Thanks for the link on the “dark night”. This passage seems to be the clearest definition:
While the manifestations of spiritual crisis are highly individual, and no two spiritual crises are exactly the same, there are some common features that appear for most people. These include a loss of sense of identity, radically changing personal values, and the occurrence of mystical and spiritual experiences.
It’s plausible to me that this represents the philosophical/spiritual side of the rationalist uncanny valley for many people but is less related to practical/epistemic issues. This gives me a little hope that the “dark night” aspects can be tackled using established techniques from spiritual traditions (Anna Solomon’s advice is quite different). Though that also seems dangerous, and I wouldn’t want to try it myself unless desperate—I believe in myself enough to try to get out using standard techniques.
At risk of digressing, I think I used the word “nihilism” as combining the flavor of moral anti-realism best explained as option 4-5 of this post with the intuition that any values meaningful enough to optimize towards must be reasonably robust to changes in initial conditions of reflection in an individual, and possibly to different humans and non-humans using the same meta-level reflection process. My conclusion is that I should use my moral intuition, but then dramatically pare down the list of things I think I value for the sake of robustness. Given the counterarguments, it doesn’t get all the weight, though I take it seriously. While Meaningness claims to roundly refute nihlism, it seems to use the word slightly differently and focus on other ways people turn to nihilism.
If I understand you right, you value some things (finding them meaningful) because you robustly value them regardless of circumstances (like I value human life regardless of whether I had coffee this morning). Is this correct?
But you also mentioned that this only accounts for some values, and other things you value and find meaningful aren’t robust?
Thanks for the link on the “dark night”. This passage seems to be the clearest definition:
It’s plausible to me that this represents the philosophical/spiritual side of the rationalist uncanny valley for many people but is less related to practical/epistemic issues. This gives me a little hope that the “dark night” aspects can be tackled using established techniques from spiritual traditions (Anna Solomon’s advice is quite different). Though that also seems dangerous, and I wouldn’t want to try it myself unless desperate—I believe in myself enough to try to get out using standard techniques.
At risk of digressing, I think I used the word “nihilism” as combining the flavor of moral anti-realism best explained as option 4-5 of this post with the intuition that any values meaningful enough to optimize towards must be reasonably robust to changes in initial conditions of reflection in an individual, and possibly to different humans and non-humans using the same meta-level reflection process. My conclusion is that I should use my moral intuition, but then dramatically pare down the list of things I think I value for the sake of robustness. Given the counterarguments, it doesn’t get all the weight, though I take it seriously. While Meaningness claims to roundly refute nihlism, it seems to use the word slightly differently and focus on other ways people turn to nihilism.
If I understand you right, you value some things (finding them meaningful) because you robustly value them regardless of circumstances (like I value human life regardless of whether I had coffee this morning). Is this correct?
But you also mentioned that this only accounts for some values, and other things you value and find meaningful aren’t robust?