Is Nihilism associated with depression?
When I think Nihilism ...I think "nothing matters" or "everything is meaningless".
When I think depression ...I think "what's the point?" or "I have no self worth". For me the philosophical school of thought and the state of mind are very much overlapped.
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?
For example solipsism? Perhaps this reflects a narcissist (if we are to take it in a negative way) or some hippy that chants of the "oneness" of all beings (in a more positive way).
Are philosophical categories (being born of thought, afterall) analogous to the academisation of human personality traits, outlooks and moods?
When I think depression ...I think "what's the point?" or "I have no self worth". For me the philosophical school of thought and the state of mind are very much overlapped.
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?
For example solipsism? Perhaps this reflects a narcissist (if we are to take it in a negative way) or some hippy that chants of the "oneness" of all beings (in a more positive way).
Are philosophical categories (being born of thought, afterall) analogous to the academisation of human personality traits, outlooks and moods?
Comments (64)
I do wonder what it is that divides them, fundamentally.
1. People having such a good time in their life that the question hasn't had any need to arise, or 2. they're finding it quite natural to engage themselves in projects they find meaningful without even trying
In contradiction to the thesis of the op, I present the witness, Kurt Vonnegut.
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/we-are-here-on-earth-to-fart-around-and-dont-let-anybody-tell-you-any-different/
But on reflection, he's not a moral nihilist at all, but an anti-authoritarian.
I didn't say there are two types of people. I think you read too hastily perhaps.
No, I said it, but i was only joking. Sorry if I offended. But in general, I think it is an always a mistake to psychologise philosophies and philosophers, and particularly so in the case of terms of mental health diagnostics. Nihilism can be a joyous liberation just as well as an oppressive vacuous prison.
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.
Quoting Benj96
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.
:cool: :up:
isn't the reflexive association of 'dogma' with 'transcendence' itself a kind of dogma, or at least a stereotype?
I think nihilism is endemic in today's culture. It doesn't necessarily manifest in dramatic ways, it might just be a shrug, a whatever, a 'makes no difference'. It might manifest as anomie or ennui or in other ways, but it's an afflictive state, as it saps the sense of relatedness to the Cosmos and any real sense that actions are meaningful.
Could be. But that wasn't my intended point. The idea of being free of dogma and doctrine was a separate point and benefit of nihilism - from my perspective.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can see this argument but I would probably call this apathy which isn't necessarily the byproduct of nihilism, given how many apathetic Christians and Hindus I have known through work.
Solipsism is intellectually interesting, but as Borges pointed out, it admits of no reply but produces no conviction (echoing Hume's remarks on Berkeley.)
Nevertheless, I do think there is a connection between nihilism and depression and nihilism and anti-natalism too. The latter group especially are adamant that personal psychology has no bearing on the truth of the argument. Literally true, but misleading. If a person has a (decently) happy life, feels fulfilled and engaged, then that person would rather have life than not have it, if everyone had this view, who would think to come up with these "negative" argument in the first place?
This applies to nihilism too, while psychological states do not tell us if an argument is right or wrong, it does tell us about the motivation for such an argument. If one has not felt profound moments of meaninglessness for long stretches of time, or if one has not felt that life is just one damn sludge of pain, boredom and suffering, then who could imagine framing this argument?
It wouldn't occur to anybody to say these things. Still, I do think nihilism is more merits more respect than anti-natalism, because I do believe that most people have felt periods of meaninglessness, without going all the way to claiming that the whole of life is meaningless.
Yes. I often think it's useful to differentiate the idea of 'feeling meaninglessness' from the phenomenon of believing there is no transcendent meaning (nihilism). The latter doesn't necessitate the former.
Quoting 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.
So joy is not meaningful? :chin:
Surely this has no bearing upon what I love and enjoy or whether its worth getting up in the morning?
There's a difference between Meaning and meaning if you catch my drift. My joy matters to me and some of the folk I know, but it matters not a jot to the universe. It is of no importance.
