Fair enough. We’ve covered some difficult material - and enough for an undergrad course in ethics. Take your time and have a think. Sorry if that comes across as patronising.
By all means, you can lay claim to moral nihilism, if by that you mean that there are no grand moral injunctions that are binding on all in all circumstances. I’ll agree.
What I hoped to show was that even so, there are still expectations concerning how we should behave as members of a community.
That is, even for a moral nihilist, there are still ethical considerations to be made. We are communal critters, and that brings with it some difficulties worth discussing.
How we might go about that discussion is perhaps a seperate issue.
I should add that the way we address ethical issues is not the same as the way we address other issues.
So in Science we can look around and agree as to how things are, and so develop predictions and interact with the materials around us; our agreement is held firm by our being a part of the world we share.
But in ethics we are not looking at how things are, but how we want them to be, at what we should do, how we should act. We don’t have the same grounding to hold things firm.
So there are differences in the method involved. How we want things to be is not determined by how things are, because we might change how things are. Hence, we can’t get an ought from an is.
I think sometimes that the reason some people need objective morality is that they see the human race as fundamentally vile. They think that without condemnations, there is no hope. In the back of their minds, they may realize that condemnations don’t really accomplish anything, so they’re grappling with a complete lack of hope for humanity. In that despair, they turn outward toward the divine. They’re doing the best they can to cope with something that’s crippling.
To be a nihilist has to start with either optimism or acceptance. Neither is available to the pessimist, so each kind of person is cemented in the philosophy they need.
I agree and one might say the same about the need for God as the foundation. How many times have I heard from Apologists that secular morality means anything goes and we all need protection from human desires?
Yes. I think the primary challenge is in determining which values to adopt on a given issue and why; capital punishment, drug use, euthanasia, welfare provision, LGBTQ+ rights, and so on. When the rubber hits the road, we often skid off the asphalt into a filthy morass of competing presuppositions.
Interesting. I’m not sure I follow. I used to be a nihilist on most issues of value, and perhaps still am when I’m not being a more reasonable kind of agnostic. My conclusion was always that I was unable to find a justification for objective morality or meaning outside the contingent facts of living and pragmatism. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about human beings. But as @Banno says we have to live with each other so the conversation begins. Next follows rhetorical acts of persuasion and the proffering of evidence and reason.
My point is that your mind was free to explore nihilism because your heart wasn’t burdened with anger and disappointment. You didn’t desperately need to condemn. Those who have that need will never have the flexibility to see through your eyes no matter how flourished your rhetoric is.
What we can do with the rhetoric is use it to announce ourselves. This is who I am. I am a moral nihilist.
I guess I still don’t fully recognise the point. I’m sure this is on me. Don’t you think there are nihilists who arrive there precisely because of anger and disappointment and judgement? For some, nihilism may be the equivalent of kicking over the chessboard when the game isn’t going their way. Just a thought. I think nihilism is like the Catholic Church - it’s all over the fuckin’ place.
That’s a good question. Based on my experiences on reddit, many young people hate life. If they also embrace nihilism, they have no coping mechanisms and the way they express themselves is not exactly healthy if you know what I mean. We call this negative nihilism. Fortunately they’re drawn to positive nihilists who are happy about it. My guess is that negative nihilists are looking for the way forward.
I guess this is why I tend to see it as a psychological issue as much as a philosophical one.
Just saying notice the dynamic at work between two of the protagonists, which comes down to ‘well if it’s not objective THEN it’s a matter of individual choice.’ And that dynamic does seem an outcome of the culture we’re in.
As to whether a shared valued system could be imposed - that’s another question. All I’m saying is that in the absence of one these appear as the only option.
Don’t you think it’s possible that moral perception works according to a “there is, therefore this ought to be the case” sort of logic? The “there is” seems to me to be implicit beliefs about a social situation. That is, about the people involved, the intentions involved in others and so on.
