I think Sartre was wrong in considering something as absolute just because it is at a stage that precedes thinking. Before thinking there are structures and structures make us non absolute, because they condition us all the same.

A lot of people in the world, we can even say everybody in the world, continuously, all the time, is in such situations of difficult choices. I think the final point that is worth to consider is not any particular aspect of particular situations, but what you are sensitive to, which depends on your culture, your personal history, your situation. So, at the end, what is most important is not what you will choose to do, but what you will cultivate in the future, which sensitivity, to make better and better choices in the future, as much as possible.

It seems to me that all these positions have a mistake in common: they assume as a starting point, even if just hypothetical, some metaphisical views. Even when you say that reality is mental, you are still trying to orient yourself in a context of understanding how reality is. This is closely conneccted with our use of the verb "to be": whenever we use this verb, our language is implicitly conditioning our thoughts in a metaphysical way. If we analyze critically this phenomenon, we can notice that it is impossible to have any understanding about how things "are", because, when we try to do this we are trying to mirror, in our mind or in our thoughts, what and how reality is. But a mirror, just because it is a mirror, is never a faithful image of what we think is "reality". A mirror cannot even assume that reality exist, because this assumption implies a degree of correct understanding of reality, that actually is what it should give evidence of. Moreover, about all these things, we make use of logic, but logic is unable to found itself.
In this context of failure of metaphysics, mirrors and logic, I think a better context is renouncing to proceed with metaphysics and using instead just humble attempts of interpretations. Interpretation is very similar to metaphysics, but it contains a better ability to remind us the subjectivity of what we think.
Thinking about supernatural things, however we conceive them, contains a metaphisical mentality, that has not the humbleness of interpretation.

Obviously there are impaired people, medical cases, about whom we can even have scientific evidence that they are unable to reach certain kinds and levels of brain activity. Other than that, I cannot imagine other cases where we have evidence of a predetermined limitation. Can you?

When every human is capable of receiving and digesting "major wisdoms", from the moment they choose to do so. — Bret Bernhoft

I was going to give my answer, but actually you did it:

there are prisons and firewalls constructed by man to prevent this artificially scarce resource (true wisdom) from being shared — Bret Bernhoft

Physically we are all able to get access to any degree of wisdom, we are all humans. The problem is that we humans are also able to discourage and destroy this potential. When a child is sorrounded by parents, relatives, companions, who don’t encourage any interest for wisdom, they are automatically destroying the potential of that child, they might even prepare that child to despise wisdom.

We know from history that, unfortunately, people who were not so good at wisdom, but very good at fighting, were able to prevail over other people who were the opposite. Unfortunately we humans are able to destroy wisdom and love for wisdom.

I think that bumper stickers can hardly hold wisdom, simply because they don’t have a context. We know that any word, outside any context, means almost nothing. That’s why I think that practically all proverbs, commonly considered important sources of wisdom, are all stupid. For all proverbs it is possible to find another proverb, or at least another way of thinking, that claims exactly the opposite and is able to support it with experiences and evidence.

About protecting something, you made me remember that both in religions and in ancient philosophy we find an interest to keep certain knowledge secret. You can have a look at esotericism in Google. The following webpages can be some examples:
Wikipedia: Western esotericism
Deciphering the Esoteric Meaning: A Conceptual Analysis
Plato’s Esoteric Teachings
In Jesus as well we find some requests to keep certain things secret.

One essential and ancient reason for this secrecy was to protect certain doctrines and knowledge from trivialization and contempt. In this context of thought, popularizing knowledge would have as a result people who think that they know, they have understood, they don’t need to go deeper, which is what Jesus called pearls given to pigs.

This is actually what has happened in the history of philosophy: philosophy was born as a spiritual activity, with spiritual exercises, as Pierre Hadot has shown, but over time it has become an activity of detached and indifferent rational, logical reasoning. We can think that even more now, with AI and GPT, people of any cultural level are strongly pushed towards thinking that they have at their disposal an immense power on knowledge, reasoning, understanding, while they are missing the essential aspect of knowledge as a deep, subjective, spiritual, intimate experience .

