up by trying to make gender mean anything other than sex.
More accurate would be sex (what sex you identify as) and sexual attraction (who you want to screw).
So we get rid of stupid terms like cisgender, homosexual vs heterosexual, etc.
But even that is becoming irrelevant. I mean, who cares any more?
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 31 2020, @11:46PM (5 children)
Well, I guess let's go with my empiricism here. If an axiom doesn't work to a situation where it should be applicable, then that becomes a problem with the axiom. In a complete context-free world, it doesn't matter what an axiom does or proposed, or how well defined it is. The law of the excluded middle is valid in that situation. But when you try shoehorning reality into it (as Azuma claimed earlier) and well, reality doesn't fit, then that becomes a problem with the axiom system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 01 2021, @10:52PM (4 children)
Yes. That is why hammers are terrible. You can't weld metal with them very well.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 01 2021, @11:36PM
Actually,
you can. [iforgeiron.com] But what was the point?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 02 2021, @01:23AM (2 children)
But my axiom is that hammers are the best for everything. Thus, this can't be true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @03:22AM
Vern: "Get a bigger hammer, it'll go easy!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2021, @04:54AM
Lets try it this way. Hammers only work if you grab the handle and impact with the head. It's not the hammers fault you are grabbing the head and impacting with the handle. It's not the hammers fault you are swinging it wrong.