What Do We Mean By Nihilism?

[Received]

It's flashy, it's snazzy, the kids love it, Dad wooed Mom with it, and the French made it popular. The word owes its existence to Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, who used the term as a reflection of a younger generation of political figures who rejected all authorities. It came to be used as a negative label typically applied by the other side in a political discussion regarding those who wanted to negate particularities of society without stating what would supersede them.

But then it came to mean something different. Today it can mean, roughly, that life has no meaning whatsoever (or any meaning worth paying attention to; I understand meaning as referring to existential meaning, or very loosely meaning that confers goal-directed behavior), or that life has no meaning intrinsic to the phenomena it presents. A popular assumption is that nihilism is antithetical to belief in God. The problem here is that, although God isn't technically just another phenomenon among a network of phenomena, there still is nothing intrinsic to his existence that posits meaning for those who believe in him. You can very much be without personal meaning while holding to a concept of God.

Actually, you can't really escape nihilism as a way of existing in the world, given that what determines it is a valuation of phenomena, and not the phenomena themselves. There's nothing at all inherent to this book I'm seeing that posits personal meaning for me, but only after adding the value of wanting to read books that the book actually opens itself up to me as a source of meaning which influences my actions. The exact same thing happens with God, who can be perceived (and valued) as a dull deistic necessity with no interaction in the world, or a cosmic grouch who does stuff after you die, you know, whereas with the present life there is no consolation from his existence.

So the question becomes: is there anything intrinsic to phenomena that organically bring about certain valuations? At a very basic level, there most certainly is: the drive for procreation has its basis in a long history of evolution. Sex would therefore be a value that can be taken up organically, and can very much provide life with a basic (albeit flimsy and superficial) sense of meaning.

Of course, the interesting thing is that it doesn't really matter if certain valuations come about organically with regard to our relation with the world. An individual can very easily not believe in evolution, and like that the limited sex value goes out the door.

So nihilism is very much a matter of objectivity, but precisely for this reason and the existence of man's reasoning and imagination and their ability to conceal the world, it is also a matter of subjectivity -- believing certain things, leading to certain values, leading to negative or positive interpretations of phenomena, leading to a life of meaning or a lack thereof. What matters at the end of the day is what Kierkegaard ruminated over during his wine-and-dine days before he committed himself so admirably to his task of changing the world: "The thing is to find a true which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." Or, in the more stylistic manner of Nietzsche: "This is my way; where is yours? -- Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'. For the way -- that does no exist."

 

[The Nihilist]

Wikipedia has a nice discussion on what Nietzsche means when he says that God is dead. The death of God, I think, is fundamentally related to your position.

"God is dead" never meant that Nietzsche believed in an actual God who first existed and then died in a literal sense. It may be more appropriate to consider the statement as Nietzsche's way of saying that the "God" of the times (religion and other such spirituality) is no longer a viable source of any received wisdom. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."[1] This is why in "The Madman", a work which primarily addresses atheists, the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order.
The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is what Nietzsche worked to find a solution for by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. He would find a basis in the "will to power" that he described as "the essence of reality."


I suspect that modern American culture is as good an example of nihilism as anything is, but I don't know whether I hold this suspicion legitimately, or whether this is just my leftover Catholic distaste for innocuous worldly things.

 

[The Nihilist]

Personally, I raise this particular flag because I don't believe that existence has any kind of intrinsic meaning, and because I think skepticism is the only philosophically legitimate position on most other issues. We're basically the bad guys of philosophy.

 

[Received]

The death of God and the loss of dogmatically holding to certain perceived "objective" values can be a cleansing process for figuring out the really relevant values, namely those that apply to your own life (in the sense that K is getting at above). I think the nihilism inherent to much of religiosity has to do with mistaking the husk of a value to be a value; there are a lot of things involved with religion with regard to ethics, for example, that people have cognitive assent towards but fail to see the goodness supposedly in them relating to their own lives. So they intentionally don't practice the virtue while paying lip service to it, all under the guise of "I'm a miserable, lousy sinner," which is somewhat of an understandable position given that they haven't hedged out a particular set of values and meaning-related actions that makes them happy in an individual sense. The beauty of Kierkegaard is that he knows this, and God for him works through the Logos in providing individuals with an abstract meaning (which phenomenologically can be experienced as a commandment, albeit without the explicit "do this") which when fulfilled through action invites the purity of heart and being that results in happiness.

