tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post1569548958036715758..comments2024-02-13T12:50:30.457-05:00Comments on Rants Within the Undead God: Nihilism and the Re-enchantment of Nature: A Reply to Scott BakkerBenjamin Cainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-74079643342277599092017-08-12T13:37:36.228-04:002017-08-12T13:37:36.228-04:00I suppose nihilism in philosophy can also mean an ...I suppose nihilism in philosophy can also mean an extreme form of skepticism, according to which only nothingness is real. Again, this is akin to mysticism.<br /><br />According to dictionary.com, a non-technical meaning of the word is indeed "total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself." <br /><br />I take it this would be more a vulgar consequence of nihilistic belief, a sort of savage reaction to learning that conventional reality is hallucinatory. Nihilism would be like Ludditism, in that the nihilist would want to destroy all fake reality to reduce everything to nothingness. In that case, I suppose the anti-life fellow could be regarded as a nihilist.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-52074849444514169882017-08-12T13:30:48.804-04:002017-08-12T13:30:48.804-04:00A nihilist says values are unreal, so the nihilist...A nihilist says values are unreal, so the nihilist seeks to value nothing. At least, that's what the word should mean. There are all sorts of bastardized definitions, though. I've seen nihilism equated with egoism (selfishness) or with cosmicism (terror or love of death or of the unknown in nature, as in NIN songs, for example). But both selfishness and fear or love entail values.<br /><br />Presumably, if someone wanted to destroy all life, that person would regard living things as bad or otherwise as worthy of being destroyed, which would not be nihilistic, strictly speaking. The nihilistic worldview is akin to mysticism, to letting everything be as it is, since there are only facts and nothing is good or bad. According to nihilism, there may be causality and change, but never for the better or for the worse, at least not in reality. Values are only illusory (highly subjective), for the nihilist. But again, if "illusory" or "subjective" have negative connotations, nihilism contradicts itself. These sorts of points kept coming up in my dialogues with Scott Bakker.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-27045755428611345842017-08-12T09:22:33.380-04:002017-08-12T09:22:33.380-04:00Ben, if someone said they wanted to end all life o...Ben, if someone said they wanted to end all life on earth, would you refer to them as a nihilist? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-42487973815409060712013-10-13T09:34:55.494-04:002013-10-13T09:34:55.494-04:00Well, I agree with Durkheim's view that we ins...Well, I agree with Durkheim's view that we instinctively distinguish between sacred and profane, and I agree with Paul Tillich that we have religious faith in whatever we hold to be of ultimate importance. Each worldview requires a leap of faith at some point. If you look at my articles on Scientism, you'll see that I call certain science-centered worldviews religious. And if you look at my recent article on mythopoesis and technology, you'll see that I interpret hyper-technology as an ironic way of fulfilling the mythopoeic dream of an enchanted, panpsychist world. As for whether material things are just dead, see my article "Darwinism and Nature's Undeadness." I interpret natural processes not as living or dead, but as undead, because they're mindless but nonetheless creative and so they simulate that aspect of mentality, which is why we so easily personify them.<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2011/09/scientism-modern-pagan-religion.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.ca/2013/09/mythopoesis-and-consolation-of.html<br /><br />http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/10/darwinism-and-natures-undeadness.htmlBenjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-60311288132423349362013-10-13T08:12:01.272-04:002013-10-13T08:12:01.272-04:00Pathetic is much too harsh a word, and I apologize...Pathetic is much too harsh a word, and I apologize. I do think that human beings have a natural urge toward religion and your desire to see technology as an attempt to return magic to the world is a manisfestation of that urge. Putting dead things together in clever new combinations doesn't really make them any less dead, and once you really see the world as dead I don't think you can go back to Xanth. On the other hand, maybe it is possible that humankind will someday become so powerful that we can actually achieve godhood and make worlds that are genuinely alive.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-88131731273188021432013-10-13T07:30:55.837-04:002013-10-13T07:30:55.837-04:00If science destroys your old religion, make scienc...If science destroys your old religion, make science your new religion... I guess it makes a pathetic kind of sense.