Sense Experience

It is long discussed in historical philosophy that sense experience is an interaction between an object and a subject.  I go a step further, however, and say that the interaction is between an object, a conveyance, and a subject in which the characteristics of all three determine the net result.  For example, when I look at the penholder on my desk, I see a green ceramic frog.  Science has found the greenness that I see to be the result of an interaction involving photons of light hitting the frog, reflecting back at me at a certain wavelength, then entering my eye and interacting with the rods and cones in my retina in a certain way so as to produce the sensation of greenness in my consciousness.

Thus we cannot point to any one thing as the root cause of my idea of greenness.  The fact that the frog continues to appear green every time I look at it and has done so consistently for the past 20 years seems to indicate that the frog possesses some attribute that consistently contributes to its appearing green.  It also demonstrates that the photons of light continue to react to that attribute such that the light continues to reflect with the same wavelength.  Thus the properties of light remain consistent.  In addition, the rods and cones in my retina consistently react with the light.  So we have all these reactions that occur consistently over what seems to be long periods of time.

This consistency has enormous significance that I'll examine more later. But as for the knowledge imbued from sense experience, the frog's green appearance does not tell us much about the frog itself except that it has some attribute that reacts in a consistent way with light. Also, that light has attributes that react in a consistent way with our retinas, and so on.  We do not know what it is inherently about the frog that causes it to appear green.  It has as much to do with the properties of light and our eyeballs as with the frog. 

Yet our language supposes otherwise.  We say "the frog is green" and suppose that the greenness is an intrinsic feature of the frog.  Granted, we can conclude that there is something about the frog that contributes to its appearing consistently green, but we do not know exactly what that is.  We can break the frog down into its constituent molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, but none of this accounts for the phenomenon of greenness at the level of direct human sense experience. Greenness has more to do than just with the frog itself.

This same point applies to all five external senses.  They can all be reduced to interactions that begin with the features of the object, which are then affected by the features of some conveyance to the subject, and then are further affected by the features of the subject itself.  The net result tells us little about the object itself other than its composition is consistent.  We cannot know even this conclusively however, since it is still possible to imagine that the properties of the object, conveyance, and subject are simultaneously and continuously changing in such a way that the net result is always the same. But this seems so unlikely that we do not seriously entertain it.  Nonetheless, we cannot disprove it.

Thus sense experience is useless for understanding objects as they are in themselves.  Some have gone so far to suppose that we have no business even asserting the existence of objects (as with Berkeley).   All we know is the net result of these interactions.  All I know is that there appears to be a green object on my desk, but this appearance is merely a reaction within me. Thus we cannot say that the object necessarily exists on its own apart from me, but simply that my environment is such that it interacts with my brain to produce these ideas.  We end up with a distinction between ideas in our consciousnesses and what we suppose on faith to be an extra-mentally existent world.

We are then faced with a choice:

1 - We assert that objects do indeed exist apart from our ideas of them, but that we cannot know the essence of those objects.  All we can know is our sense experience, which provides data that is an aggregation of the features of the object, the conveyance, and the subject combined.

or

2 - We assert that objects do not exist apart from our ideas of them; that all we have are our ideas, and nothing more.  This has led to idealism [the philosophical theory which maintains that experience is ultimately based on mental activity], which attempts to make this assertion while avoiding solipsism [the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist.], which they achieve by asserting a pantheistic force or God figure that essentially controls all of our ideas.  Without the God figure or force, we slip into solipsism and nihilism [the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life.].

It seems to me that #2 does not allow for free will; we are just playing out a drama controlled entirely (and I mean entirely) by a pantheistic force of some kind.  To me, this still leads to nihilism because my thoughts, beliefs, and actions are not my own.  They are God's.  And there is no sense in speaking of morality since my choices and actions are predetermined.  I have no control over my relative happiness and well-being; we are all entirely at the mercy of whatever "the force" decides for us.  (This may be where my predispositions come into play, but I just don't believe this.)

So I choose #1.  And this "choice" (inasmuch as I can call it that) is not based solely on avoiding nihilism.  There is more to say to help justify it, and this will come out in future essays.  Although I admit in advance that my arguments do not "prove" it in any strict sense, but simply reinforce it.  The rational exigency returns to avoiding nihilism in the end.  And not to belabor the point, but I see this as necessary and reasonable.  Nihilism makes for a fine academic discussion, but we should not discount or underestimate the very real and very harsh consequences of nihilism in practice.  I genuinely believe that "nihilism is death."  And I will stand behind a line of reason that regards avoiding nihilism as foundational.

