You assumed the concept of something, that is free will, for which we have absolutely no evidence, and then you tried to find it in structures and functions of the brain.
This way, if we instruct a computer so that it is able to say “I am a person”, it won’t be difficult to find reasons for the computer being a person in its structures and functions.
It becomes easy even to find the structures and functions that can explain the existence of Santa Claus: quantum physics, with all their magics, have become now the magic hat that makes possible to find the physical reason for the existence of whatever we like to believe or to dream of. It is so sweetly romantic: we exist! Thank you, quantum physics!

I am afraid the topic will become too wide now, but maybe it is worth it. Just some notes.

I have studied the Bible in the past and now I know that not a single word is translated properly in any translation of any language. It is not translators’ fault, of course. So, when I want to read the Bible, if I have patience and time, I go directly to the text in the original language, although I frequently need to check dictionaries. When I am lazy I go to a translation, or I don’t read at all. :grin:

But, at least, this gives me a strong awareness: I can never be sure that I really understood the text. Even scholars struggle frequently in discussing the concept behind a word.

In this context, we can realize that plain translations, although they give an impression of being easy and clear, exactly for this reason they are very dangerous: they can give you the illusion, they can make you persuaded that you understood and that the topic and the discussion is simple and clear. Actually, the humblest people are exactly those who are more competent about that text: because of their competence they are extremely humble and cautious about how to understand a text. So, what happens in practice is something bizarre: normally ignorant, uneducated people are those who think they have clear, simple and strong ideas, while scholars, professionals, researchers, are inifinetely modest, humble, unsure, because they know how many questions and uncertainties are behind each word.

This opens another dramatic problem: are non-professional people condemned to be excluded from understanding anything? I would answer dramatically: “Unfortunately, yes”. This means that if somebody decided to dedicate their entire life to music, for example, they cannot expect to decently understand, for example, Van Gogh, or theology, or philosophy, and viceversa. The only thing we can do in this case is to enjoy the wisdom of being humble.

So, I think that by struggling with the problem you said, you are actually gaining something invaluable: the awareness of how complex the book “Being and Time” is. This is much better than those who have harsh debates in forums simply because each of them thinks they have got the right and correct idea.

We need some compromise, of course, some understanding is possible, we aren’t entirely in the dark, nor we like it, nor it is correct to encourage it. So, I am not saying that you are entirely wrong. I am sure that that translation could be made in a much better way, with better notes, to help readers. So, fundamentally I agree with you, because I have experienced the same frustration. Let’s just take also the positive aspects of it.

It is not bullshit at all; quite the opposite, it is intention to be serious, academic, scientific. If you ever tried to seriously translate something, you’d quickly realize how difficult finding matching words between different languages is. We can even say that the very activity of translating in an illusion, or a rough attempt to say something similar in a different language. Philosophical books are frequently full of words left in their original language and it is rather normal reading them with dictionaries near you. This is because it is extremely easy to misunderstand philosophical concepts, even more if they come from ancient texts. Today this job is made much easier because we have the internet, Wikipedia and a lot of other resources. Think about the old times, when philosophers didn’t have these fast instruments, so that they needed to spend much more time whenever they found an unclear or untranslated word: philosophy itself was forced to be a much slower work, and I think that this was not completely a negative aspect: this way philosophy was forced to be something much closer to what it was in its origins: meditation, contemplation, a spiritual exercise. Today we pretend to make philosophy with the technological mentality of being fast, quick, efficient, productive, clever, all things that make me think of just one thing: America, at least as it was or is traditionally in some clichés. The results are under our nose: today philosophers are very oriented towards science, pretending to quickly grasp, to conquer, to dominate with a scientific mentality the most difficult and deep concepts.
I agree that slowness can be frustrating, but don't forget its importance and necessity to make philosophy possible and authentic.

I think it's the concepts being unclear which makes them more universal than other concepts and as such more useful for understanding the universal, which, at least according to you, is the object of study of philosophy — Hello Human

As I said, philosophy wants to go to the roots, to the universal, but in this research philosophy cannot avoid to see that actually it is limited, because it is made by humans. This means that the very concept of universal is stupid: how can we, little microscopic, biased creatures of this universe pretend to get in our mind such a pretentious concept as “universal”? Whenever we think of the concept of universal, we are conditioned by our DNA, time, body, culture, epoch, geography, so, how can we think that what we are thinking is really universal? We humans are ridiculous in this pretence.

