Epistemological nihilism

[Someone here]

It's the idea that acquisition of knowledge about the true nature of reality is impossible. 

 examples of epistemological nihilism:

Omphalos hypothesis
Simulation hypothesis
Descartes' "evil demon"
"Brain in a vat" hypothesis
Dream hypothesis
Solipsism

 

What they all have in common is that they are unfalsifiable and that they posit that, at bottom, all of our perceptions are illusions. They also have this in common: just about everyone has toyed with them at some point in their lives.

The problem with them isn't so much that they are false/unlikely, but rather the combination of their being unfalsifiable and (if true) causing all other knowledge to be valueless.

Or rather, that in the end they don't much matter. If it's true that we're in a simulation, for example, then statements about the nature of reality don't become meaningless, they just become statements about the nature of our simulated reality. If we're in a dream, then statements about reality become true statements about our dream world. And so on. And any statement about the nature of the unsimulated reality beyond us has no hope of being anything other than speculation.

These are my own personal musings, but I would imagine that they're pretty standard and also that I absorbed them from somewhere. So I'm wondering if a) there is a standard philosophical treatment of these ideas, and b) if there are holes in what I've presented here.

[Leo Gura]

That you are dreaming right now is not a hypothesis. It's the case. And you can know it absolutely.

The truth cannot be falsified. That's not a bug, that's a feature.

[The0Self]

This is nothing, having an intuitive yet absolute regard for itself as being everything. In that way, it can be so-called “known” absolutely.

Show me something else? “But there’s something else happening!” That’s this appearing as something else happening — this is the absolute, there’s nothing else.

The dream is that there’s something else, including purpose, meaning, or others, or actual real separate things of any kind at all.

Edited July 9, 2021 by The0Self

[lmfao]

How about this, "Ontological Nihilism", you can look that up. Don't know if you'll find much theory though. Probs cuz there isn't any for some that radical. 

Edited July 10, 2021 by lmfao

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, lmfao said:

How about this, "Ontological Nihilism",

You mean God?

Yup, that's a thing

Ontological nihilism is the thing everyone's terrified of being true.

[Someone here]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That you are dreaming right now is not a hypothesis. It's the case. And you can know it absolutely.

In what sense am I 'dreaming'?  That's a vague statement. You need to elaborate. 

I don't think I am laying in my bed right now hallucinating stuff.  Although that's just a belief. I can't know. Which precisely my point is we can't distinguish between reality and dreams. Unless you are lucid in the dream. 

Do you mean it literally or figuratively? 

Or is it something I can't understand unless with psychedelicds? 

 

Edited July 10, 2021 by Someone here

[Zeldor]

@Someone here  The idea that there is a “you” that could “lie on a bed” is a dream. There is no reality except in this dream that we call reality. Your reality is made up of a bunch of pixels that you then group together into objects and then group into mental constructs that exist through time, which is itself just another pixel that says other pixels are changing. There is no change because there is no 2 different moments of time that an object can exist differently in. There is no past or future, there is only “now”. Although I think even to say “now” is incorrect as that is still operating within the framework of time.

I don’t know if this makes sense but this is my best guess.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Zeldor

[OBEler]

@Zeldor call it then Now with a captal N like leo would say

[vladorion]

Ontological nihilism is an idea that the mind comes up with when it tries to grasp non conceptual reality.

It then holds onto that idea as the ultimate reality, ironically.

[Zeldor]

@OBEler Lol, it makes me feel childish to do stuff like that, but I guess it makes sense.

[Gesundheit2]

What is knowledge, anyway?

[Nahm]

11 hours ago, Someone here said:

…my point is we can't distinguish between reality and dreams. Unless you are lucid in the dream.

Why you always we’ing?

Whose point is that really? 

“I don't think I am laying in my bed right now hallucinating stuff.  Although that's just a belief. I can't know. Unless you are lucid in the dream.” 

An I definitely can’t know, and a you can’t be lucid and in a dream. Lucidity is the absence of an I and a you, and a dream. 

[Someone here]

@Nahm I'm not talking about lucidity in that sense (enlightenment or whatever).   I'm talking about lucidity in night-time dreams. 

90% of the time.. You don't know that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. You Believe the dream is real. Until you wake up. The argument carries that what if the waking state is also a dream. You wouldn't know. You could live your life believing that it's real. Only to wake up at the moment of death. That's one point. Is that you can't distinguish between the two (dreams and reality). 

This is one way those skeptics and epistemological nihilists argue that all of our perceptions might be an illusion and thus all of our knowledge is based upon illusion. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Someone here

[Nahm]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

I'm not talking about lucidity in that sense (enlightenment or whatever). 

Me neither. 

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

I'm talking about lucidity in night-time dreams

Right. Me too. 

[Someone here]

Oh I thought you were talking about seeing through the separate self.