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.

So if tomorrow we call the sun "horse," it won't change that bright ball in the sky — Xtrix

I didn't say that we just call it differently. That would not be a real change. I said "is": if what we today call "sky" tomorrow stops being sky, but rather is really, objectively, as a fact, a "horse", I cannot give it a name, it is impossible to give it a name.

If you consider “being” as "something”, but not permanent, how are you able to give it a name, which is, the word “being”? It seems to me that we can use names only if we consider that something remains unchanged over time. For example, if what I call “sky” today is a “horse” tomorrow, it is completely impossible to me to give it a name, I cannot even figure what I am thinking about. But you call it “being”, which means that, in this something that you call “being”, something remains the same over time, so that today and tomorrow you can still call it “being”. This seems to me that actually you are not conceiving “being” as something really completely changing, really not permanent.

I think it is obvious that metaphysics has different meanings in different times and different authors. As a consequence, the question in the title of the thread “What is metaphysics?” has not much meaning. How do you think to deal with the plurality of positions about the question?

If you consider change as a kind of being, I think this is not really consistent, because, if you really want to be consistent with a perspective based on change, you must consider change also about your idea of change. In other words, if I say “everything changes”, I must admit that this very statement and its meaning must be included in the set of things subject to change.
If you think about change as a way of being, then you are assuming that, along the change, being remains being. But, if it remains being, then you are excluding it from change, you are excluding your statement from the field of things that change.
Heidegger was able to include change in the category of being because he actually modified the meaning of being: being in Heidegger is not absolute, but conditioned by time, by the human condition.
In this context, the meaning of “being” is itself exposed to change. This way Heidegger forced the meaning of “being” to something that actually means human condition, subject to time and death. In this context we cannot say that change is an expression of being, because being itself hasn’t any stable meaning. In other words, Heidegger wanted to keep his philosophy in the terminology of being, and the price for this was to force the meaning of being to something subject to the human condition. This forced him to have nothing to say at a certain point. I think that after Heidegger no other philosophers have reached the high level of his philosophy so far, but I think also that we can do better, we can take his research to better levels.

Anything can be not good for anyone. Can you say any source that is good for you and shows that what I said is wrong?

You can have a look here, as an example.

I am interested in seeing how it is not true, according to what philosophers.

I think it is good to clarify the following things.

The aim of metaphysics is to go beyond physics, beyond science, to get some stable, unassailable truth, that must be impossible to reach by science. If it is possible to reach it by science, then it is subject to all the changes that science is able to bring, like new discoveries, new instruments, new evidence. As such, it is not metaphysics, it is science.
So, if we realize that “the moon is a planet” is something that can be proved or disproved by science, then it is not a metaphysical truth.
An example of truth not reachable by science is this one: the ultimate meaning of the world is to be an instrument to make humans happy. Or: the world was created by God. The purpose of these statements is to reach levels of knowledge that science is unable to reach. This way, metaphysicians feel that they have found a remedy to two problems of science: 1) what science says is changeable by new discoveries; as such, it is not stable, it has not the absolute reliability of eternal truths; 2) science is unable to give us any knowledge about transcendent things, like God, meaning of existence, spirit, interpretation of life.

Science can deal with metaphysical concepts, but when these concepts are dealt with by science, the aim of research about them is not to find anything stable: science has no interest in finding stable things; science has interest in making research based of measurable evidence. So, for example, science can be interested in dealing with the meaning of human existence, insofar as it is possible to find in this question some measurable elements, like, for example, statistics, history, geography. In this context, science is not interested in finding a meaning of existence that must be the ultimate, the definitive one.

After having clarified these things, we can go on by exploring how weak or strong metaphysics is.