I agree that those concepts are quite unclear, but I do not understand what do you mean by them being rough, local and limited — Hello Human

Consider them as synonyms of unclear.

Your questions and the fact that this a philosophy forum made me think that you were talking about freewill. But now I can't understand what kind of answer you expect: a sociological answer? A historical one? Maybe psychological? I don't think that any of these three disciplines are able to give you an answer. So, what kind of discussion would you like to open?

You seem contradictory: you said that "freedom clearly exists", but you also wrote "Is our liberty the product or effect of causes we don’t control?" and a lot of other questions that essentially ask if freedom exists.

From an objective point of view, freedom is impossible to prove. From a subjective perspective we have, as humans, a perception, a feeling like if we have freedom. Both perspectives are exposed to criticism. So, I think the best question is not asking if we are free, but how deal with this condition of not knowing. I think the best way is to act as if freedom exists. Moreover, you can notice that, even assuming that freedom does not exist, this assumption does not have as a result anarchy or random behaviour: we can say that the mechanisms that manage our behaviour push us, drive us to behave as if we were free even after assuming that we are not.
Think about this: assume that you are just a machine. Assume that, as a consequence, you will decide to behave in a selfish way. This means that deciding to be selfish was not a free choice. If freedom does not exist, even the assumption that it does not exist should be considered a product of our being machines. This means that we have no way to know if freedom exists, because, if it doesn't exist we have no way to be aware of its non existence. Consciousness implies freedom and we don't know if either of the two exists. So, let's behave as if we were free, remembering that it is just an instrumental assumption.

If humans are so bad, why should this post of you be considered different?

All religions have a history, how they were born, what happened in different periods, what is happening to them now. In all periods of all histories of all religions there have always been, and still there are, differentiations between groups, intellectuals, representatives of institutions, high level scholars and mass people. Even already inside the Bible, even in the Old Testament, you can see that there were debates, disagreements and plurality of mentalities and beliefs between different groups of people.

We know that, to a wide extent, the history we know about everything is the history from the point of view of the winners, maybe sometimes the intellectual winners, for a simple reason: because it is much more difficult to find vestiges left by mass people. So, for example, the Bible we have now is the product of those who left something written, which means the intellectuals, or institutional people, or prophets. Even the informations we can get about the other people are given in the Bible from the perspective, from the filter of those who wrote the Bible, that is, not the mass people.

We should also consider that there is some tendency in the mass people to reinterpret the received religion in ways that adapt to their mentality, while instead intellectuals do some effort to reconnect to the most authentic and genuine contents of their religion, although, we know, intellectuals as well are subject to their own distortions, mentalities, perspectives.

So, we should consider that today the religion we can find in theologians has the characteristic of containing an effort to reconnect to the genuine message of the Bible and also to consider what happened along the entire history of their religion. In a synthesis, we can say that theologian’s religion is a kind of religion that contains a strong effort to be connected with its history, although it is anyway an interpreted history.

Since theologians are those who discuss, debate and, especially, write, the kind of religion that is going to be transmitted to next generations is that of theologians. Even if masses of people are much more numerous, their approach to their religion is destined to disappear, time by time, as has already happened about the biblical periods, as I already said, although apparently the mass approach seems the most popular.

It was not my intention to be rude: I just did some criticism, by applying some reflection. If criticism, disagreement, looking from another perspective, becomes lack of respect, what else can we do here?

I think I see your point: if a certain number of cells with a human DNA are organized in a certain way to give as a result a whole, complete, living body, then that being can be definitely considered a human being.
Well, let’s think of a terminal person: that person is unable to give signs of conscience, electronic devices are unable to tell us if that person has still any sensitivity. Hopes of survival are maximum a couple of hours. The body of that person is terribly suffering for a consuming cancer. Shall we kill that person to stop that suffering or not?
I created this hypothesis to support what I said: I am sure that, for any static, definitive, conclusive answer, it is possible to find at least one hypothetical case that puts that answers in a crisis, in a difficulty, showing that that answer is not definitive at all.