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-86549511060719205852013-09-24T15:35:32.593-04:002013-09-24T15:35:32.593-04:00Okay, well I'd qualify that while a bird does ...Okay, well I'd qualify that while a bird does fly, it doesn't really understand aerodynamics. Along those like, the amount of real-ness is going to be thin and amidst something rather like a short sighted person looking at something far away - it's fuzzy and blurry. The fuzzy and blurry do indeed match something. But the short sighted person has taken their fuzzy view (let's say they are stuck in plato's cave and couldn't walk closer) as if it's a concrete and utterly grounded understanding. Ie, it's not fuzzy and blurry - those are halo's and the rounded shapes merging into each other are <i>how it is</i>. Ie, you get two illusions plastered on top of each other. I'd agree at trying to look at where the fuzzy view, if looked at with lenses, actually matches the state of things. But the second illusion, the one of halo's, tends to deny the first set of illusions as not being illusions but utterly clear cut and concrete observations. What I fear with trying to find where the manifest image (once you put your glasses on) matches the real is that the second illusion will be used to deny the existance of the first illusion. But apart from that fear coming to fruition, I can see the value of attempting to determine where the fuzzy actually matches the real (or to <i>what extent</i> it matches the real). And yeah, I had to write a long caveat to get to that agreement, heh! :)Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-71035670839185203842013-09-23T09:51:34.841-04:002013-09-23T09:51:34.841-04:00No, just because something has an ontological stat...No, just because something has an ontological status as being real, doesn't mean it's everlasting. The question is whether any part of the manifest image is real rather than illusory, not whether we're really immortal. The theistic aspect of the manifest image is the most extreme, mythical part that I agree is unreal. Notice how much less useful the theistic notion of the self is compared to the stripped-down secular version of the self as an emergent process. The latter helps us predict each others behaviour all the time with our shorthand concepts of the mind, despite our ignorance of how the brain works. It's the difference between property and substance dualism, but both are metaphysical questions.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-33524414311632650672013-09-22T19:02:55.612-04:002013-09-22T19:02:55.612-04:00Hi Ben,
The question I’m raising for the nihilist ...Hi Ben,<br /><b>The question I’m raising for the nihilist is whether our penchant for creatively re-enchanting our environment is explainable solely in mundane causal terms, with no ontological recourse to an emergence of ideality.</b><br /><br />I think like the aero-dynamic shape of a birds wing has an identifyable process, so too could enchanting have a sociosurvivalist-dynamic process identified in it. But it seems like you want such an identification to confirm enchanting as having a special place, so it's not just there in the universe but you also want it to have a confirmed, definate place in the universe - when really it's still in play/facing darwinistic scrutiny. Ie, it could go extinct.Callan S.http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-48690753230368562472013-09-17T16:22:04.771-04:002013-09-17T16:22:04.771-04:00BBT implies nihilism insofar as it explains intent...BBT implies nihilism insofar as it explains intentional phenomena in terms of metacognitive neglect: the apparent positivity of meaning is best understood as metacognitive theoretical gear grinding. But just as grinding the gears can still get the car out of the driveway, I agree that *something* is being done. <br /><br />I have some old suspicions in this regard: for instance, the perennial failure (gear grinding) of intentional philosophy itself informs the gear grinding that follows, dispelling the 'only game in town effect,' for instance, spurring the metacognitive hunt for variant interpretative strategies. Kant's Copernican turn, his emphasis on the how of cognition, can be read as an effect of all the dogmatic gear-grinding that had gone on before. Perhaps, he said, the time has come to blame the driver!<br /><br />Information relevance normatively understood is no more a problem for cognition on BBT than it is for a housefly. Since the relations are mechanical, it's simply a matter of what does what to what how - the way the systems at issue actually operate. But this runs counter to many an intuition, I realize. The thing is, the criterial problem that relevance poses in contemporary debates turns on the need to explain the apparently positive semantic properties of human cognition. Since BBT can explain away these properties, the problem is dissolved, and the question simply becomes an empirical one of discovering what does what to what how. It's one of the big reasons I'm dazzled by the theory, as repugnant as I find it. It literally waltzes through these hoary knots.