All you are doing here is ignoring the definitions involve to deny the conclusion that you want to deny.
The truth is that you are an anti realist because you believe meaning is something we construct which means you don’t think it’s fundamentally real in the way philosophy uses the word real. You believe meaning is not independent of our perspective.
This of course, at least from my point of view doesn’t mean that meaning doesn’t exist in a way that is dependent on our perspective. This kind of existence, however is not what philosopher‘s would use the word real to describe. I would agree that this is a problematic and confusing use of the word real but there we go this is philosophy for you. The bottom line is you don’t think meaning exists independent of your perspective.
Existential nihilism, does not deny that the type of meaning you are describing which you create, which only exists from your perspective, which is what philosopher’s using their confusing diction would describe as not real, exists. The qualifier existential is there for a reason and is doing work. We shouldn’t ignore it and substitute existential nihilism for the straw man of absolute nihilism.
I think that if you were taking the standard definitions, you would agree with me. Anti-realism is true in that the best we can do is construct our own meaning. Existential nihilism is true in that meaning that exists independent of our perspective doesn’t exist. I think you would also agree with me that meaning that we construct and exists from our perspective exists. I think you would all also agree with me that absolute unqualified nihilism that denies the existence of even the meaning we constrict and exists from our perspective is not true.
I think that you’re in general trying to collapse or trivialise the difference between perspective independent and perspective dependent ideas of meaning. I think that these are important differences both with respect to specific definitions made to delineate between them and in terms of what is reasonable to claim exists.
Rather, I’m pointing out the limits on those definitions.
How’s that, then? For my part I’ll go along with Austin’s account.
In so far as that makes any sense, yes. The world is always and already interpreted.
So now, what are we to make of your conclusion, that human existence is fundamentally absurd? It seems to rest on a misunderstanding, such that only stuff we find is not absurd, or that the stuff we decide is not valuable, or some such. How do we make sense of such a notion?
No. Anti-realism is just the assumption that you don’t know anything about reality
Granted that existence may seem meaningless if reality was unknowable and all you could know are socially constructed stories, dependent on power-relations etc. But many anti-realists don’t seem to mind, or find it meaningful even.
Regarding possible knowledge about reality, I’m a realist.
The idea that something may be a ‘social construct’ is a red herring, as the practical effects of social constructs is just as real within the context of human society as if they were truly ‘real’ from a realist perspective.
Take morals for instance ─ they may not be ‘real’ in the sense that they are not inherent in the fabric of the universe, but they are very ‘real’ within the human societies that created them as an outgrowth of human social interaction.
Or take race for instance ─ race is clearly unreal, a social construct, as it has no relation to human biology or anything else in relation to actual humans. Yet the social consequences of the concept of race within human societies make it effectively ‘real’ even though it is a social construct.
Sure, but for anti-realists, truth depends on them or us or anything but an independent reality.
For anti-realists, ‘vaccines save lives’ is true only as long as we agree that vaccines save lives. For realists its true because vaccines save lives, regardless of whether we agree. (That the effects might be just as real is beside the point).
Saying that you’re pointing out the limit of the definitions is not true. Existential nihilism does not deny that meaning that you make up yourself exists. You were saying that existential nihilism isn’t true because we can make up our own meaning. what you were doing is make believing that the definition of existential nihilism is different to what it is so you can claim that it isn’t true.
Again you are changing the definition of the meaning so you can avoid what you believe falling into categories that have connotations that you don’t like. This is not clever and this is not helpful when it comes to understanding each other. I don’t have a particular problem with the definition of anti-realism that you’re using. I don’t think it’s particularly different to mine at least not in a meaningful way.
Again with absurdism it is clear that Camus wasn’t saying that meaning that we make up for ourselves doesn’t exist. He was defining the absurd in relation to a desire for perspective independent meaning specifically. Again this is simply what the words mean and what the definition is. It is unproductive to dismiss the philosophy of absurdism by redefining absurdism as the claim that we can’t generate our I want subjective meaning. This is quite obviously a device designed to avoid the question being asked. By doing this, you are forcing the conversation to occur in a way that we are talking past each other.
You also seem to be making out that I don’t think that we can create our own meaning. For the record, I think that we quite obviously create our own meaning and I would also agree that people can find the meaning that they create extremely fulfilling. happy people walking around finding their internally generated meanings meaningful is perfectly compatible with any actual definition of existential nihilism.
To deny that there is a difference between perspective dependent and perspective independent meaning the seems to contradict the definition from your boy Austin’s account.
Then check out the recent addition to SEP on Realism and Anti-Realism about Metaphysics. Note here the detailed dissection of differing ways of understanding and applying “antirealism”.
If this were all there were here, antirealism would be dead in the water, since ‘vaccines save lives’ is true IFF vaccines save lives is a tautology.
There is more going on here, and the devil is in the detail.
yes and no: I reread the OP and “existential nihilist” is a moral attitude, another subject indeed, but the underneath arguing is metaphysical and engage the difference between reality and language.