A human cell has human DNA, it is human, but it is not a human being.

I think there is a trap when we try to answer this question. Actually it is the same trap that makes a lot of philosophical question endless, without any progress, or even oppressive.
The trap consists of looking for a conclusive answer, something stable, reasoning with a mentality oriented towards static concepts. Since we are immersed in history, which means a lot of epochs and a lot of places, any answer is easily exposed to be demolished, criticized or, as I said, it becomes just a sterile endless discussion.
We know that, over time and according to different places of our planet, a lot of different ideas, even opposite, conflicting and oppressive ideas have been kept as stable about what means to be human, or a person, but the question can be extended to everything: what is truth, what is freedom, and so on.
So, I think the best answer to your question is a methodology of work, with some criteria like the following ones:
1) as I said, try not to fall into traps of static thinking
2) which means: let’s work on provisional answers, and then work again, and then again and again;
3) in this work let’s use the best resources we have: dialogue, space for opposite perspectives, welcoming criticism, research, space for science and for criticism of science;
4) let's make decisions, but they must be always considered provisional, temporary decisions.

So, today I would say: what is essential to being human being is to be perceived as human by other humans. It seems circular, but I think it is not: I think that, as a starting point, everybody assumes they are humans, so, let’s consider humans those you think are humans, by using your sensitivity, history, culture, science.

Your question involves the huge debates about abortion: by considering this you can realize, again, how sterile it is to look for definite conclusions.

My answer is aimed at opening discussion by helping towards perspectives, not to be a conclusion.

I would add that we need to make a good use of subjectivity and objectivity in order to work well on it.

I don’t think that my idea falls into the problem of applying it to itself, because I didn’t suggest any alternative system. What I suggested is abandoning philosophy and making art by using the remnants of the abandoned philosophy. How can art be suspected of proposing another metaphysical system?

Perhaps that's what you mean by 'playing ideas'? — Cuthbert

I think so. Playing ideas means trying to work with them without pretence of reaching anything fundamental, the same way musicians play their instruments without pretending that what they are producing is “the music”, or “the essence of music”. They know that what they are doing is just an exploration of music from the limited perspective of that instrument, that culture, that personality. I think philosophy should me meant the same way.

I think there is a basic mistake when philosophy argues about this.
We get our concepts of "external", "material", "I", etc. from a kind of instinctive, primitive, not reflective experience: think of the primitive humans, or of a child, to get my idea.
Then we became philosophers and now we pretend to get ultimate ideas about the whole. Non ultimate ideas are managed by science, art, spontaneity. But this is not enough for philosophy: philosophy wants to get the roots, the total, the ultimate, the general, the universal. The problem is that philosophy gets the ultimate by using the primitive instruments I said before. In other words, it is like wanting to describe the ultimate nature of the world by having at our disposal just some specific concepts, let’s say, for example, “banana”, “guitar”, “chair”, “shouting”. The result is that we would define the universe by saying, for example, that it must be necessarily “a shouting banana on a chair”, or a “guitar shouting to a banana”. Why are these example ridiculous? It is because they try to define something extremely wide, great, extended, general, which is the universe, by extremely specific words like the ones I used. We don’t realize how ridiculous is to talk about “material”, “external”, “exists”, and so on, because we think that those concepts are wide, great, general, so that they are appropriate to talk about the universe. Once we realize that those great concepts are actually extremely rough, unclear, local, limited, then we can understand how ridiculous is to talk about “external material world”.
I want to clarify that I am not referring to Hello Human specifically: as I said at the beginning, it is not a mistake made by Hello Human, it is a mistake that I see in philosophy in general, most philosophy, most great and famous philosophers.
As a consequence, I think that trying to understand the “being” in terms of “external material wold”, or “I think, therefore I am”, or “idealism”, is just nonsense, not less than the ridiculous definitions I said before.
Kant tried to be more universal by recognizing that, when we talk about such big things, like “space”, “time” and so on, we are actually moving inside the cage of our mental categories.
After Kant we can realize that even the idea of “categories” falls into the same problem: it is not really a great and wide category, not much more than “banana” or “chair”.
This means that even the very ideas of “ultimate”, “universe”, “universal”, “being”, are ridiculous as well, in their pretence to embrace “the whole”, “all”, “everything”.
As I said, those who don’t have this pretence are science and art. Science doesn’t need to be ridiculously imitated by philosophy.
I think that philosophy can, instead, try to be, modestly, an art of playing ideas. Not “playing with ideas”, as ideas were toys, but “playing ideas”, as they were musical instruments, or musical notes. Philosophy can do this e nothing would be able to do it better than philosophy, while keeping a dialogue with all other fields of human culture.