I agree with you, but I think there is a degree of truth in what you quoted, although it is not the truth that is commonly considered. The idea you quoted is very similar to a kind of criticism that sometimes is made to young people, who have no idea of a life with difficulties and sacrifices. I think the question is essentially the same. The problem, in my opinion, is not how easy you get information or welfare. The problem is that, when something is got very easily and quickly, our mind is not encouraged to explore the value, that is, the deep connections that that thing has with other things or ideas. This is essentially the problem of encyclopedias: they give you quick access to a lot of information, but they don't let you experience a really specific style, an individual hermeneutic, a single way of living. Encyclopedias cannot do this because they are supposed to be objective, while what I'm talking about is rather subjectivity, that thing that you experience when you follow a single teacher for a long time. Of course, we know, the experience with a single teacher has its own drawbacks.
So, I would say that the real problem of easy things is that they don't guide you to see deep connections, those connections that you get with slowness, meditation, long paths.

We can consider that even psychologists need to make use of the word “selfishness” because, as you said, there is no better word. But their context makes clear that they do not judge anybody, they just describe mechanisms.
Philosophy today is in this situation: it is some sort of mixing and ambiguity between scientific and literary/emotional language. If we try to clarify what field we want to use, then things become very simple and clear, because, at the end, we are just doing either science or literature.
So, in speaking about selfishness and compassion, what do we want to do? Do we want to make a scientific exploration? Or, rather, a free literary expression of our feelings, emotions, experiences, ideas? If not any of these two fields, what else?
I think there are ways of connecting both, but we need to clarify what criterions we want to use to make this connection.

I think the concept of compassion only apparently makes things clear about selfishness.

Apparently, it makes things clear because we can describe it as a simple mechanism: for example, I see an animal suffering; I reproduce inside myself somewhat similar that makes me work out the suffering that that animal is feeling; once I have, somehow, “felt”, inside me, the suffering of the animal, it is easy to understand that this feeling will push me to give help to that animal. This mechanism seems even more convincing because we can refer it even to animals, in the sense that this way we can understand why an animal is able to help another animal.

I said “apparently”.

What about thinking, reasoning, meditating? These activities are, of course, connected with emotions. Can we make any definitive separation between emotions and reasoning? We can’t. We know that even saying 2+2=4 doesn’t happen in a human brain without absolutely any connection with emotions, unconscious and all other things that we have. Apparently, a computer is able to make calculations without emotions, but this is true only in so far we don’t realize that even emotions are just mechanisms that happen in our neurons, so that, at the end, there is no difference between a maths calculation and an emotion: they are both neurons activities.

If we conclude that compassion is just a mechanism of our brain, we must also conclude that selfishness does not exist, otherwise we should say that even a computer is able to be selfish or generous, because a computer is made of mechanisms as well.

This way we can realize that the concept of compassion is of no help to work out what selfishness is.

I think that all of this happens because, when we try to understand selfishness, this means wanting to understand in some mechanical way something that actually is a product of our emotional creativity. In other words, it is like wanting to scientifically understand how a flying horse works.

If selfishness isn't the disregard of other people's feelings, then what is it?
You say selfishness is related to intentions, but what should they be in order to be considered "selfish"? — Skalidris

I think that selfishness shows just a need that some people have to judge other people, or even themselves, as selfish. “Selfish” does never say anything about the person it is referred to; all that it says is about the person who says it. If I say that somebody is selfish, I am saying absolutely nothing about that person; what I am saying is just who I am, my psychological need to define somebody as “selfish”.

I think that your questions show a similar need when you ask:

Why did you help them? You didn't feel bad for them at all in the beginning? — Skalidris

I mean, there is in each of us an instinctive need to make a distinction between good and evil, good people and bad people. It is the need to judge, because without judging we feel displaced, confused, disoriented.

according to Schop, there are only a few people with the saintly character to truly act compassionately — schopenhauer1

I think this is just a concept trick that Schopenhauer used to avoid to admit with himself that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Who are these few people, do you think that Schopenhauer would have been able to list them? Even if the answer is “yes”, on what basis did Schopenhauer feel able to judge the heart of those people?

What is the problem with admitting that we are unable to judge, unable to judge the heart of people, unable to define "good” and “evil”, unable to talk at all about selfishness?

I am not saying, like Wittgenstein, that, since these things cannot be properly defined, we should just never use them. Let’s talk about them, but in a context where we make clear that we are talking not about how things are or might be, how things work or might work, but about our free creative subjectivity, our desire to play with emotional words, like people do in art, in literature, in poetry.

