is atheist materialism the end of philosophy

>>8434589
only the beginning of the end.

>atheist materialism

You mean materialism?

And no, it's just the death of metaphysics.

also if you believe it is not, please give me literature that is convincing other wise. sorry but atheist materialism is depressing as fuck

>>8434597
really what else is there to being, if all that is, is. if everything is just action and reaction what more is there to see

>>8434589

That depends entirely upon what is actually the case.

If it is in fact the case that God does not exist, and that the universe sprang forth unbidden from nothing, from nobody, with no ultimate goal, purpose, or design, then yes, I would be inclined to agree that philosophy properly ends at atheist materialism, or equivalently, nihilism. And the reason why this would necessarily be the case is that the world itself militates toward that conclusion, however unpleasant or contradictory the average human finds it.

OTOH if God exists as we've understood the notion, then this would immediately put the trump-gotcha to the above. But it might still happen that the universe that people occupy while they are alive betrays no direct evidence of God, and so people would still be obliged, especially over a sufficiently long historical period, to adopt the above nihilisms, "atheist materialisms", etc. The whole thing boils down to a function of whether God Himself shows up in this world for all to see, and none to escape, and says quite clearly "I am the LORD thy GOD, here let me prove it to you." or words and deeds to that effect.

>>8434599

It sounds as if you are prepared to reject the truth of a given idea based only upon the fact that you find that idea to be unpleasant. I am sure-not-sure that you are not actually that stupid, and that you have more substantive reasons for your conclusion. Actually "I don't like that" is in a sense valid, but it still just amounts to feels.

OTOH it sounds as if you are reaching out for an escape from the OP's assertion-as-conclusion. "Please, get me out of the nihilism-box."

Except that given the present state of affairs, you actually cannot do both intellectual honesty and "escape from the nihilism-box." Naturally this is a depressing conclusion for most people, and so it gets glossed over in private life, oftentimes, except when people feel like having serious conversations about same.

My project, for which I do not have an exact solution but I have an idea on how to proceed: assert that a certain conventional nihilism is true, while at the same time making room for endeavor, human life, etc. This is probably merely some version of existential nihilism, although there is a contradiction at the heart of it. Most people can still derive pleasure from certain things about life, even if they come to the above conclusion.

>>8434631
you are right i don't want to be a nihilist but i am. so i seek out other perspectives hoping i will find one that is logically permissible what is wrong with this.
ultimately what i think is that i might be a nihilist but i am not sure and would like to hear the other side

>>8434604
You can only comprehend meaning in relation to a powerful anthropomorph at the center of things?

I don't know what to say. Maybe try reading Sartre's essay Existentialism is Humanism. There are so many materialist philosophers from the 17th century on I don't even really know where to point you.

Human beings have the creative potential to imbue the world around them with meaning. You would be doing it even if you didn't think it were possible to do it.

If anything the defeat of idealism just led to a revitalization of ethics (cf. Marx, Freud, etc.).

>>8434631
also i don't think you can rightly make the claim that nihilism is the only logical answer to life. however i currently think that it is

>>8434589

Yep. When that presocratic guy said everything is just matter and there is no soul or god, philosphy ended. We are still picking up the pieces.

>>8434642
i don't understand how humans can endow life with meaning. if life is as it is then what does the human aspect add to it at all. are we not just another part of nature that goes with the stream of being that ends nowhere.

>>8434660
you are either making fun of the idea that atheist materialism is the end of philosophy or supporting
1. you mean that it is ridiculous that someone from such a early society could finish such a pressing issue
2. you actually mean what you say
whatever it be both perspectives are interesting. i really like this sentence you put together i think it is sincerely profound

>>8434670

I believe it and was being sarcastic at the same time. Atheistic Materialism is a possibility that has been fiercely disregarded for thousands of years after Socrates, and the attacks range from sound to ridiculous.

But it's also sarcastic in that one really can argue Aethestic Materialism as well as Theistic Dualism or whatever else, and that over time the same stances are still here today just with more argument behind them, enhanced by or distracted with entirely new questions that have happened upon us over time. With Hume, with Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Plato, Wittgenstein...

But really, the final statements are largely the same as they were when men in robes in a city state were arguing if the sun was a rock or a man on a chariot flying super duper fast.

>>8434589
The two are mutually exclusive. I do not have to be a materialist to be an atheist.

>>8434699
huh wow you really put a lot of thought into that. thank you for posting

>>8434711
i know i was saying the combination of the two seems to be the most logical.
could you direct me to some writings by non-materialist atheists

>>8434717
buddhism

>>8434662
Even the thought that life is meaningless or that it "goes nowhere" is a human imposition. You can't function without meaning-making because that's the very nature of language. From the moment you started speaking you were damned to a meaningful life, OP.

>>8434738
i never got Buddhism. they say we are reborn but many say we are no longer conscious so how are we even reborn

>>8434717
>the combination of the two seems to be the most logical.

