Nihilism isn’t acted out in the physical. It’s psychological suicide. Destruction followed by growth, or death and rebirth. Pointing out the conflict between pragmatism and nihilism is like making arguments against the ‘old man in the sky’ version of God. It’s not going to be impactful at all to anyone who has experienced nihilism at a deep level and is holding on to it.

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Nihilism is a tough concept. It varies from Nietzsche's warnings of a potential human state to a philosophical viewpoint in its own right, and even in the latter case it varies wildly.

In the sense we're using the term in this thread, a better choice of words could be "existential crisis". Some forms of nihilism would certainly be very similar to "existential crisis", but it could be healthy to avoid all the baggage from other meanings.

I can't really think of any self-professed nihilists (beyond some people using it more as a fashion term), however there are many famous thinkers, artists and whatnot who have professed "existentialism", in the sense of how to think and live in a world that might appear absurd or meaningless.

Then we aren't really talking about an intellectual view, we're talking about something that really resembles more a mental state. I talk a bit about that in my post above in replying to VeeDDzz.

Nihilism has gotten to be a very broad term with a lot of fluff, and I think it would be cleaner to refer to this as an "existential crisis", as it seems obvious you are viewing this state as something very negative.

I'm unsure of why you are mentioning pragmatism, but I agree that if we are talking to someone who finds themselves in such a situation, then a debate or mere argument won't help. With all that said, I would still disagree with anyone who claimed nihilism is a complex or difficult intellectual position. It is not.

I'm sorry. This response wasn't entirely fair. I can see how "psychological suicide" or "philosophical suicide" are decent descriptions. However, I don't really see it as something you experience at a deep level. That would be more akin to existential anxiety or dread.
Existentialism is a well developed philosophy and if push came to shove it could be defended. Nihilism is self-defeating. It doesn't even need to be pushed or addressed by anyone.

For this reason I would probably characterise it as a phase or a temporary position similar to the phase/position you hold in your teenage years about how its "cool to hate"/"uncool to care deeply about anything".

Yes, this is generally my position as well. If the base tenet is that nothing holds meaning, that should not be possible to convey.

I realize that nihilism is often broader and more nuanced than merely "no meaning", but I still claim that this is an underlying claim in all forms of nihilism. If you for example hold that a nihilistic view on morals, then the terms "bad" and "good" (or linguistic equivalents) should be meaningless. And apart from the most extreme case of anti-social disorders (and we're talking extremes of such magnitude, that I'm actually unsure if they can exist), I don't think that position is even intellectually possible for anyone with a developed brain who was raised by actual humans.

I could see someone claiming they are arbitrary, but even arbitrary doesn't mean "from thin air" or "completely random". And to hold that they are arbitrary seems adequately covered by the notion of "subjective morality" or "moral relativity".

Two points:

#1: Is it possible that deducing (2) from (1) commits the Fallacy of Division (i.e. fallaciously claiming that what is true of the whole is true of each part of the whole)?

#2: It could be argued that (1) could only be false if God exists. I suspect, however,that (1) could be true even if that there is a God, at least to the extent that God's purpose for the universe would be unknown to us in the absence of revelation from God on the matter.

I think that your argument accurately expresses a basis for nihilism.

I’m coming from a position of nihilism being unavoidable so we should take it seriously. You guys seem to view it as one possible lens that we can choose to view reality through. In that way, if we are able to analyze it, then we can see its inadequacies and avoid it. Therefore, anyone who uses this lens has failed to properly analyze it and can be helped through rational argument.

That’s not how it works. Nihilism isn’t first entered into by choice. Life forces us into it. Only once we are already in it can we possibly see validity to it. Anyone who calls themselves a nihilist was placed in it against their desires, but then feels an intuitive connection to a deeper level of insight or truth compared to being outside of nihilism. Since there is no understanding of this intuitive connection, it gets rationalized, which naturally leads to the misunderstanding I’m talking about.

I agree we can substitute ‘existential crisis’ in for ’nihilism’ if that helps.

Maybe the nihilistic mindset isnt 'first' experienced by choice; I cant say. However, whether I choose to dwell on the inevitability or potential consequences of death is up to me. Whether I choose to dwell on the fact that I'm unable to soar through the air like a bird is up to me. Whether I choose to dwell on the fact that my life is short is up to me.

When I am resigned to being a victim of my wayward mind, maybe I'll see it differently. Until then, I choose to choose.

