In theology there is an answer, all wisdom comes from God and people cannot fathom the wisdom higher than that of God. — SpaceDweller

This changes the paradox this way: does God have the power to make an explanation of his mysteries easy to understand for us? Ultimately, the paradox can be reduced to the fundamental problem of theodicy: does God have the power to destroy all evil now, immediately?

1) Evaluation about good and bad, worth or not worth, is a subjective matter: a calculator will never tell you that 2 is better than 3 or viceversa. This means thst dealing with the question by relying just on reasoning and syllogisms is a mistake. In any reasoning or syllogism about this question we just need to find the subjective elements and it is automatically demolished.
2) We can deal with the question by mixing subjective and objective elements, hoping that other subjects will agree with our own feelings.

A mixed reasoning that I consider very strong, if we agree the subjective elements, is this one: the tiniest amount of evil, or suffering in existence is enough to reject it as valuable. There is nlo reason why evil should exist in this world. Actually, the existence of evil makes the worl impossible to understand, to conceive.

I don't think that power is a good way to find what we need: God has power to destroy all the evil in the world, but he doesn't do this. Society, governments, have power to protect the planet, but they don't protect it. Medicines that are very good frequently reveal uneffective. In other words, potentiality or possibility don't guarantee at all that something will happen, so, what's the point of relying so much on power?

What do you mean with this jump? — Haglund

Sorry for my bad English, perhaps I should use another word. By “jump” I mean discontinuity, point of discontinuity, the point where something ends and something different begins.

I agree but don't see the link with objects — Haglund

The same problem applies between objects and living things: where is the point of discontinuity? Is a virus a living being or just a complex organizations of molecules? If we are unable to determine the point of discontinuity, then there is no exact difference between objects and humans.

Why not? It is, of course, a very limited kind of imagination, but, about this, we have, I think, two only choices:

1) there are infinite degrees and qualities of imagination. The consequence is that what we call “imagination” has no limits, no boundaries, so it must be referred even to stones and single atoms. In atoms, obviously, imagination happens simply in the form of phisical things that can happen in atoms, I am not referring to anything special or supernatural; my human imagination is just more complex.

2) There is a jump, a difference, between human imagination and any other kind of phenomenon that we would like to compare to human imagination. The consequence of this is that it becomes impossible to define where and how the jump happens, considering that animals, or new born babies, or even babies that are not born yet, can show signs of imagination. If it is impossible to define where the jump happens, how can we say that there is a jump?

Neurons can’t be made in the lab that you can imagine, but maybe they have been already made in the lab that was able to build your brain. It is the same way my laptop is unable to imagine the kind of intelligence that is in my brain, because I have built it in a way that makes impossible to my computer to imagine my intelligence.
So, the same proportion between the limited awareness on my laptop, built by me, and me, might exist between me and somebody who built me, endlessly. Who knows?
My laptop has no idea of the quality and level of my awareness. The same way I have no idea of higher level and quality of intelligence that might have built me.
What I am saying is different from Matrix, because I am also considering that even those who built me can be in the same condition towards an hypothetical superior intelligence that built them, and so on, endlessly.
The final result of this infinite matrioska is that we don’t know anything, we can’t know anything, we can only work with ideas, play with them.

How do you know it?

Maybe they have already done this on you: you have no way to know it. Whatever you think of as evidence to deny it can be considered part of the way you were programmed. It is the old problem of Descartes, that he thought he solved, but he didn't realize that it is impossible to solve problems we are part of.

it will require serval cultural revolutions — Constance

I don't think it is such a hard job, because something like religion of philosophy, with spiritual exercises, was already practiced by the ancient Greek philosophers: Pierre Hadot has shown us this. Today there are several movements, like philosophy experienced as life, secular spirituality, atheist spirituality, postmodern religions, atheist Christians and so on. I think they just need to clarify their positions, to gain awareness of what the core of their tendency is. I think all of this can be fruitfully embraced by the umbrella term "spirituality", once it is cleaned from its confusion and ambiguities.

