Well, given the difficulty of all these questions, you can hardly blame nihilists for concluding that one obvious solution to the question of meaning is that it’s a wild goosechase. It’s plausible enough.

As far as pessimism goes, I would draw a distinction between pessimism which has been won honestly and deserves some respect (though not necessarily assent) and glib pessimism which deserves contempt. And that will always be a judgement call. The danger of pessimism, of course, is that it might be disabling in situations which aren’t futile; the danger of optimism is that terrible sacrifices might be made in situations which are. Upshot: don’t have a rule of thumb about what’s possible. But Kahneman says we under-estimate the accuracy of pessimism and I think that’s filtering out into an uptick in pessimistic predictions.

Other than that, though, I agree with Royce. I think nihilism is an essential part of many debates and I’m not sure I’d trust one which ignored it entirely. But it’s not a helpful view in itself and people who say “nihilism, end of story” aren’t particularly bright. The only real question around nihilism is “if nihilism, then what exactly?” which, as you and Sciborg have both pointed out, nihilists aren’t good at answering. You could say they have a theory with no model. I don’t begrudge the theory and I think it provokes useful discussion, but without a model, so what? Same goes for eliminative materialism. When it offers a model, I might care more, but until then, it has no force to it.

Weird in what sense? I mean, jerking off to your tears is generally frowned on in most contexts. But "weird" tends to be used as an adjective that implicitly values conformity. Not sure what your point is?

You put the case very well and I don’t want to seem stubborn by persevering, since you’re convincing me up to a point. That said, I do think the only way to not capitulate to science’s encroachment is to willfully draw an arbitrary line and refuse to accept anything that crosses over it, which may be very hard to sustain. You say science can’t explain the experience of music – but it will. That’s exactly what it will do. It will define in terms of absolute precision why the subjective emotional wonders of music occur – and once science has nailed that down, to say there’s more to it will be like saying, “oh, but there’s something indefinably more to the taste of ice cream than simply triggering taste-bud responses and pleasure centers in the brain, something magical outside of mere biology.” Music is a device that pushes our buttons and makes us go back for more. Nothing else but science can actually explain the experience of it; outside of that, it will just be babble.

So, I think there’s a huge problem for humanism as science tidies up what’s happening. Just as, at one point, supposed mystical experiences turned out to be explicable as epilepsy or schizophrenia, so the raptures that humanism attributes to other experiences might be revealed as equally misunderstood. I admit it’s only a “might.” But it’s quite a plausible “might.” And then what can we say? But I really did see God when I had that fit, so it makes no difference what the doctor says, right? And if I’ve never heard from God since I started taking the pills, well, that’s just a coincidence. It’s true that following this line of thought leads to absolute meaninglessness, but sadly that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I defer to Al Gore for a useful description: an inconvenient truth.

I should add, I think there’s probably not an answer to Sciborg’s point, that it’s difficult to see how you’d live like that in practice. Brassier holds views about Israel’s “crimes”, Bakker at least used to say he believed in feminism, and so on. So there’s a hypocrisy, and the nihilist (or pseudo-nihilist) can only shrug about it, leaving the rest of us free to pursue our own interests after all. The problem is that that pursuit might be taking place, possibly, in an ever shrinking context unless science hits on something that opens the box back up again (but we shouldn’t count on that).

Royce,

Yes, I agree with all that. For someone of a radical temperament, it's an argument against corporate abuse of neuroscience, to which the obvious response would be, "but the corporations own the government, so there will never be any regulation that will prevent it." Which you could say was an argument for rallying people against corporate control of government. Over on TPB, I notice that the view is that this is simply impossible, therefore the only option is fatalism. This is obviously the answer most people want to hear - "you don't have to get involved because it's unstoppable." But I also think it's fairly realistic, since if people haven't risen up yet, I can't see what would make them. So we might as well enjoy it all while it lasts.

Oh, I'm sure most people are hoping that we'll find a way to stick to non-nihilism, it's just there's a creeping sense of doom about whether that's realistic or not. The proposition might be phrased like this: if capitulation to science is all that's left for philosophy, then capitulation to power is all that's left for society.

Having said that, I do think that a quick glance at the history of science suggests the CPI is about right. Whatever science thinks now, you can be fairly sure it won't think that in the future.

A good question, although in some ways it's the one that has been asked since logical positivism decided that philosophy could not offer a description of the world, that was science's job, and all of ethics and aesthetics were literally meaningless. And that was in the 1920s, so philosophy could trundle on for a long while yet.

As to what science says about morality, well, we know what it says! It says nihilism, no? And nihilism implies general acquiescence to power, since there’s no basis to criticize murder, rape, slavery, etc, therefore no grounds for objections to what a foolish moralist would call abuse of power. Practical nihilism is what we would call Machiavellianism and essentially devolves to power-worship, which if translated into successful toadying makes it by far the most sensible position (from a suitably cynical viewpoint). If you can’t beat ‘em, and it is more or less stipulated that you can’t, then join ‘em, regardless of what they’re up to. It also allows for guiltlessly switching sides when the power-balance tips, so it shares something in common with the “game theory” view of life that was discussed on a thread at TPB. It hasn’t been explicitly advocated on TPB yet, but it’s the only real option once you’ve concluded everything else is fraudulent (eg Scott’s once professed feminism, which is not worth supporting on his own argument, since there’s no such thing as right/wrong, etc. I assume he’s abandoned it as his position has evolved). Combined with the other implication of BBT (fatalism, according to Scott, which I quite like), it becomes quite an easy sell in an American context, esp American business of course! If they play it right, BBT advocates could enjoy a bright future.

Is anyone else having trouble posting responses on TPB? Not working for me. I have a disquieting feeling that my attempted post is going to show up about eight times if it suddenly decides to go through.