To say that when the body is suffering no one is suffering, are you saying that you are not your body? What is it that you are referring to when you say, "you"? Are you referring to your body, brain, mind, soul, or what? — Harry Hindu

When I say “I”, I am referring to my subjective experience of feeling “I”, that, since it is subjective, is impossible to prove, otherwise it would become objective. So, I cannot say that I am my body, because this would make the meaning of “I” something objective.
I experience that my subjective feeling of “I” is connected, dependent, on some objective things: my body, external events, a lot of things, but “connected” and “dependent” does not mean that it is just an objective result of these elements.
I can put, for a moment, myself in a materialistic, scientific perspective, so that I understand that, for other people, I am just an object: they have no way to enter my subjectivity. But, when I put myself in the perspective coming from my inner experience of myself, which is the perspective of my subjectivity, it becomes impossible to me to reduce my experience of “I” to something objective. I feel my experience of my subjectivity as something undeniable to me; undeniable not because I am able to give evidence of it to myself. I cannot prove my subjectivity even to myself. I feel it undeniable because I feel myself inside it, it is a feeling; it cannot be anything more than feeling, otherwise it would be objective and provable.

I know about cognitive bias and I try to avoid it, and you don’t, so I’m closer to the truth than you are — Skalidris

I think there is a mistake exactly in the text I quoted. In your hypothetical example, the talking person is considering the relativity they are immersed in ("I know about cognitive bias"), but then they reason in way that ignores the relativity they are immersed in ("’m closer to the truth than you are"), because they make an absolute statement. This is inconsistent. The correct conclusion of the relativistic premise is "so I hope I am closer to the truth than you are" or "so I might be closer to the truth than you are". This is the reasoning that I adopt in my relativistic choices: may be my choices are nothing, but may be they are something, beyond my and your understanding: who knows?

So, you think that suffering can exist without awareness of it? I don’t think so. I think that suffering is possible exclusively in proportion to awareness: if awareness is 100, suffering is 100, if 50, 50, if awareness is 0, suffering is 0. The medical practice of anaestesia is scientific evidence of it. So, there is absolutely no difference between “actual suffering” and “awareness of suffering”. Suffering without awareness can produce body reactions, but these body reactions are not suffering: when only the body is suffering, nobody is suffering: when doctors are operating your body and you are totally under anaestesia, nobody is suffering. We can see that animals have degree of awareness as well and it is possible to practice anaestesia on animals as well. This seems to me scientific evidence hard to deny.

This makes suffering intrinsic to reality — Joshs

This seems dogmatic, which is, a truth without explanation, which, as such, is quite different from postmodern thought.

Perhaps it is good to specify that the problem I am talking about involves philosophy, not us in general as persons. It is easy to solve the difficulty from the point of view of us as persons, as some of you have already done: we as persons don’t need evidence, nor clear definitions, nor systems of thought, we just need to be human.
Philosophy, instead, either from a metaphysical point of view, or from what I think is like the current scientific drift of philosophy, needs definitions, clarity, evidence, logic, consistency. Even nihilists or postmodern thinkers need some kind of clear context where to put questions. This is where Chalmer’s hard problem, or my modification of it by referring to suffering, becomes a challenge.
It seems to me that, in the context of philosophy, not just humanity, however we define the self, we are in the Catch 22 situation: if the self is something clear, then we are like machines with some kind of particular phenomenon that we can call “self”, that, as such, can be referred even to computers properly made; in this case we have the challenge of agreeing that a machine can suffer and, as such, can deserve empathy, fighting for its rights, even making laws to punish those who make violence against computers. In the opposite case, if the self is unclear, then there is not anywhere anybody suffering, so there is no philosophical need to defend the rights of oppressed people.

there is no self, doesn't necessarily imply there is no suffering — Agent Smith

This is exactly the point of my question: if there is no self, who is suffering?
I think that, even about animals, when we think that they suffer, we are assigning to them at least some degree of “self”.