Is it? Atheism is just a lack of belief in God(s). Why does this necessitate physicalism?

>could you direct me to some writings by non-materialist atheists

I can't speak to their personal beliefs, but analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of mind whose non-materialist frameworks do not require the existence of a God include almost everyone since and including Quine. Lewis, Armstrong, Davidson, Chalmers, Hawthorne, Sider, Zimmerman, Popper, and Putnam

>>8434741
just because a perceive it doesn't mean it is there. and even if i perceive that it isn't there doesn't mean that i will not go on living as if it were

>>8434742

Part of it is going into it without thinking about it academically

>>8434744
need first names for
>lewis
>armstrong
>davidson
>zimmerman

>>8434750
David Lewis, David Armstrong, Donald Davidson, Dean Zimmerman

>>8434647

I would suggest that is the unique evidence-based attitudanal conclusion. But again of course, people naturally know to bristle at/reject such ideas.

I have a notion that productive adults are the most deluded of humans because in the course of their daily routine, they attach value, meaning to what they do. On the one hand they are aware that they will be dead in a few decades on the outside, while on the other they find it necessary to put up a front which maintains civilization. I am not entirely knocking this front, since I do want civilization to operate, but I do feel that it is a delusion.

What I want is a world where everyone can acknowledge the acknowledging meaningless of things (truth), and not get depressed about it to the point of suicide, or emergency workers walking off their jobs, etc (hedonism). This is the contradictory tension that I haven't resolved.

>>8434747
Why are you employing reason if your life is meaningless?

If you were serious you would just roll around in the mud outside your house.

Sorry, despondentchan, you're gonna have a meaningful life without God just like the rest of us.

no?

even after that, things such as "how should we experience the world" "how should we live" and so on remain. not as questions of truth, but our questions of how to do things and react to things.

everything is material? well, even if I pretend to be a STEMbro, give me a scientific fact and I'm already philosophizing when I try to assign a meaning to that fact (in relation to my experience of the world; not an universal meaning, but one grounded on my experience)

>>8434662
>i don't understand how humans can endow life with meaning
personally I can't understand the opposite. for me, nihilism always equaled a freedom. a heavy, tragic freedom, but freedom nonetheless. my will doesn't disappear with meaning.

>>8434774
>everyone keeps assuming i believe in god
i was just saying that things will continue you going the same way even if life has no meaning.

Platonism (Henotheistic Idealism) is the beginning and end of philosophy.

>>8434829
please provide dem writers

>>8434835
Pythagoras, Philolaus, Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus, Damscius

>>8434589
Only for morons, but since most ontological philosophers and religious people are egotistical morons obsessed with a need for some hilarious greater meaning and imaginary ultimate purpose or truth, I suppose it might have some effect. A moron is anyone who sincerely thinks they need a grand meaning for their life beyond the obvious experiential aspects, gathering of knowledge, effect on society, family and friends, etc. The idea that everything's ultimate impermanence somehow renders experience and actions invalid is so fucking ass-backwards words fail me. Without impermanence, nothing new could ever happen, and nothing you did would matter on any level. Being religious makes your life a joke, if you apply any logic at all to it ("Let's be good!" "Why?" "God wants us to!" "Can't he do it himself more efficiently?" "Sure, but we need to go to heaven!" "Why?" "To exist forever doing nothing!" "Errr....this system is in place why?" "God needs us to have free will!" "Then why interfere or punish or reward? That's not free will, that's bribes and threats poorly executed" and so on). People who need to imagine their lives as vitally important in the grand scheme of the universe need to be laughed at.
These are fuckwads so scrambled up by reading depressed pseudobabble that they can say shit like "Why bother having kids, they'll just die someday" with a straight face. Leechblock this site, swear off philosophy books, and go outside.
You somehow think "average folks" don't realize how "ultimately meaningless" their lives and actions are, and they are therefore blind. You are a fucking drooling idiot for setting an absurd impossible definition to "meaning" and then scoffing at the world for not measuring up. "Meaning" is a human, contingent, complex, and limited concept, and that's fine. We don't live for "meaning," or "God," we live for personal experience and satisfying undertakings. What happens on earth a century from now is of little fucking concern to me, nor is what happens to me after death, if anything, because I know my limits.

Well, such strand of philosophy is situated literally in the middle of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

>>8434589
Quite the contrary: for a lot of people it'll be the point at which philosophy really starts, i.e. starts to have a meaningful impact on their lives. Start with the Greeks, lad.

>>8434599
Wittgenstein all the way.

>>8435361

The good part of this post is where you tell people not to let academic philosphy affect their real life. Everything else is a bit spastic though

>>8435449
Fair enough. I should have composed my thoughts pre-rant, and left religion off the table (though the similarities are so obvious it's hard to not lump the instincts together).