[MD] Thoughts on Nihilism

[Matt Kundert]

Steve said:
Life is clearly used in lots and lots of different ways. We 
can talk about what ways are better and worse than others, 
but on this view where meaning and purpose are 
pragmatically understood as use the complete lack of 
meaning can never be a problem for anyone who lives and 
thus uses life.

Matt:
Not to be willy-nilly opaque, but this sentiment right here is 
the heart of holism in philosophy.  It is the pragmatic 
rebuttal to a theoretical consideration.  One response to a 
theory is that it denies something in the course of its 
explication that has to be assumed.  Hence, the 
performative contradiction in a naive relativism ("nothing is 
better than anything else because everything is relative to 
a viewpoint"): if that were true, then nothing recommends 
relativism--or any other view--as being better, so the 
assumption of any viewpoint, including this naive relativism, 
confutes the conclusion of the naive relativism ("nothing is 
better than anything else").

The holism inherent in telling the Camusian existentialist to 
bugger off with thinking that the only important 
philosophical question is whether to commit suicide is that 
it is performatively contradictory to ask whether Life, sans 
phrase, has meaning because the very act of asking the 
question assumes the production of meaning.

The rejection of the tentacles of nihilism, in other words, 
comes from the same considerations as the technical 
Davidsonian reasons that produce the "principle of charity": 
that most of anyone's beliefs are true, and it's corrollary 
that belief by it's nature is veridical.

Pragmatic holism is a wonderful thing.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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