Stacey presents.. Nihilism

"Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence."

I proposed a discussion of this topic because lately I've been feeling a bit nihilistic and also, I wanted to hear what Susie had to say about it.

Existential nihilism considers existence meaningless, purposeless, and without value. Although I do feel that we do not have any meaning, this does not upset me, because from the evidence that has been presented, this is the conclusion I have drawn. I do not, however, believe that existence is without value. Whilst it may be true that we exist because of very complex physical processes, that does not mean that we cannot create value for ourselves. And that, I think, makes the fact that our existence is meaningless, void.

Moral nihilism views morality as non-existent, and argues that nothing is inherently right or wrong. I am actually a fan of morality, via commonsense, mind you. We know that killing someone is wrong, and that is necessary knowledge. I do understand that morality is a human construct, but it exists for us, and it is important for the survival of our species. Because if anything, the purpose of life is survival, and there are a lot of things that we do to aide our survival, without knowing it. See: Evolutionary Psychology.

Epistemological nihilism is an extreme form of skepticism which claims that there is no knowledge whatsoever. I believe this has something to do with the idea of truth. I suppose it's like when you are writing an essay and get your information from various journal articles, you generally accept that the information is true, but this kind of nihilism asks, well, how do we really know it's true? But some things we know are true because we all agree on it, for example, it is true that this object I am holding is a hairbrush, it may be called different things in different cultures but generally, we know it's a hairbrush. Even metaphysical nihilism says, yeah, but does that hairbrush even exist? To which I exclaim, yes it does, shut up your face.

In summary, nihilism brings up a few good points but generally is just a grim view of the world which tries to explain how various things do not exist.

As an aside, whilst I was researching this, I read somewhere that Seinfeld may be a manifestation of nihilism on TV. Brilliant.

Further Reading: http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/