I agree that affectivity has a great importance in whatever is human. But it needs a language, we can say a language made not only by words, but made by life, by everything. This language has never been clarified, so that today affectivity is exploited in many ways to deceive people and make pseudo-science, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-everything, that essentially means industrial, commercial science, commercial philosophy and so on. Is affectivity a good place to work on a meaningful, expressive and efficient language? And, after all, if we give so much importance to affectivity, what is the difference from psychology? These are some more reasons why I consider spirituality more suitable: it is philosophy practiced as an experience, involving the whole of our humanity, rather than just as reasoning. As such, it includes in itself the whole universe of affectivity, and we can also include love, passion, emotions, empathy. This way we are like a step forward from a purely rational philosophy and we don’t fall in the confusion with psichology, because psichology is not philosophy practiced as an experience. Spirituality (secular spirituality) is philosophy practiced as a human experience.
In the context of spirituality, language can be studied, settled, to avoid ambiguity and confusion. Today the language of spirituality is extremely confused and ambiguous just because common people understand it as belief in supernatural realities. But, once we clarify that spirituality is not a belief, but rather philosophy practiced as a whole human experience, the language of spirituality is automatically set in the context of philosophy, and philosophy has in itself a long and strong tradition about cleaning language from confusion.

I see the Japanese concept of death more authentic — javi2541997

I showed evidence why I see the Western concept more authentic. I would like to understand the reason that make you see the Japanese one more authentic, despite not reflecting what we can see in plants, animals and children.

I think that, in this context, the Western perception of death is more authentic, more human, because we have the objective witnessing coming from living beings that are not, for sure, conditioned by culture: plants, animals, children: they don’t want to die, they don’t like dying, they hate dying. Why should we superimpose cultural conceptions that make us separated from nature, humanity, authenticity?

Is religion, essentially, just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics? Or is it revelatory, and deeply profound? — Constance

Surely not “just about systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, but nonetheless it is an aspect that is needed. The only alternative for a religion, to having “systems of organizing our thinking about metaphysics”, that, as such, need to be conceived as perfect, would be to conceive its roots as a human creation.
For example, let’s think about the faith in God that is in Christianity. In this context, God cannot be conceived but perfect. The only alternative, in order to conceive God as not perfect, would be to conceive God entirely as a human creation. If God is not a human creation, then he must be perfect. If God is a perfect being, he is exposed to all the contradictions implied by perfection, that are, in a synthesis, all about being not human. But we, as humans, need something human. This is the problem of all religions: they have depth, profoundness, they are revelatory, but they lack humanity, exactly because they need to be based on something conceived as perfect, otherwise, if it is not perfect, it cannot escape being a human fantasy.
This problem is solved by (secular) spirituality: it is revelatory, deeply profound, it is human, there is no problem at conceiving it entirely as a human fantasy, it doesn't need any metaphysics, it doesn’t need any kind of perfection.

I agree, essentially. At this point, the problem is to find a good way as a continuation of philosophy. You said “religion”, I think that the concept of religion is too connected to an idea of perfection, referred either to God or to something else. I cannot Imagine a religion having something limited, imperfect, not completely consistent, as a central reference point. Isn’t actually metaphyisics a quest for a system of ideas that is expected to work with absolute perfection? I cannot conceive a metaphysics of something imperfect. In this context, I think that “spirituality” is better, because it has more human connotations, although a lot of people conceive it as a belief in some kind of transcendent realities. Hadot has already shown us that the first ancient Greek philosophers conceived philosophy as a spiritual experience, rather than an abstract, detached reasoning about the basic questions of the world.

For me, philosophy's world is the most basic questions — Constance

Philosophy's real job is to "reduce" the world to its essential presence so that it may be encountered. — Constance

We cannot say what philosophy is before doing philosophy. What philosophy is is determined and evolved in the course of doing it. What the most basic questions are is determined and evolved while we deal with those ones we think they are.

I think that now philosophy is more and more realizing that the basic questions are about humanity, how to be human, rather than trying to understang how things work to master them, that is metaphysics.

When science is seen as all important it can lead to people losing touch with the mythical aspects of thought and even scientific models may have mythical aspects too — Jack Cummins

I would like to point out that, actually, ignoring the mythical aspects of the text, is not really respectful of science: in order to be fully scientific, it should be obvious to consider the historical and cultural context of the texts: this is normal practice in the science of history, archaelogy. So, I think that people who ignore the myths, the symbols, the literary value of religious ancient texts, in favor of what they call “science”, actually behave against science.