Comments

[misanthropic_shaman]

Good post. It looks like we are starting to get to the good stuff! Lemme start with some petty nitpicking. Two mild disagreements that do not affect the overall conclusions:

A) I would disagree that consciousness is an interaction between subject and object. Perhaps consciousness is an interaction between subject and an extension of the subject? In other words, an interaction between subject and subject, or stated yet again: an interaction between self (little self) and Self (larger self).

B) As for the alleged "consistency" of sensory experience, I would dispute this as well. The human brain can spontaneously release (from the pineal gland according to Dr. Rick Strassman) Dimethyltriptamine (DMT). Look at the frog while experiencing a DMT release, and I doubt it will appear "green" anymore. It could look like a rainbow wall of undulating eyes or crocodilian feathered serpentine beings rippling through consciousness.

However, my objections are more academic than substantive. As for your final two conclusions... I gotta agree. There might be more choices, but I admit, those are the two main ones. I totally and unequivocally choose option #2. I am a monist. I personally think that option #1 leads to dualism, because it supposes a material, externally existent world, and at the same time a "consciousness" that cannot be explained in material terms. I am ardently opposed to dualism in any form. I used to be a monist-materialist determinist. Now I am a monist-Idealist (as a result of my spiritual/psychedelic experiences).

As for option #2 negating free-will. I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't see how it does. According to my conception of option #2, we are co-creators of "reality". We co-create the alleged "material" world both with one another and with the supra-conscious force most people choose to call "god." Free will is completely possible according to this option, although it is limited in scope. For instance, if 7 billion souls + god have decided that gravity is going to operate a certain way, and it has operated that way since the dawn of time, it would be very difficult to fly out the window. However, we are "free" to act within the agreed upon laws, as long as we maintain "mindful awareness" (I'd like to address "mindful awareness" more later). The "material" world can be viewed as solidified consciousness. All begins with MIND. As the Dhamapada says, "Mind is the forerunner of all actions, all deeds are led by mind, created by mind." Mind is the builder. The so-called physical world is one of the things that is "built" with mind.

There's a lot of other stuff I'd like to say, but it would sound rather insane to most people. The spiritual experiences I've had, combined with my reading of Eastern Philosophy and Western Occultism (which often parallels Eastern Mysticism) has led me to some rather strange and esoteric conclusions. Let's see where the discussion goes...

[Nick Carraway]

I tend to side with shaman's points on this one. First, sensory experience is unreliable even without the introduction of foreign substances (like psychedelics) into the mind. If you sit still for ten minutes in meditation staring at a blank space and watching your breath, the mind will begin to perceive things (about the room and your mind) that you would never have noticed on a normal day of sitting in the same room. Or if you suddenly lose your eyesight, your hearing and sense of smell is said to grow more potent to compensate for the loss of one sense. The background smell of a running car engine might be very different to someone who has no sight to perceive the car. One final example would be times of extreme stress. In intense moments our sense of time really changes drastically, making us notice things and/or ignore things that we may not have under normal circumstances.

I think the flaw in your supposition that the penholder on your desk will always display a green appearance is partially due to a normalcy bias. We are so used to operating with our normal, mundane senses that we begin to believe things will never change in a large degree. History and individual experience suggests that things can change dramatically and at any time, even if we don't believe they will. But whether we like it or not, our perception of external reality changes over time greatly.

So to your two options. If option #1 is that external reality exists and is knowable through our senses, then without reliable sensory data we can't ever prove that what we observe is really there. Or that what we don't see is not there. Your theory doesn't account for the unseeable, unsensible world. Take people who claim to have a sense for people's auras or for the presence of the divine. Just because I can't perceive these things using my unique physical form, doesn't mean that they don't exist. With these theoretical holes, I have to side with option #2.

