Non-belief and Nihilism

Thanks, Dan. Finally a comment that makes sense to me.Maybe I'm not using the term "hedonism" accurately. I was thinking it meant "living for pleasure."We can most definitely carve out our own meaning and purpose if we want to, but all those meanings and purposes will be subjective and so ultimately arbitrary--unless there is an Absolute.Living for pleasure would be one such purpose. So would living for anything else. I could live for, say, the preservation of armadilloes if I chose to do so (or the destruction of them). No reason to, but I could make up a purpose like that.I just thought that hedonism implied an acceptance of the lack of an Absolute. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Arbitrary to everyone else. But quite meaningful and important to the person who carves it out for themselves. And isn't that really the only person for whom it has to have any meaning?

Are you suggesting or implying that Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll could be a form of an absolute value?
In other words, the spectrum is notAbsolute ----------gray area of relativism-----fade to blackso much as it is Absolute to the individual------undecided----absolute to the other guy.By the way, I like your colorful avatar, Dan. Spruces the place up a bit!This message has been edited by Phatboy, 12-13-2004 10:58 AM

"And isn't that really the only person for whom it has to have any meaning?"It depends on what you mean by "has to." In a practical sense, it doesn't matter if your purpose is subjective or not. Although if no one agrees with you, you might have problems.In a philosophical sense, however, if the purpose is not objective, it is meaningless.I might say, "blue is evil and green is good" (this is my creative moral system). And I am going to spend my life turning everything I can green and getting rid of the blue. My ultimate goal is to make every day cloudy, so I won't have to look at the blue sky. I may not reach that goal but I will have made a start for those who come after me. AS the years go by, one can imagine theological discussions about this new sect: "If no one sees the blue, is it really there?"Such a purpose is just as meaningful as any other.

Why not? Although I'd take issue with the scale you lay out in your post, there's no reason that "enjoy the world around you" would be any less valid as an absolute statement than any other edict an omnipotent authority figure is supposed to have laid down.

That's just advice for life, whether or not anything you believe is objectively correct. So? We experience our lives in a practical sense, no matter how we wax on about philosophical matters. If the only meaning we can hope for is a philosophically meaningless, but practically utterly fulfilling source of happiness... well, there's worse fates. As always, yes... meaningless to those who don't care, and absolutely fraught with importance to those who see the world as a giant manichaean struggle between the eternal forces of blue and green.

Yeah, my scale was lo tech. I am glad to see that you understand and appreciate the concept of absolute belief, however. And as an unwavering champion of the absolute Blue, I hearby deem all worshippers of green to be capitalist idolators. This message has been edited by Phatboy, 12-13-2004 10:54 AM

I'm an aquamarine man, myself.

Is purple then evil because it has a tinge of blue? Is the color lime good?If green is a combination of yellow and blue, does this suggest that the Absolute has an element of evil? By no means! For we live and have our being "in Green" not in "yellow and blue."Thorny issues.

On the other hand, if you think that some purposes are more objectively meaningful than others, then you are a believer in the Absolute.I think this is right--not sure.

Does nihilism destroy the justification for the validity of logic itself?If we used logic to dismiss the Absolute, how can we then dismiss logic? We would be dismissing the reason for dismissing the Absolute.If a disbelief in the Absolute is to be consistent, we must also dismiss logic. For if not,logic would be the Absolute.But if logic was the Absolute, what would that mean?Maybe we can compare it with morals. Suppose there was a moral absolute. Could it mean that the universe has a moral element, but with no Mind to be thinking moral thoughts or some being performing moral actions? The universe would be moral by nature, in the same sense that light travels a certain speed. We don't why light should travel that particular speed--it just does. There did not have to be a mind to assign that particular speed. In the same way, there would not have to be a Mind to assign a moral Absolute?I think I'm confused about this.

We can not actually live nihilistically. We have to live fictitiously, as though our values were objective values.This is probably the reason for the ubiquity of religion in the history of cultures.

Going and running with our color analogy of theology, many say that Theology is black or white. Gray is lumped with black. White is a state the absence of any color. Leaven. Dross. Perhaps. But also Variety. Uniqueness. Spontenaity.

And............... It may mean that we are preprogrammed to dismiss the obvious.
Our logic is our belief. We logically do not see an absolute because our logic cannot fathom nor control such a reality. We would prefer to ponder how things came to be, forming our own little creative illusion of control by establishing theories and a basis for our own
justification for being. This, allowed by a personal Absolute, awaiting our decision to submit to higher logic. Higher and more noble reality.

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Our logic is our belief. We logically do not see an absolute because our logic cannot fathom nor control such a reality. We would prefer to ponder how things came to be, forming our own little creative illusion of control by establishing theories and a basis for our own
justification for being.

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Or, we prefer to avoid pondering how things came to be, and instead invent the Absolute to be the pat answer to all of our unanswerable questions. In this way we are comforted and embrace the illusion of a Greater Entity that cares about us and has our best interests at heart. In this way we also establish a basis for our own justification of being.

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This, allowed by a personal Absolute, awaiting our decision to submit to higher logic. Higher and more noble reality.

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Or, we have invented this personal Absolute in order to avoid the discomfort of the thought that there is no personal Absolute, no pat answers to unanswerable questions, no higher or more noble reality.