I take nihilism to imply apathy and ennui. You may not have an articulated 'philosophy of meaning' but the fact you find your life meaningful would indicate to me that youre not nihilist in the sense I understand it. But they're obviously difficult subjects to gauge.
Yeah, I think so. My feeling is that we are by default Meaning Giving creatures, it's just what we do, we find it everywhere. So, to go on to say that such a thing is completely absent goes against our nature, in some respects.
At least a Pyrrhonian can be a big nuisance to other philosophers, which is always fun. :cool:
Life is replete with meaning for all creatures, because all creatures have their own concerns, but there is no single overarching meaning, and any attempt to pursue such a chimera would seem to be potentially nihilistic. Think of Buddhism and its universalized notion that all life is suffering and is something to be escaped rather than embraced.
This is not to say that religions always make people miserable, though. Some people prefer to have their meanings spoon-fed to them and might be miserable without that assistance. I think it is also true that some find their creativity within religious systems. The essence of nihilism is to universalize and tar everyone with the same brush.
While I'm not prepared to complete such an exercise, it would be interesting if philosophies are "reactive" formations (in the psychoanalytic tradition).
An ideological anarchist is a psychological submissive (wishing to break free);
Deontologist / Morally loose
Existentialist / Emotionally hopeless
and so on,
but...meh. I don't think such a hypothesis can be supported. And yet, to me, your question above is almost inevitably answered in the affirmative. Whether "consciously" or "unconsciously" how can a mindstate not leach into an ideology or (at least a precriptive) philosophy? Just as current culture, a philosopher's locus in History, cannot but influence her constructions/projections into that same History.
Is it not fair to suggest that any given "philosophy" is necessarily constructed using the "words" floating around in the philosopher's individual Mind applied to and combined with the words input from others' minds. What else is there?
Perhaps 'nihilism' [the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless; extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence; the doctrine of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900 which found nothing to approve of in the established social order] is a contradiction in terms.
To declare that life is meaningless is to take a position on the meaning of life. It's unavoidable. A very generously defined "normal person" can not exist without some sort of self-guidance that will amount to a moral system; he can not exist without some sort of 'meaning' developing.
Perhaps the Russian-style nihilist is possible: "I do not approve of the established social order." There is a lot for even non-nihilists to disapprove of.
Maybe you mean, "There is no external source of meaning in the world." No imagined deity, no disembodied mind, no cosmic force provides meaning. Human minds are the sole source of meaning".
As for nihilists "jumping out of bed glad to be alive" I think it is difficult to maintain the joy. I used to associate with a particular group of socialists who were something like the Russian nihilists. They had reached the point where they approved of NOTHING in capitalist society. They were not good socialists, they were bitter old men.
A problem with the term nihilist is that it is absolute and without nuance. It's like "anarchist" in that way -- when used by adolescents it has an extreme, unmodified meaning.
Whether nihilism is a good term or not, carry on with your program of joy.
You raise some good points. I don't want to create the impression that I live in a Panglossian or Disneyesque place of happiness and tap dancing. But most days have some joy in them.
Bitterness, as you describe it so well, is something which corrodes many peoples lives.
From Wiki:
I think what bugs me most about people's reaction to nihilism (at least as I have understood it) is this idea - 'If you think there no inherent meaning to life then you must be marooned in meaninglessness." This echoes the OP wherein depression and nihilism were connected.
Sure, many depressed people appear nihilistic in the common usage of the word. But more accurately they are likely to be experiencing anhedonia.
I consider myself a nihilist, if by this expression we believe that there is no meaning to human life and no transcendent meaning to reality (whatever that is). I can't be certain, but I recall that this is the conclusion I came to as a boy. It just seemed to fit my sense making process and was not the product of any trauma. Perhaps this makes me an antifoundationalist.