With regard to American culture, I think meaning and values have levels of density. The closer you get to hedonistic values, the thinner your meaning and happiness is, and the closer you are to nihilism, even though the asymptote never touches the imaginary line during the moments of actualizing these superficial values. Ours is most clearly a return to hedonism, away from higher thought or authentic religious living, with an added technological touch (all the more dangerous, according to Heidegger, because it negates noble objects like nature by turning them into instrumentalizations toward our own utilitarian schemes). The danger of this is that these values are so short-lived, in addition to being shallow, so that inevitably nihilism does intermittently fill in the wide cracks offered by them.

Why do you hold to skepticism?

 

[Eudaimonist]

Great discussion, guys.

Like Nietzsche, I am concerned about the nihilism resulting from the "death of God", but this is a concern over an unhealthy culture, not philosophical pessimism at the prospect of creating a secular ethics that is more than an assertion of one's own desires or pleasures.

I judge with cautious optimism that I have such an ethics, or at least the seed of one. I see an opportunity for a rebirth of Greek eudaimonism (i.e., a virtue ethics) in a new and updated form. Ayn Rand and a few neo-Aristotelian philosophers have made some progress in reviving this needed ethical approach. Success will be difficult, because the pall of Hume's extreme epistemological skepticism still hangs over the heads of many philosophers. It is more or less assumed that Hume had proved it impossible to move from an is to an ought, when all that he actually did was to (correctly) show that one can't possibly use deductive logic for this purpose.

I think a revival of virtue ethics will be needed to combat the unfortunate way in which Evolution is sometimes used to replace God as a source of ethics. This is usually done descriptively, although some people make it prescriptive with the mistaken assumption that Evolution is teleological, when it is nothing of the sort. I'm not suggesting that important insights into human nature can't be gained from studying evolutionary psychology, but I doubt that prescriptive ethics can be read off of human nature using such an approach.

As to what leads to valuations, I'll briefly say that it comes down, more or less, to a natural function argument based on the insight that values are a species of fact. Human existence (as opposed to non-existence) is itself one of valuation in that life is a goal-directed activity. When this activity ceases, so does a human's existence. Stillness is death.

I'm not suggesting a final causation operating like a magnet, but simply that life is, at root, a result of self-sustaining activities, and is the sum of those activities. To note what a human being is, is also to note what a human being ought to do, i.e, what the natural function of a human being is. It is to note what is good for a human being (what contributes to her existence), and what "health" or "flourishing" may mean to such a being.

Human beings rely on their psyches for their life-activities, and so what is nourishing and expressive for such psyches may give important insights into the sort of character needed to survive and flourish as a human being. Such an ethic might never quite be a "hard science", but it may appeal to facts -- to cause and effect -- and to the requirements of life as a human being.

While I still think there is plenty of work to be done in fleshing out this approach in the academic sphere, I am optimistic that progress can be made. I would rather be optimistic about future than to succumb to the pessimism of philosophical skepticism.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[quatona]

In my understanding and use of the words, meaning comes about when something means something to someone, andvalue is generatedwhen someone values something."Value" and "meaning" describe a relation between a subject and an object (in the same way as "taste" does).Hence, I don´t even understand the concepts "intrinsic value" and "intrinsic meaning", even less have an inclination towards looking for such.
Merely removing the subject from a concept that describes a relation does not make a new concept.

 

[Received]

It is more or less assumed that Hume had proved it impossible to move from an is to an ought, when all that he actually did was to (correctly) show that one can't possibly use deductive logic for this purpose.