Putting god/s inside the frame of existent/non existent condemns us to limit the discussion inside that frame, preventing a widening, expansion of horizons beyond that frame, preventing us from thinking about god/s with ideas really worth to be applied to god/s. If you think your god/s exist/s, then you have put your god/s in a cage; if you think that god/s do not exist, you have put your atheism in a cage as well.

Objective does not mean "valid for everyone". — 180 Proof

When I say

valid for everybody — Angelo Cannata

I don’t mean “valid in the opinion of everybody”: obviously, everybody can have different opinions. By saying “valid for everybody” I mean that we can find evidence of its objectivity against any objections. For example, if we think that the existence of a stone is objective, it means that we think we are able to give evidence of it against anybody thinking differently. In this sense the existence of that stone is valid for everybody, despite their opinion.

non-fallaciously — 180 Proof

Non-fallacy doesn’t exist, because it is everytime evaluated by human people.

I mean history as a set of elements that make our human condition. For this reason I specified that I mean all levels of history. I don’t mean it as a fixed system of understanding. It is just a starting point that seems efficient in connecting meaningfully most other points. By “history” I also include the present.

Does "pedophilia" cause more needless harm than less? Does "genocide" cause more needless harm than less? Each Yes "definitely condemns" ... and No raises more questions. In any case, on what grounds can it be non-fallaciously assumed that 'needless harm' is not a disvalue. — 180 Proof

You cannot establish objectively that paedophilia or genocide cause more needless harm than less. You can establish it from specific perspectives only. There are not perspectives valid for everybody, everywhere, everytime. The same applies for the concept of “needless harm”: there is not an objective ground to tell if it’s a value or a disvalue.

I cannot call it a system, because it is not static, definitive. It is my today’s method, that actually I have been practicing for many years. But tomorrow I might change idea.

Do only redemptive figures live in you? How do you eliminate Pol Pot, Donald Trump, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Adam Sandler? — Tom Storm

I make efforts every day to reduce as much as possible the influence in me of people that I consider negative.

In which case is there any position that can't be justified using this personal approach, from pedophilia to genocide? — Tom Storm

You cannot find anything able to definitely condemn pedophilia or genocide. There are answers and counteranswers to everything, so, you and me are in the same situation: a strong reference point to condemn paedophilia or genocide does not exist. They can only be condemned by a kind of everyday work, research, dialogue, exchange of experiences and sensitivities. Laws can give punishment, but punishment is not evidence that society has been able to find a strong reference point to show that paedophilia and genocide are evil. Punishment made by society is just a practical choice.

Yes, exactly, my approach is subjective and interpretative and my intention is to address the OP. Jesus works on me, through me, on my daily life, and I don’t think he is the Son of God; he lives in me like other people I like live in me, like Socrates, Gandhi, Vattimo, Heidegger, Heraclitus and many others.

Every moment you make your best synthesis of all these things and you make your choices. Once you become familiar with this way, you can see that you have no need of principles, values, reference points.
— Angelo Cannata

That's a big claim. Can you demonstrate it? Isn't the act of making such a synthesis itself a reference point and value? — Tom Storm

Of course I can demonstrate it: my daily life, second by second, is a continuous evidence of what I said. The act of making a synthesis is a temporary reference point: the synthesis is never made once for all; instead, it is always criticized, revised, changed, modified, and criticism as well is criticized in turn. There is no absolute, static, fixed reference point.

I think that an essential element that is normally ignored in discussions about postmodernism is history. History considered at all levels: the history of universe, history of nature, of people, your own personal history. If you don’t think about it, history will make choices for you. History includes also your DNA, your body. As people that have some psychological feel of freedom, we try to bring some active contribution in history, by using awareness, intelligence, critical sense, emotions, spirituality, to make choices. This way you don’t need any fixed rule, any dogma, any principle: you received from history your humanity, sensitivity, emotions, intelligence, everything. Every moment you make your best synthesis of all these things and you make your choices. Once you become familiar with this way, you can see that you have no need for principles, values, reference points. You are just a human, a person, a good person, and, as such, you don't need moral systems. What are moral systems for?

