...brevity is okay
2007-04-27 06:34:24 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Nihilists often suggest that you can't really know anything, or that there is no universal truth or meaning in life.
That itself is the paradox: if you can't know anything, how do you KNOW you can't know anything? If nothing is always true, then how can the statement that nothing is always true be always true?
2007-04-27 06:50:43 · answer #1 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Nihilistic thought proposes that there is nothing real, nothing true, no certainties, no complete knowledge. Yet how did they decide that without judgment on their own part?
The overwhelming paradox, briefly, is that Nihilists use those parameters to discern their non-existence. @8-)
2007-04-27 07:09:27 · answer #2 · answered by Dovey 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Sorry, I don't know what the "nihilist paradox" is.
It may be referring to the fact that Descartes said "I think, therefore, I am." Ergo, the nihilist, if he believes that the self does not exist, has to contend with the problem of his own metacognition. If he is thinking, he must exist (according to the Cartesian proverb).
2007-04-27 06:46:09 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Truth is a two valued word. There is truth as in a statement and there is TRUTH as in universal.
In nilihist philosophy, TRUTH does not exist and many people critisizing it will equate both truths. Which would make the statement "there is no truth" a paradox.
2007-04-27 06:52:25 · answer #4 · answered by Sophist 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