<br /><br />This doesn't mean that some other version of bona-fide intentional question-begging might surface somewhere and bite me on the ass though! Even more, saying that evolutionary theorists use 'design' under erasure is well and fine, but I'm essentially retooling the *whole bloody family* of intentional 'concepts,' which suggests that any number of 'heuristic bugs' likely plague my account. It could that the delineation of problem ecologies is precisely one of these. Scott Bakkerhttp://rsbakker.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-37125436686821811082013-09-17T14:11:56.970-04:002013-09-17T14:11:56.970-04:00I agree we should look at our myths/philosophies/w...I agree we should look at our myths/philosophies/worldviews as confabulations. This is easier said than done since it requires a kind of Buddhist detachment, or what I'm trying to think of as an aesthetic one. The exapted belief systems *are* accomplishments if we interpret them as artworks. We creatively put together some raw materials and if the result inspires us as a heroic solution to our existential crisis, and it feels right as opposed to cliched and serving some tawdry oligarchic agenda we can call it a masterpiece. What's the alternative? Nihilism, depression, and suicide? I see wisdom in making the best of a bad situation.<br /><br />Of course, my stuff on the aesthetic outlook is a work in progress. I believe you said before that you used to think along these existential lines, but you no longer put much faith in them. So again, does BBT imply nihilism?<br /><br />Your last sentence anticipates an objection that came to mind regarding your point about the relativity of heuristics and algorithms. What determines the *relevance* of information to solving a problem? That looks semantic to me. If we're going to be perfectly pragmatic, there needn't be any predetermined or ideal solution, so all information might be relevant, depending on our creativity and willingness to live with different degrees of effectiveness. If it's the nature of the problem that determines the relevance of info, then what indeed are these problems? Are they like niches? <br /><br />One thing I learned in philosophy classes is that reductive theories often sneak in the explananda as presuppositions. Of course, you're familiar with this in the naturalistic theories of mental content. But this feeds into the so-called transcendental approach as well. It's not so much that the transcendentalist presupposes normativity and so on; rather, it's that the transcendentalist is skeptical of any attempt to theoretically eliminate such properties and so as a matter of course she gives any reductive theory a thorough going-over, because she expects the worst.Benjamin Cainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00661999592897690031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6320802302155582419.post-52542243317584045122013-09-17T13:42:51.497-04:002013-09-17T13:42:51.497-04:00I think we stumble, always have, always will, then...I think we stumble, always have, always will, then foist confabulatory narratives on that stumbling post hoc, which sometimes have the effect of nudging us in different directions, and sometimes not. I fear science will verify something like Blind Brain Theory, and we will have to come to grips with our confabulations AS confabulations. I still don't see your silver lining, how you can agree that meaning is an artifact of neglect, a kind of privative perspective as opposed to an accomplishment, then continue claiming that it is our accomplishment.<br /><br />Regarding algorithms and heuristics it's important to note that whether a cognitive mechanism counts as heuristic simply depends upon the problem to be solved. If it ignores information relevant to the solution of a problem to more economically solve that problem we call it heuristic. One can tease apart any heuristic, identify internal functions requiring the transformation of certain inputs into certain outputs and call it 'algorithmic,' simply because all the relevant information is consumed to discharge *that portion* of the heuristic process. In this sense, 'algorithms' marble the heuristic whole without the whole being any less heuristic, which is to say, geared to the solution of finite problem ecologies.<br /><br />This of course strands us with the question of how to delineate 'problems' - which might prove fertile ground for your complaints... I dunno.Scott Bakkerhttp://rsbakker.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com