Hume was right on in pointing out the is/ought distinction, but the basis of valuation is determined by -- as bad as it sounds -- our affects. We can't really understand happiness in some neoplatonic, incorporeal, soul-sucking sense, but as constituted by very basic neural functions. This doesn't make us indistinguishable from animals by any means; the higher cognitive functions -- including consciousness as a whole -- invite new possibilities for positive neural-emotional rewards. Philosophical meditation, service to one's community, and hedonism all involve neural rewards, but they have different qualities based on the actions needed to get there.

The soul (or, if you'd like, "soul") is circumnavigated through thinking because the body rewards thought (emotionally); conversely, the body is valued because the soul makes consciousness possible, and with it the perception of value and therefore a planned-out way of getting to the goodness and happiness that value holds. (Not a dualist in the Cartesian sense at all, btw; to my understanding psyche and body are two sides of the same coin.)

 

[Received]

In my understanding and use of the words, meaning comes about when something means something to someone, andvalue is generatedwhen someone values something."Value" and "meaning" describe a relation between a subject and an object (in the same way as "taste" does).Hence, I don´t even understand the concepts "intrinsic value" and "intrinsic meaning", even less have an inclination towards looking for such.
Merely removing the subject from a concept that describes a relation does not make a new concept.

My point in using "intrinsic" was to question whether there are any qualities built into certain things in the world that naturally (i.e., intrinsically) bring about (or bring to light) certain values. It would probably be more correct to say that we have these values already in us, and that certain phenomena bring to light certain values we secretly have. We all value sex naturally, you know, but it's possible to cancel out this value through, e.g., instilling the fear of Hell if you engage in sexual things.

 

[quatona]

Thanks for explaining, but I still can´t bring myself to follow your conceptualization.

My point in using "intrinsic" was to question whether there are any qualities built into certain things in the world that naturally (i.e., intrinsically) bring about (or bring to light) certain values.

I think of it differently: Those qualities are not built into the things - if anything, they are built into me. My mind creates those qualities (and values them or not).
Now, if the question is actually "are there desires we all have in common?" this would at least be a meaningful question, to me. I´m not sure I would answer it yes, though.

It would probably be more correct to say that we have these values already in us, and that certain phenomena bring to light certain values we secretly have.

Ok - but why would these values have to be held "secretly"?

We all value sex naturally, you know,

No actually, I don´t know this.
1. We all value sex...unless when we don´t, and except for those who don´t.
2. We don´t value sex in and of itself, we value sex for (partly very) different qualities we associate it with.

but it's possible to cancel out this value through, e.g., instilling the fear of Hell if you engage in sexual things.

I think that such claims require us to assume a (hypothetical) blank slate state for humans. Here´s where we would leave observation and start assuming (and chances are that those assumed premises are driven by the result we would like to arrive at).
Human existence without environment, without growth, without experience is a pointless hypothetical. The closest we might come to it is the moment of birth - and I don´t know that them newborns are valuing sex, of all things.

 

[Received]

I think of it differently: Those qualities are not built into the things - if anything, they are built into me. My mind creates those qualities (and values them or not).

Yeesh, this could get sticky: to my understanding, but the quality is a result of a synthesis between ourselves and the "thing out there". They're not technically built solely into the thing, or solely into myself and my experience, but rather a synthesis of the two. Fair enough?

Ok - but why would these values have to be held "secretly"?

Simply because they're latent -- we haven't named what we value as a value. There's nothing profound here. I might value snowy mornings or bubble gum, even if I haven't said, "I value snowy mornings" or "I value bubble gum".

No actually, I don´t know this.
1. We all value sex...unless when we don´t, and except for those who don´t.
2. We don´t value sex in and of itself, we value sex for (partly very) different qualities we associate it with.

Well, assuming there are no genetic mutations that inhibit sexual functioning, we do value sex -- at a certain age -- naturally (i.e., without inhibitions from learned values through society). We can unlearn this value, but that doesn't mean that for the vast majority of us it's a present value, latent or not, whether we deny it or not.

I think that such claims require us to assume a (hypothetical) blank slate state for humans.

Nah, I think ten seconds perusing evolutionary psychology proves to us that we're far from a blank slate. Even grammatical structures are programmed in our genes, apparently, as are basic drives (fight or flight, sex, etc.).

