Hi, Robert,

Thanks for this helpful analysis. I think we are probably in agreement on most of these points (but may disagree on one).

Your description of brittleness seems exactly right to me. Does my discussion of the "instability" of confused stances seem to you to cover the same point?

Regarding the similarity of eternalism and nihilism, and their tendency to "combine in unholy alliances" (a fine phrase!): Do this and this seem to make the same point?

Eternalism and nihilism do not make sense without each other and without their shared rejection of non-dualist alternatives. They also unite in their dualistic tendency to classify all attempted alternatives as on one side of the dualism or the other—us or them.

Yes; the Aro analysis (which I start from) is that "from the standpoint of eternalism, non-duality looks like nihilism, and from the standpoint of nihilism, non-duality looks like eternalism." (This may be a common Buddhist view, but offhand I can't remember a non-Aro source.) My draft has a discussion of this that has not yet made it onto the web site.

Regarding psychology: I have just posted a page about the emotional dynamics of nihilism (plus a brief stub on kitsch, one of the emotional dynamics of eternalism.) Is this the sort of thing you have in mind?

I had to jump quite a long way ahead to post this material; there's still a ton of introduction left before we properly get to that sort of thing. But I thought it important to get some of this up on the site, because the bulk of the book has much more of this flavor than the dry technical introduction does. I think several readers have been puzzled and annoyed by the dull abstraction of much of what I've posted to date. That stuff is just conceptual background to the central portion of the book, which mainly looks at the feeling qualities of stances, and their applications in everyday life. The main part is quite lively.

Regarding belief: it's possible we disagree about this. In philosophy of mind, "belief" is often taken as an unanalyzed primitive. The assumption is that there is a simple fact of the matter as to whether or not "Harry believes God exists"; whereas I think this is actually complex and ambiguous, and the word "belief" often obscures more than it clarifies.

I think it may have been Dawkins who observed that much "belief" would better be understood as "proclamation". Metaphysical "beliefs" often seem to function as badges of tribal identification. They are insisted upon, but they don't seem to function in the same way as everyday beliefs (like "I still have three clean pairs of underwear"), because they are not subject to empirical test, do not influence action in the same ways, and are defended in different ways.

With regards to meaningness, I'm more interested in "stances" than beliefs, where I take "stances" to be fundamental attitudes and styles of thinking-feeling, rather than truth-claims.

I agree that "beliefs" are critical to analyzing systems (such as religions). But I think systems are largely bogus, and want to get at a more basic level of mind, where I may have a longer lever-arm.

These are all interesting issues... I'm not sure I understand everything in your comment completely, but probably over time as we calibrate our concepts and vocabulary, such things will clarify.

We're using the words "eternalism" and "nihilism" to mean somewhat different things. Both of us started from Buddhist philosophy, and headed in roughly, but not quite, the same direction. Neither of us is using the words quite as they were in Buddhism (which itself has several meanings for them, anyway). This is bound to cause confusion. That seems unavoidable, but maybe for the benefit of both our readers, we can try and sort out exactly how our uses differ.

For each of the specific pairs of stances, I will explain how the false opposition works—why they seem to be the only alternatives. Also, how these two stances relate to other pairs (particularly, to nihilism and eternalism). Would that constitute the "theoretical model for how different aspects of dualism are linked"?

I don't plan to make a general argument against metaphysical beliefs. I think you've done a good job of that. I do intend to explain why I think some specific metaphysical beliefs are wrong. Along with that, I will suggest the reasons people hold them anyway.

There's several classes of reasons people hold metaphysical beliefs. Maybe the most interesting one is that metaphysical entities may seem to have physical consequences. That can be used as an argument for or against the entities (depending on whether the physical consequences are observed).

For example, I think the Problem of Evil is a good argument against the existence of Gods. If there were a God (capital G implying omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence), we ought not to see undeserved suffering (a physical effect); but we do. Conversely, miracles would be an argument in favor of a God, if we encountered any. (Neither argument is conclusive, but either is incremental evidence. There are theodicies that address the Problem of Evil, but none seem credible, so this is a good argument. There could be many explanations for miracles (if there were any) besides Gods, so that's not a good argument—but it's still something.)

I agree that simple stances can have complex philosophical consequences. I intend to draw out those consequences, because the stances are typically adopted without thinking the consequences through. Confused stances are less attractive when you see their implications clearly. (I'm particularly hot to do this for monism now, because I see huge numbers of people buying into it without recognizing the problems it causes them.)