I agree with shaman that the root of everything can be found in the mind. I also agree that free will can still be possible with option #2. Your jump to determinism suggests, as shaman notes, a dualistic thought pattern. Our Western penchant for dualism is often the root of our moral/philosophical discomforts. We think in terms of what will my action do for me (the subject) when I interact with an object. It is inherently flawed because if we think of ourselves as a completely separate, self-interested entity apart from the rest of reality, it is very difficult to act in an unselfish manner. Acting selfishly all the time, as most major religions suggest, leads to big problems in our happiness. Therefore we feel affronted and disenfranchised if some external god or larger force is taking away our ability to choose things for ourselves. It's man vs. god, instead of man with god. This is the danger of relying on sensory experiences that only supports a dualistic perception of our existence.

So that brings me back to the normalcy bias. To overcome our "normal" Western sense of seeing the world, we have to incorporate more abnormal or supra-mundane sensory experiences. Once we do open our minds in new ways like meditation or prayer, you can see that it is possible to have an external reality that exists in more than one way. We can perceive an object in a normal sense, and see it completely different in a supra-mundane sense. Do your dishes with the mindful awareness shaman mentioned, and you'll see that the dish washing experience can be much more than a everyday, hurried chore. Same external objects, but now more than one way of perceiving them.

In my estimation, the most refined supra-mundane perceptions reveal that we, the external environment, and everything else is all part of one cosmic force. Call it God, Big Mind, the cosmos, or whatever you want. But if we can settle on the existence of a ultimate, unifying force, and also, not dualistically see this force as separate from ourselves, then we become active participants in the whole process. And in that case, our actions matter! And they matter not really to fulfill small, selfish needs (although these will always be there), but the largest purpose for our actions is the underlying belief that they will impact everything. If we are all part of the same unifying force, then why not try to act to make our current and future participation in this infinite force more tolerable and pleasant?

The next step in this line of thought then is karma and reincarnation which I am dubious of. But I guess since I opened the door for supra-mundane perception, anything could be perceived if we choose it.

[misanthropic shaman]

Nick, you make some excellent points. I'm pleased (and I'm sure Finkster will be as well) at the depth of the discussion.

I don't have much time to comment now (gym's about to close), but I wanted to add to your comment about the changeable nature of things. Have you ever heard of the buddhist concept of "impermanence", or "anatman" or "dependent origination"? What you said reminded me a lot of those concepts!

I'm not going to do the concepts justice, but basically, since everything is determined by previous states (dependent origination), there is no permanence to anything - everything is in a process of flux. Buddhists take this to mean that because of this, there is no permanent, eternal, unchanging self in any phenomena or objects (anatman).

I personally side with the Hindu doctrine of "Atman" (eternal unchanging self), but that's another whole digression. The buddhists, in my opinion, actually DO believe in a permanent, unchanging self or substance that underlies all phenomena (at least the Mahayana Buddhists do), they just call it something different: "Buddha nature."

But anyway... didn't intend to go off on a digression. Just wanted to say that I was impressed by the depth of your comment.

[James Dugan]

Great discussion -- thanks Finkster. What I wanted to say has been explained above in multiple ways but I am engaged by the philosophy of percieved or actual reality. It really has been a beneficial lunch.

I am taken with the monist idea -- but I can simultaneously hold two contrasting ideas on the same subject. I can also want something physically and yet deny myself mentally. What you percieve as a frog is something caught in time? What is frog for someone, may be a paperwieght, or a God in another time. That is where learning comes into play. We educate ourselves to hold mutiple explanations on the same topic. You would think conflicting ideas (dualism) would cause frustration, but the mind incorporates them into categories, some inherent and some learned, and we continue the process of coming closer to the whole -- everything understood -- the one word (world, experience) that would incorporate frog, green, self, object.

There is no difference between #1 or #2 -- it is the same path. In the beginning there was one and then it broke into a million pieces and one day with all knowledge it will be one again.

[Finkster]

To Shaman's point A: I didn't mean to say that consciousness itself is an interaction between subject and object. I would say rather that sense experience (which leads to ideas) is an interaction between subject and object. These ideas exist within our consciousnesses. The consciousness remains something apart from the idea, a framework within which ideas exist.