 

[mindlight]

It's flashy, it's snazzy, the kids love it, Dad wooed Mom with it, and the French made it popular. The word owes its existence to Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, who used the term as a reflection of a younger generation of political figures who rejected all authorities. It came to be used as a negative label typically applied by the other side in a political discussion regarding those who wanted to negate particularities of society without stating what would supersede them.

But then it came to mean something different. Today it can mean, roughly, that life has no meaning whatsoever (or any meaning worth paying attention to; I understand meaning as referring to existential meaning, or very loosely meaning that confers goal-directed behavior), or that life has no meaning intrinsic to the phenomena it presents. A popular assumption is that nihilism is antithetical to belief in God. The problem here is that, although God isn't technically just another phenomenon among a network of phenomena, there still is nothing intrinsic to his existence that posits meaning for those who believe in him. You can very much be without personal meaning while holding to a concept of God.

Actually, you can't really escape nihilism as a way of existing in the world, given that what determines it is a valuation of phenomena, and not the phenomena themselves. There's nothing at all inherent to this book I'm seeing that posits personal meaning for me, but only after adding the value of wanting to read books that the book actually opens itself up to me as a source of meaning which influences my actions. The exact same thing happens with God, who can be perceived (and valued) as a dull deistic necessity with no interaction in the world, or a cosmic grouch who does stuff after you die, you know, whereas with the present life there is no consolation from his existence.

So the question becomes: is there anything intrinsic to phenomena that organically bring about certain valuations? At a very basic level, there most certainly is: the drive for procreation has its basis in a long history of evolution. Sex would therefore be a value that can be taken up organically, and can very much provide life with a basic (albeit flimsy and superficial) sense of meaning.

Of course, the interesting thing is that it doesn't really matter if certain valuations come about organically with regard to our relation with the world. An individual can very easily not believe in evolution, and like that the limited sex value goes out the door.

So nihilism is very much a matter of objectivity, but precisely for this reason and the existence of man's reasoning and imagination and their ability to conceal the world, it is also a matter of subjectivity -- believing certain things, leading to certain values, leading to negative or positive interpretations of phenomena, leading to a life of meaning or a lack thereof. What matters at the end of the day is what Kierkegaard ruminated over during his wine-and-dine days before he committed himself so admirably to his task of changing the world: "The thing is to find a true which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." Or, in the more stylistic manner of Nietzsche: "This is my way; where is yours? -- Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way'. For the way -- that does no exist."

Nietzsche of course embraced the "death of God" as if it were a psychological liberation that led to an all conquering personal authenticity that found ultimate expression in the ubermensch. His big assumption therefore was that God Himself was a mere projection of human desire and that the ascetic ideal of Christianity was an Apolline sublimity whose crushing weight was psychologically debilitating and whose day had passed.

Nihilism in this sense is facing the world in all its horror and brutality- looking into the seething energies of the will to power and declaring that one has the power to create ones own values for such a universe in the absence of any transcendent reference points.

The fundamental foolishness/madness of Nietzsches position is that

1) The heart of reality is in a God that is not much like the God he rejected e.g. not just an ascetic ideal but rather : personal, allpowerful, creative and alive.
2) This God is real in the most primary sense of real and his existence is not dependent on our recognition of it. He transcends his worshippers.
3) That Nietzsches position is unsustainable as a way of living and in practice leads to a chaos of relativistic thinking as those able to affirm their own authentic values dissolve all other attempts at the same in the nihilistic acids of extreme scepticism. A world in which everybody strives to be master is a world in which moral consensus is impossible and even the possibility of dialogue begins to break down in the face of the competition for moral mastery.

 

[Chesterton]

It's an either/or, all-or-nothing thing. Either there is some real meaning or there isn't. You can't make up some interpretation of biological life and say that it's true because it has some arbitrary utility or makes you feel good.

 

[mindlight]

It's an either/or, all-or-nothing thing. Either there is some real meaning or there isn't. You can't make up some interpretation of biological life and say that it's true because it has some arbitrary utility or makes you feel good.

