I currently call myself a nihilist, but I think some of my beliefs are very close to existentialism to the point that some would argue I am actually an existentialist. However, I don’t know enough about nihilism/existentialism to be really sure what term is correct. I’m curious what the members of this board, some of which are certainly better versed in the technical definitions of these two than I, feel about whether my beliefs are technically existentialism or nihilism.
Please no debates on if existentialism or nihilism in general is better or worse or bad or good or whatever. If you feel my particular beliefs should be discussed more thoroughly, that is okay, but please only after my specific question has been discussed.
My belief in question is that I believe a persons behavior is a result of genetics/epigenetics and history. That is, human brains (and all other animals), are fancy fleshy computers, and there is no “free-choice”. That is, if you knew the exact state of someones brain, how brains work, and that person’s experiences, then you could perfectly predict their actions (where choosing to believe something I consider to be an action). In addition, I believe that many of our thoughts/ideas/beliefs and desires about the world are illusions, have little to do with reality, and are evolutionarily programmed so that we are better at reproducing.
The bit similar to existentialism is that I am “perfectly fine” with believing these things, and instead focus on “enjoying these illusions” (i.e. I allow myself to “pursue truth”, because I find the activity fun, even though I don’t think the word “truth” has a good solid meaning). My understanding of existentialism is that it focuses on “choosing” this positive attitude of being okay with these illusions, whereas I believe my “positive attitude” is an inevitable result of my history and genetics and not a free-will “choice”, thus is not existentialistic.
Does this make sense? Or I am putting too much emphasis in “free will”/choice in my understanding of the definition of existentialism?
Sorry for all the quotes around words. A lot of these things are so vague it is hard to discuss succinctly, but I also want to indicate some of the words I feel are more vague.
I was somewhat into existentialism as a college student. My somewhat dim memory of how 20-something me understood the definition, without doing any googling, is thus:
The universe has no ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’; it just is. Therefore it’s the responsibility of the individual to carve out some kind of meaning of their own existence.
I don’t think the idea of free will being an illusion enters into existentialism; I think it’s actually more about having too much free will to have to make our own choices in a meaningless universe, and the existential angst that can arise from that (it can be very comforting to be told what to do, or to believe in a judgemental but forgiving god, instead of having to make all of our own decisions and moral choices). But it sounds like you’re on the right track with your viewpoint of making the best of things for your particular situation.
With respect to human nature, I think your views are best described as naturalism. As summed up by the first line in the Wikipedia article, that’s just the belief that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe. The common intuitive notion of contra-causal free will as “could have done otherwise in precisely identical circumstances” is (to the extent that it means anything coherent at all) supernatural. It does not correspond to any observable phenomenon and is not amenable to empirical enquiry.
I agree with @solost that this is orthogonal to the ideas of existentialism. The fact that contra causal free will is nonsense might be somewhat unsettling, but it does not (to me) imply fatalism or any loss of sense of the importance of personal identity or agency. I’m proud of the fact that my brain makes choices for reasons, hopefully good ones, even if in principle Laplace’s demon could (aside from truly random effects) predict my brain’s choices ahead of time.
Did you come to this feeling “perfectly fine” via a period of dread and angst? Or have you always felt “perfectly fine”? Because that would not seem very existentialist to me.
Belief in the lack of free will also eliminates any of the existentialist tendencies which promote Authenticity, I think.
I never thought about existentialism being about too much free will. That definitely distinguishes it from my thoughts.
My beliefs are certainly naturalistic to a large extent. Which makes sense (to me) given my scientific background. I don’t tend to focus on this, as it seems obvious to me now. I think the nihilism comes from my thoughts that most things we care about are illusions. A cheap example is of a chair. The thing you are sitting in is just a chunk of matter. The word “Chair” implies some kind of reason or purpose that only exists in your head. That is, the “chair” only exists in your imagination, which you project onto some random chunk of matter.