No. Anti-realism is just the assumption that you don’t know anything about reality
Well that is very rude and very presumptuous. You know nothing about what I know or don’t know or what my justification is. If you want to argue against anti realism let’s actually hear it or do you think insulting people counts as an argument.
Granted that existence may seem meaningless if reality was unknowable and all you could know are socially constructed stories, dependent on power-relations etc. But many anti-realists don’t seem to mind, or find it meaningful even.
I think people read the freeze anti realism and the phrase existential nihilist in the question and assume that I don’t think the meaning we create exists or can create feelings of fulfilment that are subjectively profound. People then went to ignore the actual question. I’m asking about the relationship between anti-realism and existential nihilism and tell me that I’m an idiot for not believing of we can create our own subjective meaning or that we should be dissatisfied with the meaningfulness of our subjective meaning. People are projecting viewpoints on me that I have not expressed and that are in no way incompatible with anti-realism or existential nihilism. For the record, I am one of those anti-realists who find life meaningful. I think that it is borderline impossible for people not to find life meaningful. When I held my twin boys in my arms for the first time you can bet your life that I found life plenty meaningful. I think that in my question people are substituting existential nihilism for total nihilism, and then are not reading the definition of existential nihilism that I give. Existential nihilism has a specific definition that only rejects perspective independent notions of meaning, it does not reject notions of meaning that are perspective dependent. You are clearly making incorrect assumptions about what I am saying based. I’m not having read enough of what I have written.
Regarding possible knowledge about reality, I’m a realist.
Yay, the person who has insulted me has informed me without any context that they are a realist, this is so meaningful! Also the question posed wasn’t are you a realist? I even said in the little bit after the question you get to write that I didn’t want it to turn into a debate between realism and anti-realism because that debate has been done before.
The question posed was if anti-realism is true does exist existential nihilism also have to be true. You haven’t even gesture at answering that question asked. Is this what you do on this website, just ignore the question posed, make assumptions and insult people.
You don’t actually have to be either an antirealist or an existential nihilist to answer the question. You could even rephrase the question to be, do you need to be a realist in order to avoid existential nihilism? It’s really just a question of how to concepts that have relatively specific definitions logically relate to each other.
Final Answer: The question itself does not hold because anti-realism is simultaneously true and false. It is simply bad metaphysics.
True: Ideas know only other ideas. The concepts generated by my current writing know only other concepts in Philosophy. Ideas have zero direct ontological link with non-idea realities.
False: It is blatantly obvious that ideas do know the external world. How else could we have landed the Rosetta probe on a comet???
These aporias are completely cleared up in the MCogito system through precise causal concepts: categories of being, meta-causality, differential speed of Being creation, carrier beings, and Totality embedding in carriers beings.
But the MCogito system will no help because the fundamental error here is attempting to build a moral foundation—which is strictly human in essence—upon a non-human, external reality. True logic dictates that you must find this foundation within yourself or your human community, not in the cosmos.
It’s a fact that anti-realism is the rejection of possible knowledge about reality. That’s why it’s called anti-realism. So if you’re an anti-realist, then you ought to be pround of knowing absolutely nothing about reality. But if you’re offended by it, then you ought to be a realist!
It is open to read that I replied to your question, (hence the quote). Many anti-realists don’t mind their epistemic detachment from reality. They find their meanings elsewhere or construct their own. So apparently you can be an anti-realist without being a nihilist. That’s a direct reply to your question.
Okay, so the first thing to say is I’m not an anti-realist about absolutely everything. When it comes to matter of science and what I would term representation I am a structuralist. I appreciate the fact that I called myself an anti-realist without qualifying this but I didn’t want to complicate matters and it’s not like people on this forum appreciate nuance anyway. Given this I would argue I do know stuff about reality.
With respect your attempt to answer the question you again have failed. I don’t understand how you don’t understand that there are different types of nihilism and I am referencing a particular type of nihilism. I very specifically say existential nihilism in the question. I gave the definition of existentialism for those who did not understand what it is. I would’ve imagined that somebody has cocky as yourself would have the reading comprehension to read a short question and wouldn’t substitute out different philosophical terms that mean different things in their answers to questions. Obviously if somebody is a full on, hundred percent nihilist about everything rather than an existential nihilist, this is more than being an anti-realist.
Honestly, read the freaking question and then answer the question actually asked.
I am also not an anti-realist about everything, your example about a probe landing on a commit is a good one. I was simply hoping to avoid getting too deep into anti realism.
I have a very nuance naturalistic approach to philosophy that extends very much past the human realm of subjective experience. This is generally where my philosophy is coming from. I find it kind of odd you couldn’t answer the question despite what you wrote, but it’s not going to keep me awake at night either, so whatever.
Ok, sounds reasonable, but why would you want to reject possible knowledge of some things but not others?