Exactly

 

[quatona]

Yeesh, this could get sticky: to my understanding, but the quality is a result of a synthesis between ourselves and the "thing out there". They're not technically built solely into the thing, or solely into myself and my experience, but rather a synthesis of the two. Fair enough?

Fair, yes.
But not agreed. There needn´t be a thing (object) out there for us to attach value to our concepts. Theism would be a good example (I´m not claiming that there is no god. I am merely claiming that there doesn´t need to be a god out there in order for us to conceptualize a god and to attach value to it.)
I tend to go so far as to say that all we value are our values.

Simply because they're latent -- we haven't named what we value as a value. There's nothing profound here. I might value snowy mornings or bubble gum, even if I haven't said, "I value snowy mornings" or "I value bubble gum".

Ok.

Well, assuming there are no genetic mutations that inhibit sexual functioning, we do value sex -- at a certain age -- naturally (i.e., without inhibitions from learned values through society). We can unlearn this value, but that doesn't mean that for the vast majority of us it's a present value, latent or not, whether we deny it or not.

How exactly did you arrive at this conclusion?

Nah, I think ten seconds perusing evolutionary psychology proves to us that we're far from a blank slate.

This is a misunderstanding. I was using "blank slate" as the hypothetical state of being without external influences (not as a state where we don´t have desires, values etc).

Even grammatical structures are programmed in our genes, apparently, as are basic drives (fight or flight, sex, etc.).

So would you call our instincts (such as "fight or flight") "values"? I personally wouldn´t. E.g. regarding "fight or flight", I would start talking about values exactly where the power of instincts ends and gives way to cognitive considerations.

 

[Received]

But not agreed. There needn´t be a thing (object) out there for us to attach value to our concepts. Theism would be a good example (I´m not claiming that there is no god. I am merely claiming that there doesn´t need to be a god out there in order for us to conceptualize a god and to attach value to it.)

I think it is agreed. We were talking about qualities and their relation to values, which presupposes existent phenomena "out there". You're right with your point, though, in that, e.g., God might not exist but we still attach value because we conceptualize Him to be so.

How exactly did you arrive at this conclusion?

Human sexuality (the subject)? I think you can find room to disagree (you German you) regarding the cultural (that is, value-based) expression of this basic drive -- i.e., whether or not it's suppressed or not. But I still think this doesn't negate the fact that sexuality is a naturally occurring drive, and therefore that sex is something valued because it provides pleasure.

So would you call our instincts (such as "fight or flight") "values"? I personally wouldn´t.

That's an interesting question. It's hard to find a value in grammatical structures, because that's just, well, a structural way we provide meaning for the world. If we call this a value, we might as well call the fact that we walk on two feet a value. But when it comes to basic drives, like food or sex, then I do think there are very basic values here: sex implies the value of pleasure, food the value of pleasure and survival.

 

[quatona]

I think it is agreed. We were talking about qualities and their relation to values, which presupposes existent phenomena "out there". You're right with your point, though, in that, e.g., God might not exist but we still attach value because we conceptualize Him to be so.

This was just one prominent example, though. I´m still not convinced that we value qualities out there - moreso I am inclined to think that we value qualitites we conceptualize within; there is no need for an object factually being out there to attach it to, and even if we assume there to be an external object, the quality we ascribe to it is not (necessarily) an inherent quality of said object.

Human sexuality (the subject)? I think you can find room to disagree (you German you) regarding the cultural (that is, value-based) expression of this basic drive -- i.e., whether or not it's suppressed or not. But I still think this doesn't negate the fact that sexuality is a naturally occurring drive, and therefore that sex is something valued because it provides pleasure.

It can provide pleasure (and different people expect different sorts of pleasure coming from it; or, IOW, different people find it pleasurable under different conditions). Unless you postulate that we bang everything that moves, sex is not an inherent value.
On another note, I fail to see how the suppression of a "naturally occuring drive" (or at least the capability to do so) can not be considered a value. It is a naturally occuring capability and desire, as well, after all.
Personally, I value my capability of controlling my "naturally occuring drives" (in that I can either act upon them or not, depending on the situation, conditions, circumstances, persons involved etc.) much higher than the drive itself. Once you introduce "naturally occuring" for a criterium, I wonder how you would manage to argue that this capability is not "naturally occuring".