But as a romantic and perhaps an absurdist, a la Camus, I find that meaning is something we make as individuals and as families, or friends or communities. We can't help ourselves. All any of us have is the exercise of personal preferences, which creates our worlds. Even the religious can't escape this process. Their understanding of god's will is also the exercise of individual preferences and interpretations of what they think god is and wants.
Quoting BC
Yes, it sounds like Monty Python by way of Nietzsche. The Joyous Nihilist.
It's also held as a dogmatic position itself, which you point out. In existentialism, it's generally held out as freeing people from a "tyranny of ideas," but it is itself something that be dogmatically enforced. 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 and telology is considered a non-starter for largely philosophical reasons.
I would say a blend of existentialism and scientism is the dominant religion of the academy today, and it certainly tries to defend itself in the same way the Church tried to defend Aristotlean metaphysics during the early modern period. 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."
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.
But the view that "freedom from ideas" itself enhances freedom assumes a lot. In general, we don't think of people blundering around through ignorance as a model of freedom. Yet, if knowledge of "what the world is," actually enhances our freedom, rather than limiting it, (and the huge number of things we are "free to do" thanks to the development of arts and sciences suggests this is the case) then Derrida and Foucault's idea that avoiding ontology is a way to become "freer" is simply misguided. Likewise, if in an important sense it is true that we "discover" ontology and metaphysical truths more than we "create" them, then Deleuze's point about creativity doesn't end up making a whole lot of sense. The person who achieves freedom from reality is only free until reality comes crashing back into their life, and the person who thinks they are creating when they are only creating their own delusions is in a sad state. Positions seemingly born of skepticism often tend to have to assume that quite a lot is true.
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.
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: .)
Quoting 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 [s](one of whose leading exponents has recently begun to decompose.)[/s]
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'.)
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.
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?
Yes youre 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.
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.
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 [I] something[/I] to do with intentionality in animals.
It's clearly [I]possible[/I] 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 unificationsthe 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 [I]does[/I] produce meaning and value, provided man isn't supernatural in some way.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 comprehensionthere 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.
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.
Quoting 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.
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.
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 ...
The question is how you have arrived at this nihilism.
Quoting Tom Storm
Braggart.
Quoting 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.
Why? Whence this emotion?
He said he was a robot.
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 broadlythere 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.
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/
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.)
Quoting Joshs
:chin: I thought I've always been critical of positivism.
Quoting baker
Sure. But you can still be critical of it from a philosophical perspective.
Quoting 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.
Said Tom Storm:
Quoting Tom Storm
How do you counter? Especially on his point on "survival deficit"?
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.
I don't take credit for being a cheerful. I don't think we can take full credit for our emotional lives.
Quoting baker
Not really. Most people in Australia seem to apprehend no meaning or purpose outside of their own experiences and appear content with what Joshs calls 'concrete experience'. However if one is afflicted by illness or hardship this may change things.
I've never believed that everything must mean something or that we are part of an absolute purpose, or that there is an ultimate reality humans can understand. There's a hole in reality. We are adrift and we seem to invent stories to help ourselves cope. Some of those tales have a type of magic for a period of time, even centuries, and eventually those stories lose power. Right now we seem to be in a transitional period and are overwhelmed by pluralism. We don't seem to know who should be in charge any more, Some people want to go back to the Greeks, others want more scientistic approaches. Some want to reconcile the two. I'm not an academic, so I'm happy to watch from the sidelines. But I suspect we need fresh world views and models rather than romantic nostalgia projects.
Quoting Joshs
That seems right to me.
To expect life to be meaningless has its perks, because whenever life appears meaningless the expectation is satisfied, and whenever life appears meaningful you'll be surprised and enjoy the fact that you were wrong. An optimist who expects life to be meaningful does not enjoy being proved wrong. Therefore, I'd rather be the pessimist, but I wouldn't call it nihilism.
Regarding nihilism, I don't think there is good reason to believe that life is meaningless everywhere and always.