It is here we have reached the end of philosophy — Constance

I think we need to be always careful in proclaming the end of things such as philosophy, literature, art, cinema, that I have seen proclaimed in several contexts: we should, more humbly, talk, if anything, of end of one kind of of philosophy, not of philosophy as such. It is the end of philosophy meant as domain over concepts, things, but actually, surreptiously, domain over people. In this context, the choice to teach literature, be interested in poetry, or in politics, can considered a symptom of need for a new way of meaning philosophy. The way Kierkegaard talks about time or eternal present is not a metaphysical way, is not a language organized in a dominating way; he talks in an existentialist way.
After realizing that we need a weak philosophy, we need to build a good relationship with metaphysics, because the things of the past cannot just be put in the bin and forgotten. I think that a good relationship with metaphysics should be in the form of a dialogue, rather than adopting passively metaphysics as if it was contraditions-free and well working to get domain over things, reality and people. Metaphysics can be helpful to tell literature and poetry that, even if we have a certain human ability to shape and even create reality, nonetheless we cannot ignore that we need to face humanly humiliating experiences, such as suffering, death, contradictions, inconsistency, forgetfulness. At the same time, we cannot be just pessimistic, because weak or postmodern philosophy, as well as art, literature and a lot of other human experiences, are able to show that we can make miracles, unpredicted wonders.
In this context philosophy ceases to be the place where people look for conclusions, answers, solutions, formulas, that is all stuff to exercise domain, and becomes instead perspective to work, do research, open dialogue, plan comparisons, explore horizons. When we realize this, we can see that philosophy is far from beind ended, there is lot to do and to work on, and it doesn’t need to retrieve any disguised metaphysics or masked realism to gain reputation or to keep afloat.

In itself, language says nothing but nonsense. Meaning is primarily conventional, except for what little is natural (like imitative sounds) or comes from transcendent sources (as recollection). But once there is established meaning it is as fixed as their related Forms are. — magritte

If meaning is conventional, it means that what you wrote has a conventional, which means an agreed meaning in your perception. If you perceive that your words have an agreed meaning, how can you say at the same time that language says nothing but nonsense? Does what you wrote have an agreed meaning or is it nonsense?
Then you referred to an established meaning: how can we realize that it is established, since our mind is part of all the things that are subject to change?

I think that religion, science and art can be fruitfully connected by the context of interpretation, or we can say hermeneutics. You can have a look at Gadamer about this. Religion can be considered an interpretation of existence in reference to supernatural beings. Art is the expression of subjective interpretation of a lot of things. Science tries to build interpretations as well, but with an effort to keep bound to what has evidence. In this context science can help, or be in a dialogue, with artistic and religious interpretations by suggesting methodologies of consistency.

Numbers as pointers to a geometric line can be talked about, — magritte

Actually Cratylus, after drawing further consequences from Heraclitus, forgot to draw further consequences from himself: if everything changes continuously, then it is never possible to know what we are talking about, because one second later it has changed its meaning. This actually brings us to Heidegger, that I already explained: all this endless drawing further consequences is a result of our subjectivity that is necessarily always involved in our metaphysics: metaphysics alone is not interested in drawing further consequences or meta-consequences, the same way a computer doesn't draw all the consequences of its calculations.

It’s simple: you can’t step even once because, as soon as you touch the water, one instant later it is not anymore the same you touched initially, because it is flowing. It is similar to Zeno’s paradox of the arrow, but the opposite way. Cratylus sounds this way, changed to a paradox: if movement exists, then nothing can have an identity (the river can never have an identity). Zeno is the opposite: if the the arrow has an identity, then it cannot be moving, because identity implies permanence, which means stillness.

Martin Heidegger, What is metaphysics? (1929)

“First, each metaphysical question always encompasses the whole problematic of metaphysics and in fact is the whole of metaphysics. Secondly, to ask any metaphysical question, the questioner as such must also be present in the question, i.e., must be put in question. From this we conclude that metaphysical questions must be posed (1) in terms of the whole and (2) always from the essential situation of the existence that asks the question.”

