I’ve always been particularly frustrated with the dismissal of materialism as nihilism in the sense of ‘the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.’
What it really means is that life has no extrinsic value; we designate no supranatural agent to grant meaning to life or the universe. Instead, we rely on agents within the universe to assign meaning to it according to their own state; a state that is, in turn, a natural phenomenon. If anything, we’re operating under the assumption that meaning in the universe is inherently intrinsic.
I’ve always been particularly frustrated with the dismissal of materialism as nihilism in the sense of ‘the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.’
What it really means is that life has no extrinsic value; we designate no supranatural agent to grant meaning to life or the universe. Instead, we rely on agents within the universe to assign meaning to it according to their own state; a state that is, in turn, a natural phenomenon. If anything, we’re operating under the assumption that meaning in the universe is inherently intrinsic.