That's an interesting question. It's hard to find a value in grammatical structures, because that's just, well, a structural way we provide meaning for the world. If we call this a value, we might as well call the fact that we walk on two feet a value. But when it comes to basic drives, like food or sex, then I do think there are very basic values here: sex implies the value of pleasure, food the value of pleasure and survival.

To me, sex at least as often as it implies the value of pleasure implies the non-value of displeasure. So does food. When it comes to aggression, I value my ability to abstain from it even uncomparably higher than the drive itself.

Again: I don´t see much point in calling drives "values". Valuing, to me, implies a cognitive activity. If you simply take out the cognitive part that allows us to sometimes value our drives and sometimes not, you are grossly oversimplifying the conditio humaine. You end up with the ideal of a world in which people hit everyone over the head whenever they are frustrated, in which they have permanent sex regardless with whom/what, they eat until they vomit and beyond that point.

In any case, when you say "this implies the value of pleasure" you seem to help me drive my point home. Pleasure is not a quality of a thing out there, pleasure is a value within ourselves. Our drives are within,our desires are within, our emotions and feelings are within, our empathy is within, our cognition is within. These (and some more) are the (sometimes conflicting) internal qualities that we value - the fact that we continually project them on (existing or non-existing) objects doesn´t change anything about it.

 

[Received]

This was just one prominent example, though. I´m still not convinced that we value qualities out there - moreso I am inclined to think that we value qualitites we conceptualize within; there is no need for an object factually being out there to attach it to, and even if we assume there to be an external object, the quality we ascribe to it is not (necessarily) an inherent quality of said object.

Yes, it's clearly possibly to think of qualities for things that don't exist. My point is redundant: the qualities we perceive in things that we know to exist are the basis of these qualities (in the sense that they make these qualities based in something -- which means qualities are still a result of a synthesis of ourselves and the world out there). Qualities can be ascribed to concepts we create, or to things we behold. "Hotness" can be based in* a phenomenon (such as a kettle), or it can be projected by our imaginations for things that don't exist (like fire from a fire-breathing dragon). This doesn't negate the fact that when qualities refer to things that exist, they must be just as much based in these existent things as they are in ourselves (hence the synthesis).

*By "based in" I mean that the object out there gives rise to a quality, like "hotness", before us, and not that it in itself holds the quality, nor that we in ourselves hold this quality. It might be better to say that the experienced quality is a result of the thing and ourselves experiencing this thing, both of which come together and provide this specific quality.

Personally, I value my capability of controlling my "naturally occuring drives" (in that I can either act upon them or not, depending on the situation, conditions, circumstances, persons involved etc.) much higher than the drive itself. Once you introduce "naturally occuring" for a criterium, I wonder how you would manage to argue that this capability is not "naturally occuring".

Another thoughtful point. My interpretation would be that you value pleasure so long as its attainment doesn't result in pain. My point with mentioning "naturally occurring" is that we would value some inclination provided for us by a basic, evolution-given drive, before culture (which posits values) has the chance to modify this drive.

My point with sex is that we value it because it provides pleasure, but the moment someone comes along and says the devil will get you if you have lustful thoughts about a woman, sexuality so conceived no longer becomes valued, because the interpretation is that these sexual thoughts, while they might provide immediate pleasure, will ultimately provide much more significant pain (Hell). That's just an example. For me personally, sitting around thinking about hot chicks all day just doesn't work, because it opens up a desire that can't immediately be satisfied, which means I'm suffering (I understanding suffering to essentially be desires that aren't fulfilled); I value pleasure over pain, happiness over unhappiness, and therefore thinking about hot chicks isn't a preferred activity. How does "naturally occurring" values relate to this? My point is that we have a natural inclination to sex (thinking about it, striving to do it, doing it) because of evolution, which provides us with a very basic value: survive and procreate. This drive is "naturally occurring" because it isn't learned, but natural; however, it can easily be unlearned, as it has been with the example of the person who fears the devil and Hell.