Maybe this thought experiment is fundamentally born from wishful thinking from my side, but wouldn’t it be quite something if social situations themselves had an objectivity about them such that they consisted of properties (in a highly dynamic way) that could in principle be accurately grasped from moment to moment?
If my first assumption is true, that of moral or social perception of what is determining ought making beliefs and actions - and the second about objective properties of the social world being discoverable (measurable), then to me this suggests a paradigm of social enlightenment being possible.
As to how this is related to moral nihilism (directed at OP). I think this is at least one way in which I challenge certain negative aspects of moral nihilism. I won’t go so far as to say that I think nihilism is definitely untrue, but the different aspects associated with each label (moral nihilism, moral realism, moral relativism) can I think be mixed in various ways to build a position that doesn’t have to hold on to one single label. I personally find moral realism as described on Wikipedia or SEP to be a bit confusing to me. I’ve wanted sometimes to call myself a moral realist but when I look up realist views I find myself not resonating enough with them. “Moral objective properties in the world” seems a common realist phrasing, but what the hell does that mean? I don’t know.
I guess I’m just not sure what this observation gives us practically. I also think it’s less clear than this. Many people I know who are theists and apparent “objectivists” are also zealous proponents of individual choice. It isn’t either/or. What I think happens with the latter is that a belief in a supervening source of all values in some way emboldens their own identity and gives them imprimatur to make personal calls on most matters.
If you are saying that our “ought” statements can be dependent on our “is” statements, I have no objection; but speaking roughly, if a valid conclusion contains an “ought”, there is an “ought” in the premises. “Ough” does nto pop into existence ex nihilo.
I think the kind of nihilism you refer to is, perhaps, of the “everything is fucked, so everything is bullshit” variety, Pretty popular when I was a teen in 1980.
Easy to see how that might come from disappointment, cultural freedom and social media reinforcement. I asked my Dad about this. He was 13 in Europe in 1936. He said most people felt similarly in his time (and they had Hitler and the depression as a lubricant) but you didn’t have the luxury to indulge it. You worked 6 days a week, if you had a job, and got married at 21. You just didn’t have opportunity to blossom into full pessimistic splendour and no one would listen anyway. Sounds partly right to me.
This is interesting to think about. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. My first thoughts tell me something like the fly, which is physical, isn’t the same as moral statements for this paradox, but I will think about it more. If I find anything to say, I’ll reply, but thanks for this conversation so far.
For context, I’m an atheist who tends to see morality as something we learn to do. Morals are therefore “real” in the sense that matters.
But I don’t find the phrase “objective reality” meaningful. The word objective means “unbiased.” So “objectively right” means something like right for an unbiased judge. But who is this unbiased judge ?
We don’t have perfect agreement on that, but we do mostly agree that causing pain to sentient creatures, just for fun, is wrong.
My sense is that you are contrasting this “soft” objectivity to some much more “solid” objectivity. But physics, for instance, depends on measurements and observations. Measurement is always approximate (excluding discrete counts) and may be performed incorrectly ( by the vague but effective standards of the community.)
Basically I’m saying that “perfect objectivity” is “ideal” (even normatively) like a perfect circle.
So I don’t accept that there’s an essential gap between normative judgements and judgments about physical objects. I do agree that it’s easier to feel liberated from the prejudices of others than it is from the “blind” laws of nature.
In short, I can’t accept the phrase “actually exists” as sufficiently meaningful. I can understand that an uncritical “atoms and void” ontology suggests the secondary reality of the normative. But presenting this atoms-and-void ontology as rational — and not just some sado-masochistic personal myth — requires just the norms that are supposed to be made “unreal.” In particular, demanding respect for this “atoms and void” reduction of norms requires rational norms.
Note that you ask for arguments against it. This shows your respect for and acknowledgement of rational norms. As I see it, you are enacting the blurry reality of the norms you question.
You can even see normativity as spatio-temporal patterns in atoms and void, which are too complex to model with traditional mathematical tools. On the other hand, huge neural networks seem to model some of these patterns pretty well.
