[Murphy]

It's a disheartening idea in some ways, liberating in others (fatalism/determinism are perfect arguments for hedonism if personal responsibility is an illusion). I agree strongly that when eliminative materialism is used as a swaggering provocation, it becomes boring, and we can all tell when someone's interest in it is of that superficial type. But I don't see any need to be apologetic about a general interest in, or slight concern regarding, nihilism. It casts a shadow, and not everyone finds the counter-arguments decisive. That doesn't seem unreasonable. After all, the pessimism comes about because nobody has refuted the case. We can talk about what response most people will have to it - eg ignore it, party harder, etc. But those are emotional adaptations, not disproofs.

[Royce]

After all, the pessimism comes about because nobody has refuted the case. We can talk about what response most people will have to it - eg ignore it, party harder, etc. But those are emotional adaptations, not disproofs.

I will suggest that the pessimism is a choice. As I have stated earlier, I can not see why this knowledge has to be interpreted as meaningless and pessimistic.

Say that a nihilist says to me that science has proved that everything is meaningless, no free will etc. IMO those statements do not take away meaning. If you convince yourself that this is actually true, by pure belief in another persons words, then you label yourself a nihilist. This seems like a choice to me. Although I might be ignorant.

If somehow meaning is "taken away" from experience, then we would for sure experience meaninglessness. I just doubt that statements/words can accomplish that.

Just ask a buddhist what he thinks about the fact that there is no free will, no peronality etc. He would answer that it is full of meaning either way. I am not saying buddhism is right and nihilism is wrong, only that there are many perspectives to consider.

"Meaning is only billions of neurons firing". Well, is not that fucking amazing? Neurons firing=The experience of life. In my humble opinion this is fantastic and filled with meaning. Sorry nihilists:)

[sciborg2]

I think a lot of our mechanistic concepts have to do with the history of science and philosophy, rather than the summation of what's in nature.

I used to think there was a huge gulf between skeptical philosophers - who I presumed to be materialist/mechanistic - and those that seemed to want to keep the world enchanted in some manner.

But if a JREF member like Massimo is telling us naive determinism is false and reality rests on the patterns of transcendental Platonic Mathematics, and a New Atheist Horseman like Harris is saying you need consciousness to begin with otherwise a nonsensical something-from-nothing miracle is required....

What does that even mean for reality? As Hoffman notes in the previously linked piece, due to the caricature of reality presented to us we're not in position to say anything definitive about God via our sciences. But then how are we prepared to say anything about the other Big Questions like meaning and free will via our sensory experiences either?

And this is before you throw in the quantum stuff with its challenges to "realism" and the whole observer-participancy suggested by certain experiments. I've seen a few places where it's suggested that the choice is between consciousness influencing reality and the multiverse, and AFAIK the multiverse is just pure fantasy at the moment.

[Murphy]

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.