If I believe that the Jones is guilty, while you believe he is innocent, aren't we both believing about the same Jones ? — plaque flag

There's no way of being sure that we are both believing about the same Jones.

You are trying to build a system that includes freedom. This is contradictory. Why do you want to introduce freedom in a system? We introduce elements in a system if they are needed to explain something. What does freedom explain in a system? Nothing. It's like wanting to imagine the existence of a new planet in an astronomical system where everything is already explained. Why do you want to introduce another unneeded planet? Moreover, if you find an answer to this "why?", then you have found the cause of freedom, but, if freedom has a cause, it is not freedom.
In other words, freedom must be, by definition, impossible to explain, otherwise it is not freedom. If it is impossible to explain, then you cannot make it part of a system.
That's why it is nonsense to discuss about freedom in any philosophy that wants to be a system, a systematic philosophy.
Freedom is a psichological, emotional, human need, so it is good for non systematic philosophies, like nihilism, or postmodernism. In systematic philosophies it just creates contradictions.

Saying that we are perspectives implies that the idea that "we are perspectives" has a meaning only inside the perspective of those who say it. This is equivalent to say that it is meaningless, because its meaning is entirely limited inside itself, entirely determined by itself.

It begins with the narrative — Astrophel

If this is true, it means, as a consequence, that what you said has a meaning exclusively inside your narrative, you are inside your narrative as soon as you think and talk. As such, what you said cannot be considered objectively true, because it is inevitably conditioned by itself. In other words, what you said is meaningless.
Consider that what I have written now, in this message, comes from agreeing with you: I started by saying “If this is true...”. As a consequence, you cannot object anything to what I have said, because objecting to what I have said would mean objecting to yourself.

Even when you tell yourself your internal story, you cannot deduce that you exist, because, whenever you make use of the idea of existence, you are making use of the mental structures of your brain. You can never take control of these structures, because you cannot think of them without using them again. If you think that this is evidence that your mind and your mental structures exist, it becomes automatically evidence that you are using them and, consequently, you have no control on what you are talking about. So, at the end, talking about existence, even our own existence while we are thinking about it, is completely meaningless: as soon as you think it has a meaning, you are automatically saying that you are a machine that is manoeuvred by that meaning, so that you cannot say anything meaningful about what you are talking about.

your perspective that it's a perspective is itself a perspective — Tom Storm

I completely agree, that’s why I said that, after our work, we need to keep in mind that the very concept of perspective is completely unreliable, because, after all, it remains a hidden way of saying that there is an objective reality, from which perspective tries to be different.
We cannot free ourselves from perspectives, because we cannot free ourselves from our brain, we cannot think without using our brain, and I know that this is already a perspective.
I even think that Socrate’s knowing that he didn’t know nothing is already knowing too much, it is actually a claim of knowing really a lot.
After that, I think we are driven to aknowledge that language forces us to make statements that, as such, are far from being correct, aware of perspectives, humble. But attention to language shouldn’t make us go to analytical philosophy. I think that analytical philosophy is another masked metaphysical philosophy, because it takes language as a hard point, a hard basis to inquire into our reasoning.
Once we realize that we are prisoners of our brains (the experiment of brain in a vat is not a mental experiment, it is just our condition: the brain is the vat of itself, from which it cannot escape), I think the best we can do is to go to our humanity, psichology, emotions, literature, myths. Not in an obscurantist mentality, but exactly after being enriched by the research we have made about metaphysics, perspectives, criticism and self-criticism.
After all, the fear of the infinite recursion you mentioned is a consequence of carrying on by applying a mental methodology based on wanting to understand, to control, to master what is happening in our reasoning. Now we know that we cannot get any ultimate mastering, so I think it is better to stop trying to build new metaphysics and, rather, go to humanity, humbleness, weakness.

It seems to me that you would like to build a non-dualist philosophy, but actually, at the end, you are still dualist.

You wrote

what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — Wayfarer

Thinking that whatever we say about reality is conditioned by our perspective doesn’t make you a postmodern. You are still assuming very well that reality exists independently of our mind, even if it is impossible to us to think about it without interfering in this thought with our mind.