Few people care much about chairs. More importantly is that I think this concept applies to almost everything, especially “reality”, “truth”, “morals”, “relationships”, “love”, etc… I think one key here is, instead of answering a philosophical question (i.e. “How do you be morally good?”), is to dig into the definition of terms in the question and ask if that question itself is even sensical. Many times I find these questions people take so seriously (“Am I loved”, “What is real”, etc…) to be so poorely defined as to be meaningless.
For example, I love science, but I do not believe in realism mainly because the word “reality” itself is poorly defined. However, I find it is useful to pretend to believe in realism (which is more an emotional attitude than actual philosophical stance) while doing science, but I do not think realism is philosophically necessary.
I did certainly come to these ideas through a period of angst. I used to be a Christian and take what I considered to be “biblical belief” very seriously. This past Christian me would consider present me to be pure evil (whatever that means). However, at one point (at end of my PhD) I sorta “fell out” of being a Christian. I still wanted to be a Christian, but found I just wasn’t one anymore. I started examining my belief on a deeper level and started asking what fundamental Christian ideas really meant. (What is “faith?” What is “Joy”?, How can you really know “Truth”, etc…). I found none of these concepts had any solidity to them, and was forced to build an entirely new worldview from ground-up. This period was definitely very angsty and I was definitely in a depression for a large portion of it. This feeling of feeling psychologically forced to give up beliefs has certainly shaped my current thinking.
I came to questions of meaning as a former fundamentalist as well. It was mostly focused on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche which I studied extensively in college (20 years ago.) I also studied existentialist literature. My memory is rusty, though my 20 month old hilariously keeps bringing me my copy of The Gay Science to read to him - so I have been reading Nietzsche lately, to a toddler.
Losing religion can create a kind of void and the feeling like you need to fill it with something, even if that something is… nothing. There’s a kind of progression from nihilism to existentialism (I don’t mean every person follows this path, I mean the philosophical ideas logically connect.) Nihilism declares, “Life is meaningless!” Existentialism responds, “Yeah, so? I can make meaning right here, and it doesn’t matter what meaning I make, I am the divine architect of my own life.” I think there’s an argument that can be made that both nihilism and existentialism (and Buddhism, for that matter) focus on the universality of suffering and somehow working through life by recognizing shared pain. And another thing that nihilism and existentialism both share is that they are in agreement that life is absurd and fundamentally devoid of meaning. Where they diverge is the question of what to do about it. (My interpretation of the nihilistic response is ‘rend your clothes and gnash your teeth’ but I know very little about nihilism so someone may feel free to correct me.)
It sounds to me like your conclusion that everything is an illusion has led you more or less to a nihilistic outlook, but you are plunging forward creating your own meaning anyway. So the chief question is whether you can be an existentialist and not believe in free will. That’s a valid and debatable question, and the short answer is that a lot of existentialist philosophers grappled with the idea of free will, and some people will tell you it’s absolutely necessary to believe in free will to be an existentialist, and others will say it’s more complicated than that… here’s a discussion I found, if it helps.
I don’t really believe in free will either*, but I still consider myself an existentialist. I am first and foremost a pragmatist, and it suits my life to do so. It really doesn’t matter whether free will is a thing, because it feels like it’s a thing, and I get to make my own meaning.
*It might be more accurate to say I don’t care if free will is a thing, and I can’t figure out, logically, how it could possibly exist - but I’m not going to engage in fisticuffs with anyone who says otherwise. Some philosophers might even argue that it’s our experience of free will that makes free will real, as nothing can meaningfully exist outside of human perception. But I’m not really prepared to go there.
While the definition of existentialism is factual, there’s a lot of other stuff here that is pretty far outside of the bounds of Factual Questions. Let’s give IMHO a try instead.
Thanks for the info. Your ideas sound similar to mine.
So, your understanding is that it is a matter of debate if existentialism requires free will or not, which is rather different than the above posters. (just noting)
I didn’t say all existentialism requires free will, I said that I think there are certain conceptions of existentialism that do. Not all existentialists make a big deal out of Authenticity.