...are just manifestations... — universeness

I think you are making the same mistake I already said:

By reducing the fenomenon of lightning to what science is able to understand about it, you are making exactly the same identical error that you mentioned

the young student Max Planck was advised not to study theoretical physics because there was little left to be discovered.
— Art48

The reasoning to be made is simple: if already happened in the past that people thought they had exhausted what was there to be known about certain things, while now we see that actually they had no idea of the infinite iceberg hidden behind what they considered all that we need to know, what makes you think that the same cannot happen in the present and in the future, even about the same things? — Angelo Cannata

Thinking of “Supernatural” as an empty, useless term is possible if and when you think that, by natural explanations, you are able to exhaust all that we need to know, essentially, about something. This is part of the scientific drift that I think is happening today in philosophy. Let’s leave to scientists the job of scientist. Philosophy is wider than science: epistemology is philosophy, it is not science. Philosophy is able to criticize objectivism, metaphysics, science cannot, because this way it would just destroy its own possibility of existing.
Once you have reduced the understanding of lightning to science, you haven’t exhausted at all the understanding of the whole that happens. The same way, once you understand that the crocodile, that ancient Egyptians considered a symbol of divinity, is just an animal, you haven’t exhausted all the stuff connected to that experience. Once you have mastered all the features and characteristics of a letter (how many words, how much ink, how much paper, its weight and anything else measurable), you have understood nothing until you are able to understand its language, its content, its style.
Any material object can be understood in an infinity of ways, from an infinity of perspectives, that make it really infinite.

By reducing the fenomenon of lightning to what science is able to understand about it, you are making exactly the same identical error that you mentioned

the young student Max Planck was advised not to study theoretical physics because there was little left to be discovered. — Art48

The reasoning to be made is simple: if already happened in the past that people thought they had exhausted what was there to be known about certain things, while now we see that actually they had no idea of the infinite iceberg hidden behind what they considered all that we need to know, what makes you think that the same cannot happen in the present and in the future, even about the same things?

It’s like a catch 22 situation. If a madman agrees he’s mad he’s mad, even he recognises it! (should this not actually show sanity?), if he denies his madness well that’s because he’s clearly mad right? — Benj96

It is simply relativism: everything is relative, you can have relative certainties, but not absolute, ultimate ones.

In the twentieth first century, I am wondering how much further is philosophy going in the elimination of metaphysics. — Jack Cummins

First, I think that metaphysics, despite the extremely intricate forest of definitions and positions, can be defined as any system of ideas that you try to use to interpret how things are. So, when you say “I think that certain things can be thought as they were this and this, this way and this way”, you are making metaphysics. This coincides to what in science is called hypothesis: “let’s imagine that things are this way”; “let’s imagine that that planet changed its direction because there is another planet whose existence we don’t know yet”: this is metaphysics.

Now, we need to make a distinction between metaphysics and its usage: I think this is a confusion frequently present in most philosophers. The difference I am talking about is between considering an hypothesis as just an hypothesis or, rather, as something that actually is certain, more certain than proved scientific achievements.
If you say “let’s imagine that being is and not being is not”, since you premised “let’s imagine”, in this case you have made some metaphysics, but you are considering that metaphysics as just an hypothesis. Parmenides didn’t add this premise. He just said “being is, not being is not”. This is metaphysics considered not as just an hypothesis, but as something already obtained as conclusive, certain.

