Comments on “The nihilist critique of monism”

I’m curious: do you have a picture of what monist nihilism would look like? It apparently hasn’t been a common enough stance to be immediately recognizable in the way that the Big Three are, but it also seems as though there’s a high potential right now for this fourth stance to gain some kind of traction. I can only understand it in purely ‘ontological’ terms but am having trouble picturing a cultural manifestation.

I suppose punk rockers moshing comes to mind. A primordial ooze of deconstruction. “We’re all in this meaningless dream together”. It also seems as though something flavored like monist nihilism has pooped up in some Zen circles, perhaps because of Sutrayana-inspired attitudes about Shunyata crossing over with general sentiments of an ordering principle which bubbles up from being in a ‘Buddhisty environment’.

But I’m at a loss for a clear picture… what do you think?

Widespread skepticism about the authority of science

Is science by default aligned with a nihilistic view? I think it is definitely materialistic in its metaphysical assumption. When you use it here though, are you referring to how science is often conflated with spiritual/metaphysical reality (e.g. reduction of existence to materialism and therefore nihilism)? I think you went over this elsewhere, maybe… (Like with Nutrition ‘science’ or cognitive science, but in those cases couldn’t that arguably be pseudoscience?)