John Thiel
Member
Hey, dig this, it looks like I'm having the last word on nihilism...maybe all the nihilists decided to stop posting.
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Nihilism
- Thread starter The Sum of Awe
- Start date
dust1n
Zindīq
To make sure I understood right, I'm assuming you meant 'I dont' see how it's logically possible to deny all objective claims.'
You can approach it with metaphysical/ontological nihilism, or you can approach it with epistomological nihilism. Epistomology, in general, is extremely long and complicated. I still rehash ideas about it over and over trying to make up my mind.
The topic is old and very complicated: Just for example...
"Empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, argued that human knowledge originates in our sensations. Locke, for instance, was a representative realist about the external world and placed great confidence in the ability of the senses to inform us of the properties that empirical objects really have in themselves. Locke had also argued that the mind is a blank slate, or a tabula rasa, that becomes populated with ideas by its interactions with the world. Experience teaches us everything, including concepts of relationship, identity, causation, and so on. Kant argues that the blank slate model of the mind is insufficient to explain the beliefs about objects that we have; some components of our beliefs must be brought by the mind to experience.
Berkeley’s strict phenomenalism, in contrast to Locke, raised questions about the inference from the character of our sensations to conclusions about the real properties of mind-independent objects. Since the human mind is strictly limited to the senses for its input, Berkeley argued, it has no independent means by which to verify the accuracy of the match between sensations and the properties that objects possess in themselves. In fact, Berkeley rejected the very idea of mind-independent objects on the grounds that a mind is, by its nature, incapable of possessing an idea of such a thing. Hence, in Kant’s terms, Berkeley was a material idealist. To the material idealist, knowledge of material objects is ideal or unachievable, not real. For Berkeley, mind-independent material objects are impossible and unknowable. In our sense experience we only have access to our mental representations, not to objects themselves. Berkeley argues that our judgments about objects are really judgments about these mental representations alone, not the substance that gives rise to them. In the Refutation of Material Idealism, Kant argues that material idealism is actually incompatible with a position that Berkeley held, namely that we are capable of making judgments about our experience.
David Hume pursued Berkeley’s empirical line of inquiry even further, calling into question even more of our common sense beliefs about the source and support of our sense perceptions. Hume maintains that we cannot provide a priori or a posteriori justifications for a number of our beliefs like, “Objects and subjects persist identically over time,” or “Every event must have a cause.” In Hume’s hands, it becomes clear that empiricism cannot give us an epistemological justification for the claims about objects, subjects, and causes that we took to be most obvious and certain about the world.
Kant expresses deep dissatisfaction with the idealistic and seemingly skeptical results of the empirical lines of inquiry. In each case, Kant gives a number of arguments to show that Locke’s, Berkeley’s, and Hume’s empiricist positions are untenable because they necessarily presuppose the very claims they set out to disprove. In fact, any coherent account of how we perform even the most rudimentary mental acts of self-awareness and making judgments about objects must presuppose these claims, Kant argues. Hence, while Kant is sympathetic with many parts of empiricism, ultimately it cannot be a satisfactory account of our experience of the world."
Kant, Immanuel: Metaphysics*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
But that aside, you shouldn't merge the two words together. Realism is a specific branch of thinking, and Nihilism is a specific branch of thinking, and it isn't going to help to use 'equals' for things that aren't quantitative.
dust1n
Zindīq
It seemed to me that Nietzsche's recognition of nihilism was one that held it as the great crises that man would face, and that his beating of nihilism is what I recognized by Nietzsche's awareness that nihilism was legitimate (at the time and contexts in which he uses it) and that humans would have to overcome this at some point.
John Thiel
Member
That's being nihilistic in your contemplation of it; perhaps that's a trap found in nihilism.
Cool story, bro
DreadFish
Cosmic Vagabond
Fair? Who's the ******* nihilist here??
No one, but you have to admit Nihilists are the only intellectually honest atheists.
DreadFish
Cosmic Vagabond
Well, you know, that' just, like, uhh, your opinion, man.
Those are all movie quotes, dont worry about it
But if I were to be serious, there are many other intellectually honest atheists besides nihilists.
Well, you know, that' just, like, uhh, your opinion, man.
Those are all movie quotes, dont worry about it
Yeah I saw the movie, didn't understand it.
By intellectually honest I meant only agreeing in what is, not what they think.
DreadFish
Cosmic Vagabond
Yeah, well, it's a very complicated movie, Sum. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in your head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head.
I think there are plenty of other intellectually honest atheists who may or may not adhere to a particular school of thought. And I think there are likely plenty of nihilists who stick to what they think about what is, rather than what is. It's too broad a statement to hold any water.
No... No, we don't.
by the definition of a nihilist, you understand that you need to have faith in your emotions and thoughts, so...
You can do that and not be a nihilist.
What do you mean?
Faith in something doesn't require nihilism, that subtraction of the quality of reality from something that leaves it essentially absent. You can have faith in things that are present, whether real or abstract, but hidden in other ways.