Now, we should also not confuse metaphysics with definitions that we can find in dictionaries. This is another thing that creates a lot of confusion. If a dictionary says that “an orange is a kind of fruit”, the expression looks very similar to a metaphysical hypothesis, but we need to realize that the dictionary is not trying to define what an orange is in reality. The dictionary defines the word, not the reality meant by the word. The dictionary is not saying “that thing that you are seeing out there is an orange”, nor “the thing that you are seeing out there is that kind of fruit with this and that characteristics”. Rather, the dictionary means “if you think that that fruit is so and so, then you can call it orange”, or “in order to call that fruit “orange”, you must check if it is so and so”. So, again, dictionaries are about words, not about the reality meant by words. According to this, we can notice that dictionaries can even contain definitions of things considered, at least by some people, not existing: for example, a dictionary can have a definition of the word “god”, but gods do not exist according to atheists. So, dictionaries are not about how things are, but about what we decided to agree about what certain words mean, independently from their connection with reality. According to atheists, the word “god” has no relationship with reality, but this is not a problem for dictionaries.
Now, going back to Parmenides, personally I consider his procedure an error, because he decided to consider his metaphysics not an hypothesis, but a description of reality that must be considered true, certain, real, objective. His statement has hypnotized a lot of philosophers because it seems fantastically obvious, able to have in itself all the ground, all the basis to make it true, without needing any further research.
I think that Parmenides’ statement is so hypnotizing because it is tremendously similar to a dictionary definition. By using a dictionary (dictionaries contain also some grammar notes) you can achieve the same conclusion of Parmenides without being a philosopher: in a dictionary (or in a grammar book) you can find that “being” is the present continuous of the verb “to be”, whose present simple form, third singular person, is “is”. Since “being” and “is” are different forms of the verb “to be”, then, if something “is being an orange”, then, at least “now, in this moment” it is an orange. We don’t need any philosophy to say this: grammars say this. E voilà, we have found the magic power of grammars, that was exploited by Parmenides: this way grammars and dictionaries can master not only descriptions of words, but descriptions of reality as well.
This is the big trick, I mean the big illusion made by Parmenides.
Now we can deconstruct this and realize that, as a statement about words and verbs, Parmenides’ statement can be easily adopted because, as such, it is a social agreement: societies create words and verbs and agree about their meaning.
But, as a statement about reality, about how thing actually are, how objectivity works, it should have been considered just an hypothesis; we can call it metaphysics if we agree that metaphysics is just an hypothesis.

At this point I would say that metaphysics, if it is considered not hypothesis, but a conclusive and definitive achievement about how reality is, how things are, how things really work, then metaphysics can and should be eliminated from philosophy. Considering something as a definitive and certain achievement should belong to the realm of religion, faith, belief. That’s good, because intelligent believers belonging to religions know that, since their belief is belief, their faith is faith, then it is a free choice, it is not based on any proven ground; if its essential basis has a proven ground, then it is not religion, nor belief, nor faith, it is science.

So, in synthesis, the mistake made by Parmenides, because of confusion between grammars and reality, made him and his followers think that metaphysics is able to be not just hypothesis, but conclusive achievement about understanding how reality is and works. This kind of achievement should actually belong to science, but science is limited to evidence, which, in turn, falls into all the difficulties raised by epistemology. Philosophers like Parmenides think that metaphysics is not based on scientific evidence, but on the power of reason, which is infinitely more powerful than evidence; since reason is free from objections coming from epistemology, it has the magic power of dictionaries and grammars.

In conclusion, I think that metaphysics, considered as a conclusive achievement about how reality is and works, can and should be 100% eliminated from philosophy, because it changes philsophy into religion dressed up as rationality. Metaphysics as just hypothesis is fundamental to work on everything, on science, philosophy, whatever, so it should remain in philosophy and should be well used.

I would say that Bloch’s idea of hope, without making hope an exact aim, has its root on Heraclitus’ idea that everything is becoming. Heraclitus’ idea is very primordial, of course, but then there is Heidegger saying that being should be conceived strictly connected to time: what is being and time other than, essentially, becoming? Obviously, Heidegger’ philosophy is much closer to humanity. Heidegger’s being towards death seems quite the opposite of Bloch’s hope, but I think the Heidegger’s idea about death is not an essential pessimism; rather, it is humanity.
We shouldn’t ask Bloch what to hope for, because, since it is quite a basic and abstract principle, it must remain rather undefined. But we can ask: why hope? I would say: because it is already in our humanity. If we cultivate it, we are just developing something already working inside us. We just need to build better criterions to make it fruitful as much as possible.

It seems similar to the problem of objectivity: objectivity is unable to justify itself: it aways turns out to depend on subjectivity.

I don't think so: to my understanding, for Plato the world of ideas is the world of absolute things, while what is accessible to our senses is the world of relative, perishable, imperfect, deceitful things. How are they the same coin?

All the schematic description I have made is actually Heidegger’s thought, it is not a creation of mine.