The Philosophy to end all others...
 

I have spent a great deal of time (not really I just threw together some thoughts on Nietzsche and Nihilism after a night on the piss :P) collecting my ideas on Nihilism. It is my opinion that Nihilism is the pinnacle of philosophy. Even if we discover the true nature of things I firmly believe it won't really mean anything. Of course it will affect our human life but the philosophy itself will stand unscathed.

Don't be disheartened by Nihilism, it isn't an excuse to give up on life. Nihilism destroys our own self worth, our ego, which is disheartening. But if you can accept your own insignificance as I have, then it is very easy to live with an unconquerable sense of inner peace and contentment.

My modest article:

Nihilism – An Explanation | Rhetoric and Reason

There is no 'essential' value in anything anymore, no meaning, God is dead, always was.

As I move forward in life I want to try and develop Nihilism further, bringing together the philosophies of the Sophists of Ancient Greece, Nietzsche and others to give Nihilism the validity it deserves.

I'm down.

As far as meaning goes, Nihilists claim there is no meaning or value to anything correct?

But, meaning is a physically real thing. Even if meaning is simply applied by humans, meaning derived from a human is a real thing, even though it might exists only as a chemical reaction occurring in a human body, that chemical reaction is real, and that feeling of meaning felt by that person is real. Thus, meaning is inherent to the universe, as there is a physical part of it that exists. So, how does one say the universe is meaningless, if there are physically real meanings (even though they may be subjective) in the universe?

Meaning is not a physically real thing, in that it's not a property of any object. It's a concept that exists only within human minds, and doesn't necessarily bear any relationship to physically measurable properties of things.

So then would a nihilist also deny that hot and cold exist, light, dark, happy, sad, (don't have to be opposites, I just thought of them that way) because hot is not a physically real thing. Yes, I know thermal energy is real and measurable, but the degree to how much hotter boiling water feels to molten steel is maybe a few thousand K, but the degree to how that feels to a person isn't measurable. IE: Pain is not measurable, degree of luminosity may be measurable, but does a nihilist deny what certain degrees of brightness look like?

Pain's measurable, since nerve impulses and reactions are measurable.

It's not denial, it's acknowledgement. concepts exist just like physical objects; they just have no inherent meaning and are in fact, arbitrary.

I always thought Nihilism was about feelings and interpretations of things having no purpose, but I guess I got that impression from the all around idea of insignificance. Philosophy is not my game :P

But then isn't the chemical/neural reaction/response that causes one to feel meaning measurable?

I'm a little confused as to how it's different? I'm not trying to berate the point, I'm just interested.

I'll bite. So what are the units? This is like saying that because you can measure the hue and luminosity of points on a painting, you can measure its artistic value.

Ohai.

(And you could measure artistic value by picking a good set of dimensions to measure on, and a standard.)

"Pain scales are based on self-report, observational (behavioral), or physiological data. Self-report is considered primary and should be obtained if possible (since pain is a quale by definition, and therefore assessment based on any set scale of expected outcomes from similar cases can fail to provide useful clinical data"

"Qualia (play /ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience."

corect me if I'm wrong, but a nihilist is a physicalist correct? Such that a nihilist would reject objective morality?

Indeed.

That's a subjective scale. It relies on the interpretation of the person feeling the pain. It's better than nothing, but the implication in saying that since nerve impulses are measurable, so is pain is that you can measure someone else's pain. This doesn't do that.
Rather like the (hopefully fictitious) scale used in the poetry textbooks in "Dead Poet's Society," I presume?

I don't think our individual energy is significant enough to have any effect in the flux of Universe. So no reason to romantisize over humanity. Once upon discovery of Nihilism, one can adjust to embrace it by creating life of your own perhaps if needed within the context of nature as long as one exist. Understanding abyss of Nihilism is important, not just some superficial idea of Nihilism where most people misunderstand and become hopeless.