As for the consistency of experience, all things being equal, meaning no drugs or anything that would explicitly change the object, subject, or conveyance - either temporarily or permanently - then our perception is consistent. I didn't mean to say that objects/subjects/conveyances themselves are necessarily consistent. Inasmuch as those "things" (as I'll call them for now) remain consistent, then our perception remains consistent. If those "things" change, then our perceptions change with them. This represents a significant problem. If our perceptions change, how do we know what changed? Did I change? Or did the object change? Or did something about light (or the conveyance) change? Sometimes we can figure this out. But if we cannot figure it out, and if we are ignorant to the question (that is, we take a materialist approach to things), then it can lead to error with significant consequences.

So I would explain away the use of drugs, the effect of stress on our sense of time, or the compensation of one sense for the failure of another sense as examples of our perceptions changing when something about ourselves as a subject changes. I allow for this. In fact, it reinforces my point.

I have to take issue with some of Nick's statements: "History and individual experience suggests that things can change dramatically and at any time, even if we don't believe they will. But whether we like it or not, our perception of external reality changes over time greatly."

Perhaps we need to be more specific about what "things can change" means. To me, science and technology reflect the relative stability of things and the consistency of our perceptions. That is, we have discovered a set of ideas that are so consistent we refer to them as "Laws of Science." However, if you mean things changing in our lives, like I lose my job this week, or someone flies a plane into a building, then yes, things can change quickly. But for now, I'm dealing with more the fundamentals of experience itself. And I believe that those fundamentals are very consistent, if not perfectly so, barring any obvious changes to ourselves as subjects or the objects of experience. In fact, I would explain away any perceived change as implying a change to either subject or object, changes of which we may simply not be aware.

I also do not mean to suggest that sense experience is the only form of experience we have. That would certainly lead to materialism or at least dualism. It just happened to be the topic of this specific essay, which I am trying to limit to about 1000 words (which is tough for me!). I am as anti-dualism and anti-materialism as any of you, so I think we just need to keep going with the essays to work through that. However, the discussion of sense experience sets up certain concepts that I carry forward.

I will have to think more on how #2 can avoid negating free will. However, I like much of what Shaman said after that about free will being limited within a set of laws. It makes me wonder if we will find ourselves taking different paths to an outcome that is, for practical purposes, the same (per James's point). I simply came up with my own way of allowing for God's governance of Reality while preserving our free will within it. The details may not matter that much, but it makes for good conversation. And I wonder myself if my ideas about "non-spatial energies" at the heart of matter is just a stand-in for a pantheistic force anyhow. My preference for it is based on preserving free will. The more we inject God directly into the world and into ourselves as beings, it seems the more we eviscerate free will. So I have my own way of working through that.

Also, it is unfair for me to equate fatalism/determinism with nihilism. They are not quite the same thing. Although they both render life meaningless, and therefore have the same practical outcome as I see it. And I mean to avoid that outcome.

And so far, what I have said about sense experience would seem to tell us virtually nothing about objects as they are in themselves. So the question remains of just what do we know about objects and reality, and is it practically any better than nihilism anyway? I will address this.

Finally...I do have additional essays ready and waiting to go, but out of respect for other writers on the board, I don't want to dominate the board with these posts, so I was planning on throttling them to about one a week. However, if I get everyone's blessing, I'll post the next segment when you're ready. The short essay format does allow the commenting to be very specific; I like that.

[misanthropic_shaman]

I like where the discussion is going. There's more I'd like to say, but I'm going to throw out a couple of crazy things and see how they are perceived. First of all, I'm blown away that James is expressing this:

"In the beginning there was one and then it broke into a million pieces and one day with all knowledge it will be one again."

Holy s*** dude, where did you learn that??? That's ultimately the secret of most (perhaps all) esoteric doctrines... Seriously dude... that's the secret of everything.

In the beginning God was One. God still IS one (as per the HIndu idea of Brahman), but for whatever reason, "God" fragmented, or as you say, "broke into a million pieces." The Kabbalists call this the "Death" of "Adam Kadmon." God was an undifferentiated being (that appears as Pure Love, Pure Light, Pure Knowledge), encompassing EVERYTHING. His metaphoric "death" or fragmentation resulted in the formation of the universe. WE (individual humans) all have a spark of the Divine within us - as Aleister Crowley said, "Each man and woman is a star". That spark or "star" seeks to reunite with its source. We are now in the process of reunification with "God" and with one another, for at the most fundamental level, WE ARE GOD. Jesus expressed this view rather eloquently (see the Gnostic Gospels, most notably the Cathar Gnostics), but his teachings were distorted by those who sought power or simply did not understand...