As a realist, I don’t need to reject possible knowledge of, say, Superman and Donald Duck. They’re fictions, and I can know them because the pictures and inscriptions of them are real. It would serve no purpose to add that I’m an anti-realist about the non-existing parts of the fictions. Furthermore, should I reject possible knowledge about what’s inside black holes? Who am I to reject the possibility for future physicists and cosmologists?
Like an anti-realist rejects possible knowledge, a nihilist rejects possible meaning. Both are unwarranted, I think. But I get that some find it meaningful to discuss the nature of meaning and existence.
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Ok, sounds reasonable, but why would you want to reject possible knowledge of some things but not others?
I am not rejecting the possibility of knowledge. I know what meaning is and I know that it does not exist external to us.
All living organisms constitute self relating systems in which they represent information about the world and process it into output values that maximise, minimise or maintain aspects of its environment within particular set points. You can see this in operation in virtually all living organisms. You can see it in the way bacteria regulate the concentration of hydrogen peroxide through the transcription factor OxyR. You can see it in the way bacteria chemo attract using the methyl accepting protein and various protein kinesis and protein phosphers to modulate the output of the bacterial flagellum. What is happening in the self-regulating systems is that they are internalising external information by representing it. This is representative information and it has representative value meaning it is at least to some degree What philosophers would call real, in that what the information is representing exists external to the self regulating system. In bacteria this information is collected by the methyl accepting protein in humans it is collected by sense organs.
The next thing to self regulating system has to do is process the representative information into an output value. Doing this is dependent on information that exists within the self regulating system that has come to exist through evolution and in the case of more complex organisms learning. I call this processing information. In the case of bacteria this processing information is instantiated by the protein kinesis and protein phsphotases that lead to modulation of the flagellum. In humans, this processing information is instantiated by the human nervous system. This processing information is not representative of the world external to the self regulating system, it is merely how the representative information needs to be processed in order to produce evolutionary desirable outcomes. This means that processing information is not real in the philosophical sense. We as self regulating systems use the language of meaning to talk about how closely our representations of reality match set points . if the temperature off the room is higher than our set point this means the room is too hot. If the temperature of the room is below our temperature set point it means it’s too cold. If the temperature of the room is at what at temperature set point is at this means the temperature of the room is just right. Humans are replication machines and have set points are fairly intuitively obvious in this context. This why our set points are set to like sex with with people,raising children, eating food, finding shelter, accumulating stuff, not being too hot or cold, not drowning, maintaining the health and well-being and approval of those that may be in a position to help them in the future.
In general is statements are representative, and ought statements are processing information. The temperature is 65° is a statement and has representative value. The statement we ought to turn the temperature up is an odd statement, is processing information and is not representative of anything external to the self-regulating system making the ought statement. This makes it not philosophically real.
Obviously, this is a rather short explanation of a rather complex metaphysical position. There’s a lot more I could say and a lot more examples I could give but I will leave it here. Hopefully you get where I’m coming from more now.
You’ve shown the difference between is and ought somewhat differently to how I might have put it, but proximate enough for some agreement. I’d have said much the same thing but in terms of Anscombe’s notion of direction of fit.
Do we also have some agreement that this is different from the distinction you made earlier between perspective-dependent vs. perspective-independent meaning? Or are they for you somehow parallel?
From the links I provided and from the discussion over the last few hours, I hope it is clear that it would be a mistake to think “antirealism” in all its various uses can be defined in any one short paragraph. Some nuance is required.
So I’ll go back to my first point here, that the cleanest way to understand the distinction being made is in terms of truth, with realists claiming that for the topic at hand the best logic to use is biconditional, and antirealists insisting that such a logic will miss something important, but exactly what will depend on the question being considered.
And if we can go that far, then perhaps you might reconsider my small objection to your OP, which is in the move seen here:
My point is that “human existence is fundamentally absurd” does not follow from “life has no intrinsic meaning”. My argument is that the problem word here is “intrinsic”. If we had “life has no meaning” it might follow that “human existence is fundamentally absurd”; but we do not have “life has no meaning”, since we (collectively) give meaning to what we do.
It’s in this way that antirealism does not render our discourse meaningless.
Anti-realism with regard to meaning, purpose, or value does not mean that human existence is absurd — all it means that humans, as they exist within human society, have to create their own meaning because the universe won’t give them it on a silver platter.
Oh dear, ‘represent information’ ‘process it into output values’. Do we really have to go the moldy oldy cognitivist representational route? You don’t find any value in the more recent 4EA (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) approaches?
Talk of “processing information” muddles different kinds of information, processes, and their relations.
For example, a belief about an object that you see represents the object, but the seeing presents the object in your conscious awareness. Both are processes in your nervous system, and both can be used for self-regulation. But the object that you see is not a figment of the nervous system. The process in your brain is constituitive for having the visual experience, but the object of the experience is located elsewhere (whatever happens to be in your field of view).
“Processing information” muddles beliefs, perceptions, hallucinations etc. Without perceptions of real objects, we wouldn’t know of a reality, or that points (beliefs) could be matched closely.
How’s that, then? For my part I’ll go along with Austin’s account.
