I think I can see why anti-realism is not an “anything goes” approach, but I still can’t see why “subjective” values (or meaning) should matter. Of course, I also used to look at value in terms of what I cared about, or what motivated me. But at some point I realized that what holding a belief about the importance of something boils down to is that I will feel various emotions and do various actions in response to situations that are related to the belief. There is no intrinsic (dis)value in me (dis)valuing something, I concluded, and this drove me to full-blown nihilism.
But then I realized that (dis)value is something that is, not something that I can choose for myself based on some criteria. Suffering is what gives meaning to the word “bad”. No possible belief about the experience of suffering could change its badness. Even when I was convinced that nothing mattered, my despair was producing genuine disvalue.
So now I care about reducing suffering, but if I thought I was failing in achieving the goal of reducing suffering, this wouldn’t by itself be bad. The world contains some amount of disvalue. My belief in the disvalue of suffering is an empirical claim about a feature of the world, and it motivates my actions and evokes emotions in me.
(I haven’t finished reading all the relevant texts you linked, but I am posting this comment for today.)
I think I can see why anti-realism is not an “anything goes” approach, but I still can’t see why “subjective” values (or meaning) should matter. Of course, I also used to look at value in terms of what I cared about, or what motivated me. But at some point I realized that what holding a belief about the importance of something boils down to is that I will feel various emotions and do various actions in response to situations that are related to the belief. There is no intrinsic (dis)value in me (dis)valuing something, I concluded, and this drove me to full-blown nihilism.
But then I realized that (dis)value is something that is, not something that I can choose for myself based on some criteria. Suffering is what gives meaning to the word “bad”. No possible belief about the experience of suffering could change its badness. Even when I was convinced that nothing mattered, my despair was producing genuine disvalue.
So now I care about reducing suffering, but if I thought I was failing in achieving the goal of reducing suffering, this wouldn’t by itself be bad. The world contains some amount of disvalue. My belief in the disvalue of suffering is an empirical claim about a feature of the world, and it motivates my actions and evokes emotions in me.
(I haven’t finished reading all the relevant texts you linked, but I am posting this comment for today.)