The concept of non-existant truth is particularly useful in social sciences. A vast part of things that affect on our lives are created by humans itself and these things do not exist by themselves e.g. responsibility, moral and laws.
It should be clear that denying these things is likely to cause remarkable problems to a coherent nihilist.

From historical point of view nihilism was exercised by some Russian university students late 1800's who were thought to be part of the upper class. They rejected all or the most of the values of present society.
Punk was a very nihilistic movement before it was recuperated. Punk was an absolute denial of music and taste of trends, expressed by shitty outfit. The self-destructive lifestyle of punks can be labelled nihilistic.

Do you exist?

Most people would use a stock argument such as "cogito ergo sum", (stock arguments are convenient and avoid the question). Subjective is anything which must go through the mind in order to be deduced, knowing that the mind could be in error. God is subjective, the world is subjective, a mirage is subjective, everything we sense is subjective.

Contrast this with objective: What really is there, what the universe is really like, without the possible errors of the mind.

Can we know the objective? Objectivists would say 'yes' - that we can learn everything given sufficient time and ingenuity in developing tools. They rely for this on two constructs which it is claimed are objective - math and logic. If you flip a coin 64 times, and each time it comes out heads, could you assume that that coin always came out heads? We might assume not, because we know that the coin has two sides, so in the end it might (though not for certain) come out tails. The same is true with any experiment. If you carry out an experiment with a truck (what I like to call the Ed experiment), and you send out innocent volunteers to stand on the highway - and every time you carry out the experiment they get run over by an 18-wheeler - can you objectively state that every time you carry out this experiment they will get mashed?

No. You don't know how many possible outcomes there are. You have seen only one, but that doesn't mean there aren't others. Indeed, you could have been extremely lucky, and seen a very rare outcome time and time again by sheer chance. You couldn't even say that what you had seen was a possible outcome, since it would be possible you were imagining the whole affair; thereby imagining the impossible coming to pass. So you cannot objectively state that something is always a certain way, only that it is sometimes a certain way (and even this not really), or that in your subjective opinion (faith) it is always like this.

Faith does not equal fact. Faith is subjective - it is a personal decision made with our minds - if our minds are at fault, and hence our evidence, then the statement is not objective. Only if something is objective is it objective.

Since everything must pass through our senses (ultimately our minds) for us to form ideas about them, humans can never know objective fact consciously. That means that I can form a theory that the grenade I hold in my hands is green, my evidence is that the refraction of light off the grenade that comes to my eyes makes the grenade appear green - therefore I give the shade of color I observe the arbitrary name "green" to describe this. Maybe the grenade isn't green. In that case I would be wrong, that is why I don't make an objective statement. Of course, it would be hard to find many people who would go around all the time saying the such-and-such might be so, and never being definite about anything. But - if I'm right, then it makes no difference - because I wouldn't know I was right, and hence wouldn't be able to make statements that claim to be objective. That is the crux of the nihilist argument.

In dealing with math and logic: Logic bases itself on axioms; no axiom = no logic. I challenge anyone to give me some logic that requires no axioms. Since all axioms are faithy guesses (the cat is sitting in front of me, all cats are black therefore the cat is black - cat sitting in front of me=faith, ALL cats are black=faith), and faith is subjective, all logic has the possibility of being flawed right from it's first axiom. Logic is not objective. Logic, as a system, is a tool of the mind; and since objectivity is what is really there - tools of the mind are not of themselves objective. Logic could be a flawed tool - and we would never know it. The wisest thing to do is to assume it, and always leave room for attacking the axioms.

Math relies on logic, also, math does not represent anything specific in the real world. It is abstract. It bases itself on axioms that are subjective - and therefore is subjective.

'I think therefore I am' is useless. First of all you need to define 'am'. Next you would need to understand the concept that you might very well not exist - but that it might be beyond your comprehension how that were possible. You may say that it would be illogical not to exist and yet to still think, but your axioms might be wrong about existing and thinking. You cannot know you exist. You cannot know the person next to you exists, and you can't know the universe exists. In fact, you can't know for sure that anything exists.

Nihilism is the belief that the objective can never be consciously known. Nothing more. Nothing less. In reference to other wu's posted here, nihilism is not connected in any way with morality only with philosophy. Being a nihilist does not make a person violent, destructive or suicidal.

Do you exist? 

Seeing as existing is just another form of the verb "to be" which is reducible to the present tense here, the question becomes: "Are you Are?"

Which ladies and gentlemen, is a tautology. Asking it neither adds or removes anything from the discussion, as it isn't contingent.

The next thing to look at is the assertion that "Subjective is everything that must go through the mind to be observed, knowing that the mind might be in error."

Here is another malformed statement, but this one is more subtle still than the last. If we re-read the statement we see that the first phrase (before the comma) is implying that everything is subjective, for all knowledge of the outside world must pass through the mind to be sensible. This implies that being subjective, it is personal to us, has no objective value, and cannot be held to be in any sense "true", but this also implies that there is no sense of 'false' either, this is the catchall trap of subjectivism, and also relativism. Now if we look at the second phrase (after comma) this implies that there is an objective notion 'error' that can be applied to the previous knowledge. One's mind can only be in error if there is an observable truth it is failing to relate, and this negates the subjective view point earlier. In effect, the mind is an objective tool for observing truths that 'might be in error', a criticism that isn't even certain. The whole argument falls apart at this point.

Now, moving on from semantics, lets look at the coin toss analogy. This is here to demonstrate to us the unknowability of truth in a probabilistic framework. Unfortunately, while the analogical truth that one cannot know what outcome will occur at the toss of a coin is logically true, this also implies that should the coin fall within certain measurable parameters (IE be approximately close to the fair ideal of a coin) then empirical observation has revealed always in the past a converging of the outcomes of heads/tails at half/half. It is reasonable to assume that unless anything else changes, that this will continue. You see, the logic here isn't dealing is specific outcomes, per se, but the whole system, which can be said to follow observable, and reliable behaviour. It can only do this if the smaller component behaviours of it's elements combine to form the regular system we observe. The truth of the maxim isn't lost in the individual coin toss, it emerges over the series of coin tosses, and the larger the series, the more true it will be.

Faith does not equal fact.

 The grenade isn't green.. 

Yes it is, as long as you always see it that colour, and call it the same thing, and it matches what other people call green in life, then you're fine. The 'subjective' reality of the colour as you percieve it makes no difference to it's logical properties, or indeed to logic itself. The neat thing here is the assumption that there *is* a right from which one is falling short. I would argue that the notion of nihilism here is emerging from a confusion between subjective and objective rather than anything substantial.

On logic and axioms...

Cogito Ergo Sum

To finish up, while there seems to be quite a caustic array of arguments in the wu above, the notion of nihilism presented here seems to be run through with flaws. I don't even think that it is a real philosophy per se, but a phenomenon of breaking down and clearing away values, all values indiscriminately by using the tools of reason and culture against themselves. While this may give a certain sense of exultation in the duration, it is however empty and eventually futile. Like fire in the wheat.

Values are the means by which we relate and interact with the world. They are our roads into the wonderful and terrible playground of life, and without them we would just end up living in our own heads. The very tools we use to burn down our old cages must themselves be burnt, but will also take us before they are gone, and leave us as ashes in the bleak and barren landscape of our own destruction.

Ni"hil*ism (?), n. [L. nihil nothing: cf. F. nihilisme. See Annihilate.]

1.

Nothingness; nihility.

2.

The doctrine that nothing can be known; scepticism as to all knowledge and all reality.

3. Politics

The theories and practices of the Nihilists.

© Webster 1913.