One reason why you can’t make sense might be your definition of selfishness:

the behavior of an individual who takes actions affecting people with whom they have limited or inconsistent emotional resonance, or intentionally choose to ignore it — Skalidris

Not having emotional resonance, or even intentionally ignoring it, does not imply being selfish. I can tell you that in the past I helped a person who was in a very bad situation, and I spent a lot of energy and time. After that, a friend of mine asked me what I felt after this action. I felt embarassed, because I didn’t feel anything special, not any particular emotion, nothing, no emotional resonance. Nonetheless, I am 100% aware that I did something good.

I don’t think that emotional resonance has any important role in helping us to establish if somebody, even ourselves, is selfish or not.

Even the opposite can happen: people who are sincerely emotionally connected to other people, but at the end they don’t do anything, they just forget, they are distracted. Isn’t this a kind of practical selfishness, even if it is unintentional?

I think that, at the end, the most important thing is to consider that the concept of selfishness is a very shallow one: you can never tell if somebody, even you, is selfish, because nobody can judge the depth of our heart, our soul, our intentions, our unconscious. The concept of selfishness implies a judgement of the heart of the person, while actually nobody in this world is able to look deeply enough into any heart, even your own one.

If a person is happy who needs it ? — simplyG

I think the idea of happiness is not useful to address problems, because you can never tell if you are really happy: somebody under the effects of alcohol, or drugs, or just specific situations, might think they are happy and then, later, realize how fake that happiness was. In this sense philosophy is very useful exactly to those who think they are happy. I think an essential power of philosophy is its ability to criticize, criticize deeply. It can criticize happiness and unhappines. In this sense I think that what you wrote:

the philosophers aims should be to maximise human happiness and reduce suffering — simplyG

is not really the noblest, the highest task of philosophy.

It’s often recognised that life is suffering and ignorance is bliss — simplyG

In the context of what I said, considering that ignorance is able to make people feel happy, we might consider that, whenever you are happy, most probably you are so because you are in a degree of ignorance. But the same can be said about unhappiness, especially when it becomes a metaphysics of existence: if you decide that life is unhappiness, very likely you are ignoring something.

As a consequence, if we don’t want be ignorant, we are prevented from being both happy or unhappy. We are forced to experience both things and see our soul torn by these strong emotions: unfortunately life is able to destroy our happiness by suddenly introducing the worst things, but also viceversa, life is able to force us to forget unhappiness by introducing experiences that seduce, attract, possess you with extreme feelings of bliss and happiness. In this sense I would say that life is violence, not only that violence that makes you suffer, but also the violence of good experiences that irresistibly force you, at least to a high degree, to forget your suffering.
I think that, in the middle of this condition, we can only try to find the best ways not to solve it, but to cross it, to go through it.

Why should you believe? You try to protect yourself from beliefs induced by society and governments, by trying to critically define what you should believe in. But you should consider if this way you are just obeying again to society and governments, because you are keeping yourself into the choice about what to believe. Why not to try to exit this cage, the mental cage of having to believe in something? So, this is my initial question: why should you believe in something? Shall we assume that believing in something is necessary, that this cage is necessary? Why?

Yes, of course we cannot speak without using the verb to be. But this does not imply that we must have a strongly clear idea about its meaning.

This is too easy a way to defend any argumentation. Normally philosophers do the opposite: instead of trying to support their arguments with others’ ignorance (which would be actually bizarre: how can ignorance support an argument, even if it’s the ignorance of the other person?), they embrace the challenge of showing that they have understood their own arguments.

I don’t think that questioning our understanding of “to be” is equivalent to say that communication is impossible. We don’t need to assume that we have a clear idea about the meaning of “to be” to be able to communicate.

If philosophy is unable to mention one single thing that it has been able to understand about the world, I don’t think that assessing my competence will be a help to fill this gap.

I think there's more value in actually expressing that criticism than just making references to it. — vanzhandz

Angelo but isn't our conversation right now proof that the world exists? — chiknsld

One essential criticism about Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is that we have no idea about what “to be” or “to exist” means. The same applies to our conversation as a proof that the world exists, which is almost the same argumentation adopted by Descartes: it cannot be a proof of the existence on the world, because we have no idea of what “existence” means.

Philosophy at its best is absolutely about directly furthering an understanding of the world — Joshs

Is there at least one single thing that philosophy has been able to understand of the world, able to withstand criticism?

What do you mean by ‘strong things’? — Joshs

Ideas that pretend to be able to withstand any criticism.

What I said is not about any problem because of repeating Descartes. The problem is in being exposed to the same criticism which Descartes was exposed to.

We can't assume that the world exists, because we have no idea of what "exist" means.