This teaching is as close to Universal as I have encountered. The Hindu's call it "Purusha" instead of "Adam Kadmon," Purusha's "death" forming the world. Indigenous Peruvian shamans, as well as the Aztecs... they have similar concepts. The universe, or parts of the earth, to them, being formed out of the carcass of a divine being. Even the f***ing NORSE (and ancient Greeks - Gaia) have a similar concept. In Norse Mythology, the Frost Giant, Ymir, was killed, and out of his body the universe is formed. In fact, followers of Odin (Odin is an ancient god who predated the rest of the Norse pantheon) even had their own version of the "World Tree" that is analogous to the Kabbalah. It's f***ing crazy how universal this myth is...

There are too many similarities... separated by continents and millennia for this to be explained as "cultural diffusion"... something greater (I believe) is going on...

So James, if you could tell me where you got this idea, I would sincerely appreciate it. I am currently in the process of compiling a list of all the cultures that believed the universe is literally composed out of the body, soul, or substance of the divine. I personally came to believe this after a very intense spiritual experience, in which I saw the fragmentation and reunification of God... I described it to an acquaintance, and he said, "dude, you just described what the Kabbalists have believed millennia." I was blown away, having never read anything about the Kabbalah...

Finkster... OK, one more absurd spiritual digression, and then I'll hold the rest of my comments for later. When you say:

"It makes me wonder if we will find ourselves taking different paths to an outcome that is, for practical purposes, the same (per James's point)."

YES!!! Unequivocally YES!!! That's the final aspect of what I just described above. Picture Non-Euclidean Geometry... are you familiar with "one-point perspective?" Imagine parallel lines curved through space-time. They seem to be separate, but on the horizon they bend and reunite with one another. We all reach the same "outcome" or endpoint. We take different paths to the endpoint, but we ALL arrive there sooner or later.

Again, there's more I'd like to comment on, but those two comments struck a (pleasant) chord with me. Sorry if the digression is unwarranted or kind of "out there" or sounds like proselytizing...

[Finkster]

I don't think you're proselytizing :). To have this kind of conversation, you have to draw a line in the sand and say "this is what I believe." So you have as much right as I or anyone to do that.

I've always shied away from mythological explanations of things. My approach is more scientific in nature, although I am not suggesting my ideas are scientific, just the language. I am intrigued by the idea of an initial oneness that explodes into a million pieces. Resonates in a way with the big bang theory. There's a pattern there, and God knows, I like patterns. :)

I have been intrigued lately by the discovery of certain themes that seem to transcend myths across cultures and historical periods. While I've been vaguely aware of it for a long time, I've never really thought much about it or taken it seriously. But there may be something to gain from it.

The situation is further complicated by the use of terms like "God" and "energy". I'm never sure I know what others mean by those terms, and I therefore have to suppose they probably don't know precisely what I mean by them either. We have a vague conception anyhow, I guess. But we might all we talking about the same thing or something completely different and never know better. For this reason, I am slow to judge anyone in a philosophical conversation. I judge more by outcomes and the sort of morality and behavior to which a set of ideas lead.

I have always been struck by the Christian idea that we are made in the image of God. This is not the same as saying we are God. To me, God is omnipotent and I know I am not omnipotent. But I believe we have free agency within the infrastructure of Reality that God has established. In my writing, I eventually describe how we are "primary causes" or "autonomous beings". It is in this sense that we are made in the image of God, but this does not say we are God or have anything like the creative power of God. We are very much God's subjects. I also believe that the "autonomous being" concept implies immortality, which implies that death is a transition not an end (although I can't say I believe in reincarnation). This also carries the tremendous moral implication that the quality of our existence "into eternity," if you will, is affected by how we live now. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

For now, I stand by my belief that injecting God into the human composition only further muddles the huge epistemological problem we already face in interpreting our experience. Not only do we have to attempt to deconstruct experience into the components of subject, conveyance, and object, but we must now also deconstruct whatever role the "God element" is playing in all this. And for every choice and action, I have to question how much of it is me choosing of my own free will and how much of it is the "God element" directing my choice. That's tough for me to accept. I'm a big free will guy :).

Shaman, your comment about us all arriving at the same place sooner or later is uncharacteristically optimistic of you. That's awesome!