Since the very beginning they could have used better self-criticism. Think about Aristotle, for example: why didn’t he ask himself “Why should things be the way I am describing them, matter and shape?”. Plato as well: it is strange that, in the cave myth, he didn’t realize that the one who looks outside the cave is in the same conditions of the ones inside it: every position is conditioned by itself. And Descartes: how is it possible that he didn’t realize that his assumption “I think, then I am” was so highly exposed to criticism? We can even notice that already at their time there were people criticizing their thoughts: think about the sofists, for example. Aristotle knew the problem raised by the sophists; nonetheless, he just carried on, with the result that his philosophy is easy to be demolished. I even think about Heidegger: he criticized the traditional ideas about being, but he also talked about “authenticity”: how didn’t he realize that this concept is extremely similar to the idea of “truth”, which is again exposed to his very own criticism, just on a different level? The simple question that most of them, surprisingly, ignored, is: why should things be just the way I am thinking they are?

In other words, it seems to me that metaphysics just lack self-criticism.

I think that metaphysics, whatever meaning you give to it, has the defect of being bound to being: in certain contexts it is almost a synonim of ontology. The consequence of being bound to being is that it ignores time and subjectivity. Along history metaphysics was criticized by historicists, because, by trying to understand how things are, it looses sight of the fact that things, rather than being, are becoming (Heraclitus). As a consequence, about any metaphysical system of ideas, we should never forget that it is itself conditioned by its own being immersed in the flowing of becoming, changing.
The problem raised by subjectivity is similar, because the fact that anything we think of is conditioned by our subjectivity makes our thoughts dependent on the variability, unreliability of subjectivity.
In other words, the defect of metaphysics is its intention to reach a system of ideas that is expected to be stable, definitive, ultimate, objective, reliable, solid.
We can mean metaphysics in a more flexible and humble perspective, but in this case it seems to me that what we are doing is not philosophy, but science. When science makes its hypotheses, it doesn’t build them with the intention of reaching an end to research. On the contrary, science makes hypotheses as simple intruments to acquire better and better knowledge of the world, without any intention to stop.
So, I would say: if you suppose, for example, that the moon is a planet, just to see how this idea works in comparison to the results coming from observation through technical instruments, then “the moon is a planet” is a scientific hypothesis, which means, there is no intention to make it the ultimate, fundamental system of ideas about the moon.
If you say “the moon is a planet” with the intention to build an assertion that should resist to any criticism, any objection, any doubt, so that, if different conclusions come from observation, we should think that most probably observation is wrong, then you are trying to build metaphysics.
If we think that 2+2=4 is an eternal truth, indesctructible, unassailable, impossible to question, then you are thinking of it in a metaphysical way. As such, this kind of thought has the defect that not only tomorrow 2+2 might give a different result, but also our thoughts about it might change, because ideas are subject to time, change, becoming, as well as anything else.
This way, any attempt to build a system of ideas, with the intention to reach something stable, is metaphysics. So, even when I say that everything is subject to change, if I treat this assertion as a stable and permanent theory, I am doing metaphysics as well.

I agree. Essentially, I think this is Heidegger and unfortunately it iseems to me that analytical philosophy has been prevailing more and more, changing philosophy in science, and this way ignoring Heidegger's research, because science doesn't need to examine the radical questions of philosophy.

Let's forget about my experience of my own consciousness for a minute — T Clark

This is exactly the problem: if you try to forget your own consciousness, what you are trying to understand is not consciousness anymore, it is impossible for it to be consciousness: after trying to forget your own consciousness, what you are trying to understand in an objectified concept of consciousness. An objectified concept of consciousness is not a concept of consciousness, because the experience of consciousness is the experience of your subjectivity, your experience of being a subject. Subjectivity is the opposite of objectivity. If you objectify subjectivity, what you are talking about is not anymore subjectivity.

The problem is in the ambiguity of the concept of consciousness. For example, a computer is able to react to the presence of a person or even to the expression of her face. Can we call this consciousness? If the answers is yes, then consciousness is everywhere, because everything is able to react to anything. If the answer is no, then it becomes extremely difficult to show the difference. When I say “extremely difficult”, I refer also to Chalmers’ expression “hard problem of consciousness”. Obviously, anybody is able to show that their position is not stupid, since the very existence of the “hard problem of consciousness” is impossible to prove.
In order to talk properly about consciousness we need first to admit this ambiguity and confusion. The first problem about consciousness is in using the word “consciousness” as we knew what we are talking about, while actually we are in the middle of the deepest confusion and ambiguity.