I think there is a lot of confusion in all of that material, including the quoted definition of existential nihilism. That definition mentions “objective significance”, which in my opinion is an oxymoron.
This is a heck of a way to start. obviously you’re not giving much of a specific explanation here but in the context of the rest of your message I take what you’re saying as a expression of nihilism that goes beyond existential nihilism. It seem you’re denying subjectivity to exist. It seems like you are denying things like truth to exist. I address these additional layers of nihilism when you talk about them in a more detail.
Your additional layers of nihilism not withstanding, the definition is not an oxymoron, not if you apply the word objective in the way it is generally used in these matters in philosophy. Subjective simply means from your point of view. From my point of view it is good for Manchester United to beat Brentford tomorrow. I wouldn’t say it’s objectively significant for Manchester United to be Brentford. I would say that it is subjectively significant for Manchester United to beat Brentford tomorrow. When somebody is talking about objective significance they are saying that’s something is significant in a way that is independent of their point of view or perspective. Somebody who is a realist rather than anti-realist might say killing babies for fun is bad in a way that is independent of what I or anybody else says all things. This would be to apply objective significance rather than subjective significance to the killing of babies for fun.*
I think that significance is something that can be created only by subjects who are able to make the decision to create a meaning, by thinking of it. In a hypothetical world made only of objects, it is impossible for meaning to exist, because there would be no subject able to think of a meaning.
This means that you are an anti-realist from a philosophical point of view. I agree with you on anti-realism being true.
In this context, existential nihilism, meant as a denial of objective meaning, is not a choice, but a logical necessity. This way what existential nihilism denies is an oxymoron, not a possibility. I can’t work out at all how an objective meaning can exist. It seems to me like saying that an idea can exist without any subject able to think. This means, in my opinion, that, if existential nihilism means denying the existence of objective meaning, then you have to be an existential nihilist not only of you are an anti-realist, but even if you are a realist.
Okay, I take this as you saying existential nihilism is true if anti-realism is true. The confusing part is when you say, but even if you are a realist. I don’t see how this follows if you are a realist you in my opinion wrongly believe meaning can’t exist in a way that is objective rather than subjective. If meaning exists in a way that is objective rather than subjective then existential nihilism is wrong. I think that your extra lays of nihilism makes you resistant to taking what is meant by words at face value. It seems that because you object to the validity of the definition you went to redefining words on the fly which is confusing and muddies some of the good points that you’re making.
I am anti-realist as well. I cannot work out how anybody can think of anything independent of subjectivity, since we would have no way to verify its existence without turning it instantly, automatically, into something thought by somebody, which as such is not independent of subjectivity. So, even the concept of “reality independent of subjectivity” seems an oxymoron to me: if you have been able to think of it, this very fact makes it dependent on your thought.
Preach it brother.
You wrote “If anti-realism is true than existential nihilism must be true”. I think this creates confusion as well. Anti-realism cannot be true, because, if it is true, it would mean that its being true is a fact, a reality. I think that an anti-realist thinker cannot rely on the meaning of “true” or “truth”: they are just subjective concepts created by us, the same way meanings do not exist independently, but are created by us.
Okay, this is deep. We are getting into the ground of epistemological nihilism. I take what you were saying about the word true as generally fair. I in general try to not use the word true as it’s quite imprecise what you mean and people will often use the word quite sloppily to denote nothing more than what they feel about the world. I tend to use the phrase representative value rather than true. I think that representation can exist independently of us. For example, a map that exists independently of us may have representative value with respect to representing a mountain. This is to say there is a correspondence between the physical dimensions of the mountain and the patterns of ink on the map. This is to say that representative value is making a correspondence claim that applies irrespective of perspective. To note I am not climbing something is 100% representative when I say it has representative value, I am simply saying it is more than 0% representative. In the light of this qualify let me amend my question to “if anti-realism has representative value then does existential nihilism have to also have a representative value”.
In this context we cannot even say that meanings created by us exist. The very concept of existence becomes totally unreliable once you decide to be anti-realist.
The term anti-realist is quite in precise, I am not an anti-realist about everything. I am not an antirealist when it comes to science using the term science more expensively than most. When it comes to science, I am a structuralist. I would agree that if you are an anti-realist about everything it makes any positive statement about anything meaningless?
I think that saying that the meaning, that people create it for themselves, that is subjectively exists, has representative value as a statement. It doesn’t have as much representative value as people think it does, but I would say it clearly has more than zero. I really do want Manchester United to beat Brentford tomorrow. I think that denying the existence of subjective experience is going a little far. It doesn’t exist in the way people like to think of it as existing but this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I would say that subjective experience exists as a model inside your brain that generates subjective beliefs about the world that it is quite often models as objective reality.
If you think of a meaning, that meaning does not come to existence in the world of your ideas. This would be just another realism. Rather, it is just a subjective experience, about which we cannot even say that it exists.
I think I disagree here and I think my disagreement turns on wether saying “subjective experience exists” has representative value or not. I think that it is representative of reality that our brains generate a model of the world of which some of it has representative value and some of it doesn’t have representative value. This isn’t to say we are good at distinguishing what has representative value from what doesn’t but the model itself exists. What people describe as subjective experience is the model which exists representing its own internal dynamics. The model itself exists physically in the connections of the brain. This is the same way a file and your computer has a physical existence in the transistors of your hard drive. This is to say just as it has representative value to say a file physically exists on the computer of your hard drive the fundamentally fallacious idea that it’s good for Manchester United to beat Brentford physically exists in my head. You could in theory and maybe even in practice find the connections in my brain integral to my subjective belief about tomorrow’s a soccer game and physically destroy the physically existing of my subjective belief that exists as part of my physically existing reality model.
It sounds like you may have read the case against reality by Donald Hoffman. If you have I would love to discuss it.
I agree but it doesn’t really match with my system where language is a control structure of a recursive infinite, where the real thing happens. For the Thought category this recursive infinite is the specific human way of mimicking (recall: we are apes): the meta way, the mimicking of mimicking. When I’m writing this very post, it’s not language that is the source activity, that “represent” by itself something: it’s my mimicking of the current state of the discussion, that includes what you said above and the simulation of how I can have your own mental simulation branch on mine. This is meta by nature, I’m mimicking you mimicking me. Then the writing output itself automatically, I really don’t think about that, it’s automatic. For example I disagree about the “brain” argument, there is nothing of philosophical happening in “the brain”, this discussion happens in the common space of human meta-mimicking of a set of known ideas, a normative meta-mimicking set, called “philosophy”. Thought articulate to Life, to meta-mimicking and then Life articulate to Matter, here you will find neurons, spikes etc. but “philosophy” does not operate at this level, it’s a bad category fault to say that, and this fault comes from the faulty immanent [physic-psychic] bi-categorical framework of Philosophy… up to the MCogito system (it’s here on TPF).