You think I'm joking when I say I'm a nihilist, right? Ah, how witty, you think. Also, she can spell. So I'll follow her on Twitter or read her blog. Supposing anyone reads this and that Blogger isn't actually recording my own page views, even though I asked it not to.
I'm not joking. I don't know that I exist, never mind anything else. (And no, that does not make me a solipsist - I'd have to know I exist to believe that.)
All I know is that I know nothing. I can't prove that a table exists and I certainly can't speculate on the nature of existence or the self. Ah, but you so clearly have a personality and a mind... to lose, you counter. Ah, indeed.
And what is that except a mechanism we have evolved to continue our gene pool in this place that I'm not sure exists. Or something. Preposterous! Preposterous, indeed.
So, please, explain to me the nature of this mechanism: of the self and the purported soul. Counter, with evidence, the thought experiment that we're hooked up to a machine and dreaming this, and if you can't, please tell me what's on the other side of this dream world.
This makes me an epistemological nihilist. I know nothing, therefore I believe nothing. (Notice that I never said I believe in nothing (because not believing in something doesn't cause it to cease to exist, like a game of peek-a-boo or hide the child's nose), or nothing exists.) This seems to me to be the smart move. You probably beg to differ. I'll argue that belief is just a survival mechanism to make sure we don't off ourselves at the futility of it.
The great thing about nihilism is that, philosophically speaking, it's difficult to counter. Every time you say something, we shrug and say 'We don't know.' And you can't say boo. Which is great because I can be competitive. Unless I'm losing. Then I'm bored.
When I sat down to write, I was really thinking about the thought experiment above, the one that sounds remarkably like the Matrix. (Gasp!) I've already said I've lived my life through books. Books make me happy. Does that make my happiness less? Because it's not based on experience? Or does the experience of reading count?
If the part of the brain that is happiness implodes, what then? If you can't experience emotion, can you really be said to exist? Isn't that what personality boils down to? I like this because it makes me happy; I don't like this because it doesn't?
Is happiness dependant on interaction with others? With the external world? Does it have to have an objective basis? Or can it purely be subjective? If so, why shouldn't I be content to be hooked up to machine? Or live in fictional worlds?
And if happiness is a survival mechanism, Darwin's construct, then why would it isolate rather than integrate me? Knowledge is great. It helps us find life on other planets and cure diseases and such. But doubt in one's own existence? Really? A life lived in literature? Really?
Hang on, maybe I'm the weak link, the one being wiped out of existence... (Stop sniggering, you.)
One thing I didn't mention about nihilism: we're not any more satisfied with our answer than you are. It seems wrong that we should doubt ourselves, when we might not exist in the first place. I, for one, am open to counter-examples and evidence. I'm used to being disappointed, though. I bury my disappointment in fiction and words. Other people use drugs, alcohol and sex. I still think I got the better end of the deal.
(But don't even get me started on the reassuring arbitrariness of words or Descartes and the Giant Spaghetti Monster...)
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