And finally we get to the aspect-emperor of the forum, the big cheese, the numero uno:
Madness:I'm responding but I do want to note that please seek out every available counter-argument (including, and especially, direct criticisms of the authors who have affected this "negative enlightenment" in you)
I haven't found any convincing counter-arguments to any of them. How do you argue against philosophies that are grounded in actual cognitive psychology and empirical science? I don't especially
want to be an eliminativist or a nihilist, but I can't disprove these views.
As for Bakker in particular...I've never seen any valid counter-arguments to The Argument, and I can't think of any. The only serious one I've seen was a review of
Neuropath that basically played a semantics-game and redefined the concept of "self":
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=698Other than that, the most common criticism of Bakker's position seems to be "Bakker is a sexist poo-poo head, I hate him".
You've not seen the value I do in my views in other, similar conversations so I won't reiterate them here. I believe you are valuable in that you have unique experiences and knowledge unavailable to me and you've already expanded me much in your interaction here in the past (almost) twoish years.
Thanks, I guess.
To be fair, people say Neuropath is the amateur Ligotti. My main question of such thinkers is "are the criterion by which you establish meaninglessness a result of sociocultural organization as it has stood/stands?" If so, then every nihilist has an obligation to affect change in society and cultural to prove that every sociocultural arrangement actually does result in meaninglessness.
Interesting. Could you explain it further?
(The nihilist view, which I share, is that socio-cultural arrangements exist only for evolutionary purposes, which are ultimately meaningless and purposeless.)
However, why is the goal of suicide the result?
I'm not saying that nihilism = suicide. A real nihilist would be indifferent to life or death. I'm just saying that there's no actual reason why life is objectively better than death. From a purely rational standpoint, the choice of life isn't any superior to death. Looking at it from a nihilist/materialist point of view: if you want to kill yourself, there's really no reason not to.
Almost all my life, I've been a melancholic sort of person. This is far from my first depression, and I'll probably have many more if I live into old age. Why
shouldn't I end it all?
How do you know that all those thinkers that contribute to this worldview aren't poor arguers
This is a non-question. How do I prove God doesn't exist?
You're basically asking me to tell myself: "I believe science is wrong because I want it to be wrong."
If what exists, if what we experience is inherently meaninglessness, what is to stop us, truly, from making that meaninglessness beautiful?
You first have to decide that "beautiful" is an objectively meaningful concept, lol. I don't think it is.
Why does the result always have to be incapacitation? Why does the reaction have to be one of apathetic futility?
I dunno. It's probably got a lot to do with the fact that people who have these existential doubts are usually introverted people. Quiet, thoughtful people who spend a lot of time in abstract thinking. They're not extroverted, energetic go-getters (those kind of people are usually more interested in other people than in abstract ideas) who have lots of motivation to change things.
Introverted people usually get overwhelmed by these kinds of thoughts, and become mentally paralyzed.
Isn't it possible that there is coherency beyond what our human brains can perceive? Isn't it likely that humans don't actually know enough about anything for nihilism, religions, philosophy to be "the way things are?"
No. If we can't perceive or infer it, then it can't exist for us.
It doesn't matter if there's a coherency or purpose beyond what our brains can know, it's really a non-issue.
I want to engage life.
Good for you.
Auriga, I value your unique reality-tunnel and I still wish to spend a whole lifetime learning from differences between us.
Thanks for the compliment, I suppose, although "my" reality tunnel isn't really "mine" in any real sense - it was all a pointless delusion of being a person.
Anyways, to end this debate:
"Since there's no personal God and no gods, no good and no evil, no right and no wrong, no meaning and no purpose, it means that there aren't any no values that are inherently valuable. There's no justice that is ultimately justifiable, no reasoning that is fundamentally rational, and no sane way to choose between science, religion, racism, philosophy, nationalism, conservatism, nihilism, liberalism, surrealism, fascism, asceticism, subjectivism, elitism, or ismism. If reason is incapable of deducing ultimate non-arbitrary human ends, and nothing can be judged as ultimately more important than anything else, then freedom is equal to slavery, cruelty is equal to kindness, love is equal to hate, destruction is equal to creation, life is equal to death, and death is equal to life."