I consider myself an existentialist, and I do consider Authenticity to be important, and I believe free will exists. But largely because I believe both that causal determinism is bunk (“all clocks are clouds”) and, independently, that even if it weren’t bunk, the existence of a perfect omniscient observer of anyone’s mental state is.
My background in this type of philosophy is very weak.
First, I don’t understand what you mean by “Authenticity”.
I also don’t understand what you mean by “causal determinism is bunk (“all clocks are clouds”)” By “causal determinism” I’d think you mean what I’d call cause-and-effect, and is the fundamental basis of science. But I don’t see what this had to do with “all clocks are clouds”. I guess by “all clocks are clouds” you’re referring to my comments about chairs. (which I could defend further, but would rather wait a post to make sure I understand what you are trying to say)
Finally, I’m not sure what “the existence of a perfect omniscient observer of anyone’s mental state” has to do with any of this. I guess what your talking about here, is that I said I believe it is possible to predict someone’s behavior if you know their mental state, and perhaps you are saying you believe it is impossible to ever perfectly know someones mental state? I don’t understand this, as, for example, an atomic-level accurate nMRI isn’t non-physical (as far I understand). Thus, ignoring engineering problems, it should be possible to develop an accurate model of the physical state of someones brain. The only issue I see here is the argument that there are non-physical elements to the human brain/mind
Trying to get my head around this, I think you’re trying to say that you think the universe is non-deterministic. That is, knowing the physical state of the past is not sufficient to predicting the physical state of the future. (which I guess fits the definition of Naturalism). If this is true, I’d be interested to know why you reject naturalism/determinism.
The link I shared talks about this a bit, and is skeptical of the idea that causal determinism can be logically derived from the science of cause and effect. I’m no expert, but it does make me think of entropy, which (AIUI) is how energy distributes itself over time - and how it becomes completely unpredictable. It’s the tendency of a system away from order and toward chaos. As I understand it, causal determinism doesn’t hold up to, say, the study of quantum mechanics. At that point you only get probabilities, not certainties. That may be running afield of the subject matter, but it’s interesting, nonetheless.
It’s a fundamental concept for a lot of existentialists. Not knowing the concept would strongly indicate that you have a lot more reading of your own to do before you can decide if existentialism describes you or not.
Not exactly. It’s entirely possible to believe cause-and-effect generally holds without being a determinist.
Let’s leave this one at: I disagree. Strongly.
You’re prepared to make absolute declarations about what the basis of science is, but you don’t know Popper when he’s quoted?
No, it’s a statement about determinism.
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
No. There’s also a little thing called the Uncertainty Principle. Perfect reading is impossible.
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
I only reject the latter. I’m perfectly on board with naturalism. As a methodology, not as a complete metaphysics, mind you.
Thanks for helping me understand without being insulting.
I did read the first link you attached, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t find it to be helpful.
This second link was very helpful. I, in general, really like the site. I’d read it more, but I find my understanding tends to be very different than other peoples after reading it. So I find discussion like this to be far more useful in understanding how other people use these terms.
I don’t understand why quantum mechanics keeps being brought up. (yes, I’m well-versed in its theory). The reason I say I don’t understand, is that quantum mechanical randomness only affects macro-systems (say, position of an atom or measurable amount of electrical current), in extremely rare situations, and I see no reason at all to expect that human behavior is significantly affected by quantum mechanical randomness. Even if it is, my belief that human behavior is determined by genetics, personal history, and physics requires only slight modification. In that you can consider “human behavior” to be an expected statistical distribution who’s properties are determined (this can also be used to account for measurement and model error). I can see how this is different from typical use of the word “determinism”, and would bother some, but this complication does not bother anything I care about.
Moving the goalposts from “the exact state of someones brain” to a statistical distribution model is an admission that causal determinism is bunk, as far as I’m concerned. Probability models are the clouds Popper was talking about.
…and some of that genetics and physics (and hence, also, personal history) is non-deterministic in nature. Random mutations, stochastic bursts of radiation, etc.
Tell that to anyone who suffers from a genetic disease.