I’m not arguing for allowing ourselves to be hijacked by the victimhood that comes along with it. The victim mentality that surfaces needs to be worked through. There is a deeper reason why people stay longer than they need to in nihilism besides, for instance, the overcompensating superiority complex or the airing of grievances that come with victimhood. Just like there is a deeper reason why teenagers are rebellious and cynical besides the desire to look cool.

Your dismissiveness and criticism of nihilism has been made clear. I get it really. I share a similar annoyance toward victim mentality, but I really doubt you have anything of value to add for someone in the OP’s situation who is fed up with coping and is looking for a more sustainable solution.

I agree that "nihilism" as a mood or mindset is not just a set of propositions about the world and so philosophy as an intellectual activity is generally insufficient to get out of it (if that is what someone wants). However, the beliefs that come from the rationalization of this mindset is thought by many non-nihilists (religious people especially) to be the logical implication of any naturalistic worldview. As such, naturalists have a reason to engage with nihilism on an intellectual level as a means to distinguish the kind of rationalization you are referring to here from the versions of naturalism that do recognize human value and morality.

(1) seems correct to me and I often see nihilists making this move, so I'm curious if mrcnkwcz thinks he is avoiding this mistake.

For anyone having an existential crisis; perhaps consider the terrifying and beautiful reality that is - you being unable to ever experience non-experience/death; you can only ever experience.

1) The universe has no purpose as a whole.
2) Therefore, no part of the universe has a purpose.
3) Humans are part of the universe.
4) Therefore, no human has a purpose

...Yep, looks sound to me. Trying to ascertain how this might be a trap....

Oh, fallacy of division, hah!

It's a fallacy to think that because the fallacy of division can apply, that it must apply. Given your overzealousness in applying the fallacy of division here, you might want to think of its limitations in future cases....

Allow me to demonstrate, in an RGT-relevant way:

1) The universe is godless
2) Therefore, no part of the universe is under the auspices of a god/has a god/whatever terminology you'd prefer.
3) Humans are part of the universe.
4) Therefore, no human is under the auspices of a god/must answer to a god/etc.

I'd love to know under what theological belief system I went astray here, so I may avoid it for its special brand of illogic as opposed to the comparatively lesser illogic of all other ideologies.

start with Cioran; don't sleep through it (not that it matters). You disappoint me with your inability to spell the word. Also, there are many others alive today I'm sure who'd be eager to pin the label upon themselves if only you'd evangelize its meaning....do it, be the nihilist ambassador to Oceania or Netherlands or wherever you are/were (one or the other, my memory tells me).

Anyone who ever identified himself as an 'existentialist' is quite a close cousin to a nihilist, for the record. Camus is probably the best example of someone who pushed the boulder up the meaningless literary hill many, many times before the boulder inevitably landed on him in the form of a fatal car crash.

Also, there's me, smarter than you and anyone you know, so, learn about me sometime. Kill yourself first though (proverbially, rhetorically...not looking to get banned here...).

Maybe I don't properly understand the Fallacy of Division, but given that statement (2) doesn't follow by logical necessity from (1), it seems to me that the Nihilism advocate has to show that the move from (1) to (2) is valid in this particular instance.

As a Christian, I would disagree with premise (1). (Maybe I disagree with the premise because I don't understand what it means, so please if you'd like elaborate on that premiss.)

Nope, not valid. If you think differently, please demonstrate the logical contradiction between these statements:

a) The universe has no purpose as a whole.
b) OrP's Toyota Prius has a purpose.

The theological belief system of logic. (2) doesn't follow from (1) (you can be under the auspices or have to answer to something that doesn't exist, eg your not yet born children or future generations).

Also, is it your contention that the logical form of "The universe has no purpose as a whole" is the same as "The universe is godless"? "The universe has no purpose as a whole" tells you that the universe doesn't have property "purpose." "The universe is godless" tells you that there is no entity "god." The logical form of these statements are different - one is a description claim and the other is an existence claim.

Thank you for the suggestion, I'll have a look at Cioran's work. If he's anything like my home-boy Schopenhauer I'm sure I'll enjoy his stuff.

As for the above, I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. Maybe if you spent a little more time and energy organising your thoughts in a way that makes them more easily digestible to your audience people might understand you better. Making things hard for the reader is the opposite of good writing and effective communication in general. Chalking it up to your audience being stupid is lazy.

Yes Camus died. Everyone dies. What is the point? I am not a mind reader.