Again: I don´t see much point in calling drives "values". Valuing, to me, implies a cognitive activity. If you simply take out the cognitive part that allows us to sometimes value our drives and sometimes not, you are grossly oversimplifying the conditio humaine. You end up with the ideal of a world in which people hit everyone over the head whenever they are frustrated, in which they have permanent sex regardless with whom/what, they eat until they vomit and beyond that point.

Values can be cognitively qualified, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I think I agree with you given that I've presented the example of a "naturally occurring" value through a drive that can be changed because of ideas one accepts as true (such as the claim that the devil will get you if you think about sex). Drives are potentially constantly modified by individuals as a means to getting by by in the real world; Freud referred to the "reality principle" as the principle that the ego uses to allow the Id enough room in the real world so that it doesn't cause more problems than the pleasure it produces. The idea here is that a naturally occurring drive (sex, administered through the Id) is changed the moment a person realizes that he could get into real trouble if he started banging anything that moves (i.e., arrest, death, etc.), which could result in more pain than pleasure, thus negating the whole point of engaging in sexual activity (pleasure).

In any case, when you say "this implies the value of pleasure" you seem to help me drive my point home. Pleasure is not a quality of a thing out there, pleasure is a value within ourselves. Our drives are within,our desires are within, our emotions and feelings are within, our empathy is within, our cognition is within. These (and some more) are the (sometimes conflicting) internal qualities that we value - the fact that we continually project them on (existing or non-existing) objects doesn´t change anything about it.

Right, but my point with qualities referred to things that we know exist, not to things that we don't know exist and very well couldn't (I agree with you that qualities don't need existing things in order for them to be qualities). My original point with regard to qualities was to determine whether or not there were certain things that had qualities "built into" them that bring about (or bring to light) certain values. The next sentence in that post (#8), I think, is reason to think that we agree. I said:

"It would probably be more correct to say that we have these values already in us, and that certain phenomena bring to light certain values we secretly have."

To put it all together: there are qualities that are based in certain phenomena (not "built into", my mistake, but find their raison d'etre in, which means that we still need to be present in order for the qualities to exist) that lead us to naturally value them. Sex produces the quality of pleasure, and since one of our basic values is towards pleasure and against pain, we therefore value sex naturally -- until culture instills certain other ideas in us that make us adapt these values to the real world (as in the case of the man who doesn't have sex with everything that moves), or change sex as a value, even to the point of destroying it as a value (as with the person who tries to give up thinking about sex because he believes the devil will get him). It's as if evolution provides a very broad value (sex), and the function of culture and society is to refashion this already-existing value-based drive as it sees fit.

 

[Received]

It's an either/or, all-or-nothing thing. Either there is some real meaning or there isn't. You can't make up some interpretation of biological life and say that it's true because it has some arbitrary utility or makes you feel good.

Meaning in the sense of interpretation of phenomena isn't what I have in mind when I refer to meaning and nihilism. By meaning I mean any idea that leads to goal-directed behavior, which ideally provides an individual with a sense of purpose or "reason for living"; it differs from "regular" meaning in that the latter isn't transcendent, but refers to our interpretation of ideas or phenomena (e.g., this chair means something simply because I see it and am thinking about it).

 

[mindlight]

Meaning in the sense of interpretation of phenomena isn't what I have in mind when I refer to meaning and nihilism. By meaning I mean any idea that leads to goal-directed behavior, which ideally provides an individual with a sense of purpose or "reason for living"; it differs from "regular" meaning in that the latter isn't transcendent, but refers to our interpretation of ideas or phenomena (e.g., this chair means something simply because I see it and am thinking about it).

This is contextualised relativism. Transcendence is essential for any authoritative statements on the qualitative value of experiences - otherwise however clever you make the words sound you are just talking to yourself.

The appropriate response seems to me to be - so what and says who?

 

[Letalis]

What makes Nietzsche a nihilist?