:smile: I think the point is not about liking Descartes or not. The point is that Descartes carried on in this human desire of finding something strong, definitive, finding power. We know that this point of Descartes, like any philosophical point aimed at gaining power, grasping existence, is exposed to criticism. Still, it seems that after centuries this human desire is irresistible to our psichology and our mind carries on devising stratagems to comfort ourselves and think that there is still hope to get some kind of ultimate power, ultimate control, able to finally withstand every possible present and future criticism.

I think you are right and you have touched a very important point in philosophy.
This is my intepretation of what happened:

- phylosophical systems of ideas were perceived as lacking a strong basis;

- analytical philosophy thought it found a strong basis in the critical analysis of language and our involvement in it;

- analytical philosophy has actually several issues:

• it is not clear what the difference is between it and science of language;
• there is no strong evidence that language is the best field to get the best understanding of our human condition;
• critical analysis of language is at risk of becoming just a new hidden metaphysics, as to say: we found reality, objectivity: it is language!
• analytical philosophy can’t avoid the human sensation that it is very disconnected from humanity, from real everyday life and feelings, human interest in existential meanings, human emotions, human psichology and relationships.

In this sense I agree with your question: if philosophy carries on going through this way of looking for strong things, then it is dead, it has no reason to exist; science is much better at doing this job.

Philosophy, in my opinion, should instead recover its ancient roots of being a human experience, a spiritual activity, as Pierre Hadot has shown us. It is true that this way philosophy lacks the strength of science, but why should philosophy envy science? Rather, at this point, the problem is how philosophy differs from literature, poetry, art. I think philosophy can be different by taking on the task that traditionally was held by religion. Religion is revealing less and less able to face the criticism coming from people who want to give importance to critical thinking. A lot of people abandon religion, but they don’t want to abandon their sensitivity and interest in intuition, dreaming, transcendence, art. Many of them define themselves “spiritual, but not religious”. Unfortunately, the word “spiritual” is very vulnerable, fragile, because traditionally it is understood as “believing in the objective existence of supernatural, non material things”. But some philosophers are making efforts to recover the word “spiritual” to a secular, or atheist or materialist context.
This way philosophy would differ from literature and art in that it can build on its immense heritage and experience about critical thinking, especially in connecting things to the most general perspectives on human existence.
We could say that philosophy worked so much on “how to understand things” and this made it forget its being an experience more than a science. Let’s leave to science the task of understanding things and let’s restore to philosophy the task of exploring understanding as an existential human experience.
So, let’s discuss philosophically about metaphysics, language, morality, criticism, any philosophical topic, but not with the purpose of understanding it; rather, with the purpose of experimenting the pleasure, the depth, the seductive attraction of exploring connections between ways of understanding and human existence.

What you said looks like a complex, hidden, tricky way, of just reviving Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. If not, what is the difference between what you said and Descartes?

"... a list of key ideas from various philosophies that promote a real eudaimonic way of living".

I have been thinking about something similar in last weeks. You specified your idea with the adjective "real". That's the problem. As Quixodian wrote, "the judgement of what 'living well' comprises might be subject to divergent criteria". In different philosophies there are different and even conflicting ideas about what "real" eudaimonia should be. But we can turn this problem into a resource: we can suppose that, as a consequence, a good eudaimonia should start by examining which criterions we should use to define it correctly. I think that, in this work, we will realize that it is essentially a problem of subjectivity, relativism: the concept of "real" eudaimonia is relative to different perspectives, different philosophies. Again, we can try to turn this into a resource: let's state that a "good" (which is less strong than "real") eudaimonia should be based on an endless dialogue between what is commonly perceived as subjectivity and what is commonly perceived as objectivity. In this context, we can look for the key words and concepts that have been used in philosophies and, particularly, we want to understand why they are "key" concepts, "key" ideas: what makes them "key", that is, central, sensible, crucial. I think that a good criterion is the criterion of connections: a point is a "key" point if it is rich in connections with other points. This is, again, quite subjective: objectively, every point is able to have infinite connections; but, subjectively, we as humans may be interested in certain specific kinds of connections. For example, a word that we perceive quite rich in connections, and, as such, is a "key" word, is, for sure, "being". Heidegger made its meaning much less theoretical and abstract by putting it in the context of human existence, time, death. Another key word is, for sure, life.

At this point we can realize that we are at risk of getting lost in the web of key words and connections. To avoid this, we need some subjective choice, to take specific stands, to privilege certain perspectives, while keeping a continuative dialogue with perspectives that are different from our ones.