Different senses of the word 'purpose', obviously. Anything created by man can be said to have a purpose from the perspective of its individual creator. A purposeless process (evolution) in a purposeless setting (the universe) has produced a species that senses purpose in its day-to-day survival, the maximization of its longevity, and various objects of affection. An objectively purposeless realm operating on purposeless principles has produced purpose-sensing and purpose-imagining beings...call it a paradox, call it irony, that's reality. To claim that some property X of an objectively purposeless overarching 'arena' can magically be infused with objective purpose is to, I would think, intentionally obfuscate the issue by conflating two major senses of the word 'purpose'--those being 'ultimate' v 'instrumental', objective v subjective.

I read a book by Cioran a long time ago. The Trouble With Being Born I think it was called. Depressing guy. The problem with nihilism is, why not just kill yourself? It leads nowhere good. Camus wrote some great books though.

You still haven't let go of the Christian story of creation. You still think that in order for something to have a purpose, it must have a creator that gives it that purpose. But my car's purpose doesn't come from just its creators, it also comes from me. If I decided I want to use it as part of an art installation, then that would be its purpose. If I decided to use it as an abode, then that would be. It's true that the people who created my car knew that lots of people want something that would get them from point A to B quickly, and so made something good for that, but that is not essential to an object's purpose. Horses, which are not made by humans, also can be used for the purpose of getting people from point A to B quickly.

This is why you think atheism immediately and obviously implies a lack of purpose for human lives. If the only way a human life can have a purpose is if a conscious creator made them for that purpose, then if there is no god creating humanity, but only the nonconscious laws of science restricting the otherwise randomness of nature into certain pathways, then of course nothing has a purpose (I'll politely ignore for now the obvious fact that conscious creators called "parents" do create humans lives for a purpose all the time). But in fact, creation is not required for something to have a purpose. I can repurpose something created with one end in mind for another. I can use found objects for a purpose of my own.

The reason why it seems silly to think the universe as a whole has a purpose is because only a godlike being - one powerful enough to actually affect the distant stars - can truthfully be said to use it as a whole. Humans certainly can't. Individual humans are generally only able to consciously and purposefully affect the things in their immediate vicinity, and at approximately their size (although science is changing this). However, one of the things we are most able to actually affect is our own lives. We make decisions about what to eat, how to spend our leisure time, with whom and what kind of relationships to have, careers, etc. And it's not only us - other humans also use people for their own purposes all the time. It's in this sense that our lives can have a real purpose of their own.

Now, it is true that many people struggle to have this sense of control and purpose over their own lives. Their decisions feel to them outside of their conscious control and in some cases are. But that is a problem (maybe! see Buddhism) for them, not a universal truth about reality. My own life has a purpose - the purpose I've given it, along with the purposes my friends, family, co-workers, fellow hobbyists, you guys here, and others have given it. You think this is some kind of a paradox because you can't let go of something you call an "objective" purpose, which you think God creates for humans in the Christian mythos. No...any purpose God has for humans would still be subjective, just like our own purposes. Even Christian theology acknowledges the possibility of rebellion, of choosing to go against God's purposes for our own.

For some who believe they've actually found the objective purpose (e.g. for us all to suffer) their subjective purpose and moral imperative is to rebel; to live happily.

Let’s call it the cycle of rebellion:

Imprisonment -> enslavement -> coexistence -> war -> consumption/integration

You seem to be in the coexistence stage.

Is it a benevolent authority that you need? or any kind of authority at all? I think it's the former.

Indulge me for a moment. Let's play imagine. It can be enlightening to imagine. Let's imagine that there was an overarching authority, with an objective purpose for the existence of each and every one of us.

Let's also imagine that the objective purpose was something you strongly disagreed with.

Would this be a better state of affairs, from your perspective, than having no objective purpose at all?

I don't know what any of these mean?
...

This is a useful exercise but I would change
“Let's also imagine that the objective purpose was something you strongly disagreed with. ”
to
“Imagine the objective purpose was something that strongly inconvenienced you.” It’s not about having the correct beliefs or facts in your head. It’s about becoming/embodiment. This might seem nit-picky but it’s an important distinction.

At the heart of this is the question ‘Is life redemptive?’ Is there a possible payoff if we take on responsibility for resolving our suffering (whatever bothers us). This is something that we have to intuit, rather than intellectualize over, and we won’t even be allowed to contemplate it unless we “rebel” by becoming aware of and consciously refusing our ‘imprisonment’ from the part of us that promises to protect us from danger. The part of us that decides for us that life is purposeless, or similarly, that we have reached salvation, strengthening the default narrative that there is nothing (or nothing more) to be saved from.

The deepest level of reality is the level of order and chaos. To live our best lives, we should operate at this level, and take responsibility for thinking about the questions ‘Are chaos and order equally valid?’, and ‘Is it possible to transform chaos into order?’ This question and the previous question (is life redemptive) are the same.