[Patrick Edmonds]

It's been a very long time since I've contemplated scientific philosophical concepts, but much the original post and subsequent comments keep returning me to my favorite philosopher, David Hume. Known primarily for his foundations in empiricism and skepticism, Hume expounded on many of the ideas above and ones from your earlier posts, especially on the nature of reason, which he saw as a form of bondage for the human mind.

However, the discussion of dualism more specifically falls into the philosophical parameters of compatibilism, which espouses the notion of free will and determinism being compatible ideas. A question at the heart of the debate that I don't see being answered above, or maybe I missed it, is the definition of free will, which is where incompatibilist come in, often defining it in metaphysical terms.

Refreshing my memory of these terms, and their perceived definition and application, compatibilists such as Hume argued free will is the ability to act according to some motive, but the nature of that motive is determined. If we are to accept this definition of free will, then # 2 still permits free will even with predetermined motives, but there are simply restrictions within that reality, which is essentially what Shaman noted earlier.

I too abide by this concept because I believe that larger connectivity that binds us all together is the basis for most of our moral laws, in both Western and Eastern cultures and religions, often rooted in empathy, as cliche as that may seem. The burden for us is to weed through the layers the years of discourse and debate and institutions have created by going backwards to find that common strand and expose people to it, while at the same time moving forward in an open-minded manner to accept that while we may change, certain principles will not.

[Finkster]

Patrick, thanks for that, you hit on some good points.

To minimize words, I've been removing references to other writers, but in my first writing, I reference Hume a great deal through this section. And I notice that we are all pointing to the same general idea of being free within the restrictions of reality, although we may differ in the technicalities of that. I don't see how that works with #2, but if everyone else does, ok then. I won't fuss too much over it. To me, there's a fine line between determining my motives and determining my choice. And I think I have a way of avoiding that line.

We do need to speak more about the limits of reason, but that deserves an essay and a little more development of ideas.

There has been no definition of free will yet. It just sort of came up in the comments. So we'll dig into that more also.

I believe I cover the connectedness of humanity that leads to morality in my ideas on emotional experience. But I don't think of it as a literal sort of connectedness where we share some sort of common God element or force. I still think of individuals as individuals, literally. But we still share indisputably common characteristics so we have something in common. It just gets murky figuring out what that is. So I explain it away as the vague "non-spatial energies" and move on. That may be too dismissive though.

And I love your closing line, "...while we may change, certain principles will not." That's exactly what I'm going for.

At the risk of passing over ideas that some may think important, I'm revising my approach with the essays to move things forward more quickly than I had planned. It is clear from the comments that folks are familiar with philosophy and I don't need to waddle as much in the technicalities as I did in my first writing. I figure we can discuss the technicalities, if we need to, in the comments.

So if I seem to miss something in an essay, 1 - understand that I'm keeping it to 1000 words or so and 2 - bring it up in the comments and we'll deal with it there.

To avoid wasting an essay on it and so we can progress more quickly, I'll establish some terminology here briefly:

- I follow Kant in distinguishing between our idea of the object and the object itself. Our idea of the object is called the "phenomenon" and for me, this term describes any idea that arises specifically from sense experience. In my writing, it always refers to the result of sense experience.
- Next, I abstract on subjects/objects/conveyances and refer to all three as "primary causes." This is analogous to Kant's "thing-in-itself." This is the object as opposed to our idea of it (which is the phenomenon). And abstractly, it also refers to the subject and conveyance (yes, even the conveyance - I consider the moral implications of this later).

Which leads me to describe experience, any form of experience, as an interaction between primary causes. And relative to sense experience, we understand phenomena only. We infer the existence of primary causes by reason, but we don't know much about them.

I also consider Hume's point that the consistency of experience is not logically necessary or certain; that is, we merely accept the consistency of experience because it has always been consistent. I agree with him on that. But as I've already described, the success of science and technology reflect the consistency of experience even if we view it as only highly probable rather than certain. I am willing to take this step of faith that experience really is consistent and that there is a reason for it, which I of course speculate about later :). In other words, I accept experience for what it is. To question the consistency of experience is to question the reliability of experience itself which hails back to fundamental assumption #2 in my first essay ("experience is reliable"). If we reject this, then nihilism follows (or so it seems to me).