If it’s a mental construction, then the mental construction exists. — Xtrix

This is Descartes, “I think, then I am”. There have been other philosophers after Descartes.

Changing the meaning of words sometimes is inevitable, necessary, but it also creates a lot of difficulties. This is one reason of a lot of messages here and everywhere: just because a lot of philosophers have been changing the meaning of “metaphysics”, or the meaning of “being”, and now we are here struggling and debating in the forest of different and even contradictory meanings that they have created. In this forest I make my choices and I try to clarify them.
“Absolute” means disconnected, independent, 100% free, unbound. What is the advantage of making a new meaning that contradicts this independence, this unboundness, the moment you decide to enclose it into the subjectivity of your thoughts?

I can declare my absolute reality be the one for all, the universal one, and so can you — Haglund

This is what dictators do. The difference between this example and dictators is that dictators do not admit that what they think belongs to their subjectivity.

Perhaps your attempt comes from the everyday human experience that makes us think “I think that there is a stone out there”. Our everyday experience is so strong, we feel it so natural, so working and obvious, that it is difficult to us to realize that it contains a contradiction. This is the reason why a lot of metaphysicians find so difficult to realize the issues, the flaws of their reasoning: because nature has structured our brain to ignore our subjectivity: this has made possible survival, strength, conquering, dominating, it has made possible the human history that we all know.

The process seems natural and logical:
1) there is a stone there
2) I think that a stone is there.

These two points seem simple, until we start reflecting on them:

ok, there is a stone there. Now I think there is a stone there.
But...... how much can I trust this thought of mine? Why should I trust it? Why should I think that my thoughts are correct? What’s the point, the advantage, of thinking that I am correct?

In a post-modernist style of reasoning, we could consider the universals to be universal for the ones applying them. — Haglund

I think this is contradictory. Saying “In my opinion this is universal” means “In my opinion I think that this is not just my opinion”. I understand that such statements can easily be found in everyday conversations, and in everyday conversation we can accept a lot of things that, instead, in the strict context of philosophy would be unacceptable because of being contradictory: they are just two different languages, the everyday language and the philosophical language.
In a philosophical context: how can you think that something is your opinion (“In my opinion I think...”) and at the same time think that it is not your opinion (“...I think that it is not just my opinion”).
You can state it in a context of research, as to say “I am making the hypothesis that this thing is not my opinion”; in this case you are keeping two things, one is what you believe is the fact (“In my opinion I think...”) and the other one is the hypothesis that it might be universal. Facts and hypotheses can coexist together without contradition.

Exactly: this is the radical problem of metaphysics: it doesn’t draw the consequences of its own statements, it doesn’t follow its own methods, its own procedures, preferring, instead, to stop in the middle of the reasoning. This is what happens:

1) metaphysics make statements that are universal, or we can say “a priori”, such as

1) there is.
2) There is something.
3) Change is something. — Xtrix

2) Since they are a priori, universal, they must be able to take into account everything, they must be able to face any other consideration.

3) Taking into account everything means taking into account also the consideration that all the statements have been made by using a brain, a human mind, we can call it “subjectivity”.

4) The consequence of taking into account the subjectivity that has been inevitably involved to produce the statements is that the statements cease to be universal, because they are implicated in the non universality of subjectivity.

5) The conclusion is that kind of reasoning:

• if something is universal, it must be able to take into account subjectivity
• taking into account subjectivity creates the consequence that it is not universal

In other words: if something is universal, then it is not universal.

Even in shorter way: if being is, then it is not.

This is the radical contradiction that metaphysics tries to avoid, because it is too disturbing, too uncomfortable, destabilizing, not reassuring at all.

I have just described in a structured way what has already been noticed by Heidegger, nothing new.

But he went on with the idea of changing the meaning of metaphysics, keeping himself in the mental frame of “being” and forcing the meaning of “being” into a human context, implicated in time and death, while instead I, like postmodern philosophy does, consider clearer to admit that metaphysics is just contradictory, as well as the concept of “being”, as well as Parmenide’s principle of non contradiction.

That there is something is a given — Xtrix

This is exactly the problem of metaphysics: how can you say that something is a given, since, in order to say it, you need to use your brain?