I think that this work is worth it. In a sense I can say that I have already been working for many years on it, under the umbrella term of "spirituality".

↪Angelo Cannata You're missing the forest for the trees (thus "pedantic"). — 180 Proof

I could say exactly the same, but I don't, because it looks like a way to avoid the responsibility of giving explanation.

It is easy to say "you don't understand". It reminds me the story of the emperor's new clothes.

The word absolute was combined with the word "Your" BEFORE it — dimosthenis9

Whats pedantic is focusing on the word “absolute” — DingoJones

So, you are both admitting that you are not giving the word “absolute” the meaning given in philosophy. This means that this discussion is not meant to be a philosophical discussion. If this is not a philosophical discussion, what kind of discussion is it? In other words: what are you talking about?

It’s not pedantry, it is just philosophy. In philosophy the word “absolute” means really “absolute”, does not mean “approximately absolute”.

In short, it seems that, when you say “absolute”, you actually mean something like “absolute, but not too much”, “absolute, but not too absolute, not absolutely absolute” :smile: . That’s fine, it just needed to be clarified.

I think they actually have not been able to answer the question: all things mentioned in the answers as absolute things aren’t absolute at all.

Your question is a mixture of contradictions that make impossible any answer. They are all contradictions between the concept of “absolute” and the dependence from us.
Let’s point out them:
you wrote in the title “absolute”, but then you wrote “that you think”: if they are things that we think, then they depend on our thinking, so they are not absolute. Absolute means not depending on anything or anybody.
All the same, you wrote “mine are”: if they are yours, they are depending on you, so they are not absolute.
“their universal truths” is like an oxymoron: “their” means depending on them, “universal truths” means not depending on them.
“What you think as indisputable fact” contains the same contradiction: if anybody thinks of anything, that thing is automatically disputable, because it depends on the person who thought of it. Anything depending on somebody is disputable, because it is automatically biased by their perspective.

The question you put is just an impossible question, like asking us to give you an example of frozen fire or of something eternal that doesn’t exist anymore.

Hello, rossii, a "compelling" reason/argument to live and how to live does not exist: every reason/argument is relative. This means that being pessimist/antinatalist is relative as well: there are not compelling reasons/arguments to be be pessimist. While being in this human situation, we can try to find what seems the best to every one of us. What works for me is spirituality, which does not mean automatically belief in anything: I don't believe in anything, I cultivate spirituality as inner life, that is, the best inner experiences that you are able to cultivate inside yourself. It is not a recipe, it is a work of research in life. It is not something that works; it is something that helps.

I am happy to see that your framework has a lot of similarities with my idea of a spiritual path, that I described in detail in my book Walking, freely available on the internet. I considered in it what @Isaac said: self-criticism, criticism of your own path, should be an important part of a spiritual path. Without self-criticism there is no growth, no opening to different horizons and perspectives.

Given that, as you said, it is unexplainable,

1) how do you know that what you called “Everything” is really “Everything”,

2) how do you know that it exists,

3) how do you know that it is unexplainable,

4) and how do you know what you are talking about when you say “Everything”?

Aristotle was undeniably a very intelligent person. How didn't he realize that his argument can be turned against him, mentally closed to question things that are obvious to him?

This doesn't remove the problem I showed in the paradox.

You cannot find an answer because, as you wrote in the title, it is metaphysics and, as such, it contains the same error that is common to all metaphysics: it ignores, or forgets, the involvement of the subject in the question. In other words, you introduced the question as it was something about objective things, ignoring that you are part of the question, you are inside the question that you wrote.

On the contrary, this is exactly what science is and what makes it different from philosophy.
When, for example, science says that the earth is a planet turning around the sun, this means that a lot of experiments and evidence make us possible to synthesize their result with these words. But nothing in science prevents that tomorrow something different may be discovered. Science doesn’t establish any limit to what future discoveries might reveal, even about things that today seem 100% sure and certain.

Philosophy, instead, or, at least, a certain kind of philosophy, looks for things that should be guaranteed for ever, indipendently from new discoveries. I disagree with this kind of philosophy, but this is what some philosopher have been looking for.

hey start with the basic point that God already exists. — javi2541997

The dynamics of faith is supposed to be slightly different: in Christian theology the decision to believe is never the first step. The first step is always attributed to God, who makes the initiative of giving an experience. Then the believer decides that that experience is enough to decide to believe in God. Then the believer can decide to be a witness to other people.