Talk:Paradox of nihilism

This article was nominated for deletion on 18 March 2010 (UTC). The result of the discussion was Is now moot.

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source what to do

Abel, Marco (1995). "One Goal Is Still Lacking: The Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's Philosophy on William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury"". South Atlantic Review. 60 (4). South Atlantic Modern Language Association, USA: 35–51. ISSN 0277-335X. Retrieved 5 April 2010. Thus, trying to escape the paradox of nihilism, as one of Nietzsche's major interpreters has argued, "is Nietzsche's greatest and most persistent problem. It is also the greatest and most persistent problem of our age" (Kaufman 86) {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
This is probably Walter Kaufmann (philosopher) process Kaufman source

Redirect to liar paradox?[edit]

Isn't this just the liar paradox? Can we refer nihilism to that page and remove this one? Ornette 16:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we can't redirect nihilism to liar paradox, but I went ahead and redirected nihilist paradox to nihilism. Its not so much a version of the liar paradox (although in the case of nihilism, it turns into a version of the liar paradox), as it is the same test of self-consistency leveled against logical positivism and relativism. Rather than elaborate here, I made it a redirect to nihilism, since most of the info on this page was (largely incorrect) paraphrasing of that page, and there wasn't really any new material here. -Seth Mahoney 22:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not all of it would fit there. Take, for example, the part "the absence of meaning seems to be some sort of meaning" - that's clearly a different issue. (It's resolved by thinking about what "meaning" actually means, and the answer is that it's representation. If something means something, it represents that thing. If there is a total lack of representation somewhere, there is no meaning there. An absence of representation is not some sort of representation.) Djvyd (talk) 20:24, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Known self-references[edit]

Nihilism: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases. ICON Group International, Inc. 26 November 2008. p. 26. ISBN 9780546654776. Retrieved 4 April 2010. Nihilist paradox. The philosophy is presented with a paradoxical statement: "There is no truth". This statement at the very first glance is self-contradictory. It propounds that there is no truth. But for this to be true, the doctrine itself would have to be false. Therefore the doctrine is claiming simultaneously that there is no truth, while at the same time that it, itself, is true. Hence the nihilist paradox.[wp]
Per the statement on page ii, this definition was taken from Wikipedia, and should not be used as source here. The quoted phrase seems to have been taken from nihilist paradox somewhere between 1 November 2004 and 6 November 2005

Oh, the humanity.[edit]

Most of this article had nothing to do with the paradox itself, and was a stylistically poor explanation of nihilism. Therefore, I replaced it with a very brief summary.

I see that this page has previously been turned into a redirect to nihilism because of the apparent paucity of available material. Arguably, this paradox is logically equivalent to many other paradoxes of self-reference, but I think because it has a concrete iteration in extant philosophies, it deserves to be discussed. I believe this is actually something of an important topic, at least to discuss the opinions of philosophers and various schools of thought, especially those that do hold that there is no knowable truth. However, I think "nihilist paradox" is a poor name choice, since the word "nihilism" is ambiguous, and far more commonly refers to moral nihilism than epistemological nihilism. I personally have no suggestions as to a new title.

--✶♏✶ 13:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, I think "skeptic paradox" or some variation might do nicely.

--✶♏✶ 13:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Significance?[edit]

Can someone add why anyone cares about the paradox? There are a couple references to authors stating what they call the "paradox of nihilism" but no conclusions about what this means for nihilists, etc.

138.210.10.37 (talk) 16:15, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a WP:STUB, hence incomplete. Feel free to WP:FIXIT.

Paradoctor (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The content of the article is relevant to the topic yet not up-to-date. I think the content of the article does belong for the most part. The small amount of information under the "religion" and the "critical theory" headings does seem a bit out of place, this might change if these sections were to be expanded. I think that it would better fit in the article if it had more information to connect it to the main paradox that is being focused on. I believe more information overall would help this article because the minimal information presented doesn't explain the topics deep enough.JEby1 (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2020 (UTC)JEby1[reply]