If an object is changing, that change must be measurable, then it belongs to the realm of science. May be it is not measurable just because we have not powerful enough instruments, but in that case it still belongs to science, if it is just a problem of powerful instruments. If it is not measurable because it belongs to a realm different from science, then how did you realize that it is changing?

In other words, the question that your message gives rise to is: what is then the difference between science and metaphysics?

Saying “change is something” is a human conceptualization, which is, metaphisics. As such, it is exposed to criticism. It is humanly impossible to guarantee that our reasonings are true and correct: we never know if tomorrow we might discover an error in our reasoning. So, you have no way to guarantee that your statement “change is something” is true or correct; this applies all the same to the consequence that you think you can get: “therefore change is”.

We can imagine different levels of dreaming. What is important is not that you don’t agree, but that nobody in this world can find any evidence that they, or me, or both, or everybody, are not in a dream.
I would even say that we are for sure in a dream, we are a brain in vat for sure, simply because whatever we think about is filtered by our brain. The vat is our brain itself.
We need also not to forget that even the idea of being in a dream is questionable, otherwise we would have the reassuring certainty that we are in a dream. But we don’t even know what a dream is, what reality is, what “being” means, we don’t know anything and even this not knowing anything is completely uncertain. In this context, I disagree with Socrate’s assertion “I know that I don't know”: we don’t know the meaning of knowing, nor of not knowing. We use a lot of words and concepts just because we feel it possible, we like it, but we need to be humble about whatever we think.

This message as well can be criticized from both perspectives.
In science: you can give evidence that they are there, but science doesn’t care if tomorrow something different will be discovered: science is based on measurements, discoveries, hypotheses, it doesn’t have any interest in finding things that must be unchangeable.
In metaphysics: you have no way to give proof that they aren’t a dream, an illusion; whatever we do can be a dream; we can’t even say that we know what a dream is. We can’t state anything for sure, we can only build mental constructions and even what I’m saying can be criticized the same way, making uncertainty endlessly more and more extended.

What you said can be criticized two ways, depending if you are talking from a scientific or a metaphisical perspective.
From the scientific perspective, assuming that what you said is true: tomorrow a scientific discovery might find evidence that what you said is wrong.
From the metaphysical perspective: as such, it is a mental costruction, not more valid than other mental constructions.

This is exactly what metaphysics, in my opinion, tries to do: a stable system, able to embrace everything, including change. This, I think, is exposed to a lot of criticism. For example: are you sure that humanity is a limit and transcendent stability is a superior state, compared to it? The opposite can be claimed. Besides, this desire of transcendent unity is suspiciously similar to the dream of dictators.

It depends on what you mean by "being". Basically, we can identify two meanings, according to Parmenides and Heidegger. Being in Parmenides is absolute, absolutely abstract, it cannot be exposed to change, because change would contradict the principle of non contradiction. Heidegger forced the meaning of being towards human experience: it is impossible to humans to think of being without conditioning this thought with our human condition of being subject to time and death.

That's why I think it is wrong considering change as being.

You are talking about perspectives on objects that are actually the same over time. I am talking about things that change, really change and are not anymore what they were before. If tomorrow the sky stops being the sky, we have no more sky, the sky doesn't exist anymore, the sky has become a horse, a real horse: how can you give a name to it?

Postmodern philosophy, Nietzsche, Heidegger, the sophists, Gianni Vattimo.

My description of metaphysics is not history of philosophy: since there are so many concepts about metaphysics, I already hinted that the title of this thread is not so correct: it is impossible to answer, because of the plurality of concepts about it, unless you want just to describe a history of how metaphysics has been conceived over time. My description of metaphysics is a choice to build a philosophy of metaphysics that opens perspectives of research, rather than just describing passively how the different philosophers have conceived it.

it is impossible to envisage a world where there are no necessary facts. — Wayfarer

This is your opinion, your philosophy, other philosophers don't think so.

if what you say is true, and we cannot assign a name to anything that changes -- then we can't name anything, including change itself. — Xtrix

We assign names because we see that, together with elements that change, there are elements that don't. If all elements of an object change, we cannot give it a name, it is impossible.