Your exposition contains an ambiguous language, but actually there are clear signs that you are far from exposing to radical criticism the very ideas of existence, reality, being.

Pinter has the same ambiguity in the passage you quoted:
“nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist”.
The additional note “except that they exist” destroys the whole argumentation, so that the whole reasoning is nothing at the end, it is still just an old metaphysical philosophy that tries to be a bit more clever, but actually is just hidden behind a mask that pretends to take into account the existence of perspectives.

If you truly want to take perspectives into account, you should consider that the whole idea of reality imagined by perspectives is itself a perspective. Talking about perspectives is itself a perspective. As a consequence, the very concept of “perspective” has to be considered completely unreliable; this, obviously, doesn’t make metaphysics valid again, because metaphysics has already been demolished by considering perspectives.
As a consequence, once we demolished metaphysics by considering perspectives, and then we demolished perspectives by considering that they must apply to themselves, we need to find different routes for philosophy, to see how to proceed after that. Surely we should avoid all those masked ways of bringing metaphysics back to life (like this one I commented on, for example: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840414).

I think maths underlie our "universal logic" — Skalidris

This is what happens in science, but science is liable to be exploited for violence. This is the problem with the concept of “universal”: it is just a mask to hide our limited, local, particular perspective.

The concept of “universal” is itself contradictory: “universal” means that something is the same from all perspectives. “From all perspectives” means that it is able to take into consideration even the specific perspective of the specific person who is talking about it. Then how can the concept of “universal” be universal, since it comes from a particular perspective? This is the contradiction of “universal”.

The example you made is meaningful, because you mentioned a homeless: unfortunately, universities don’t recognize the importance of a homeless, unless the homeless, as you said, finds a solution to a math professor. But a homeless, in order to find such a solution, needs study and study needs money. So, your reasoning actually can be used to justify a capitalist system where instruction is kept closed into the hands of those who have money.

“You, you homeless, are you able to find an original solution to a math problem? No? Then stay homeless, you don’t deserve help!”

This is what the universality of Maths is able to make in society. It is not by chance that today the richest people are those who master Maths, which is economy, money, investment, banks, computers, Artificial Intelligence, weapons.

So, the question becomes: if Maths is so universal, why is it so strongly connected to such a lot of injustice in the world, even in the world of animals and plants?

I think the situation you described has already been happening in nature since the world existed. What you have described doesn’t apply to philosophy only, it applies to everything in nature. The natural selection of living beings happens exactly this way. We can take some general thoughts from what we can observe both in nature and in philosophy.

One thing that happens is that nature, including the world of philosophers, doesn’t care about immense wasting of resources, ideas, possibilities, anything. I think I don’t need to find detailed evidence to say that, if an extraordinary animal (or a philosopher) has just the bad luck of being born in an unfavourable environment, it doesn’t matter how marvellous it was. Nature doesn’t care about destroying whatever is not favoured, either by their own characteristics or by their bad luck about the environment where they were born. The world famous violinist Salvatore Accardo said in an interview that he had some chances of having very good talented pupils, but they had just the misfortune of being born in a family that didn’t favour at all their talent. The history of science is full of examples of brilliant minds who struggled before being appreciated as geniuses.

Another thing, that we can notice as a general consequence, is that almost everything is based, to a great extent, on power. Power can be considered another way of expressing the luck I have described. If you don’t have enough power, either in yourself or provided by your environment, you will die. This is what happens not only to living beings in nature, but to ideas as well. This means that a lot of ideas that we follow today because we think they are true, or better, actually they have survived just because for some reason they have got power. Certain religions, including their heritage of concepts and mentalities, have been successful because, to a great extent, they have been imposed thanks to political power. This means that today, when we think, for example, that philosophy should follow this or that method, we are, to a great extent, just passively reflecting the mechanisms of power that have shaped the history of ideas of the centuries before us and still shape our minds. In other world, an idea is not true because it is true, but because some kind of power has been able to impose it. We can think in these terms even about scientific evidence; even all the Maths and Geometry theorems, that we are able to prove in so clever and irresistible ways, can be considered just another way how power is able to impose itself as the fundamental law, fundamental rule, in nature, in ideas, in everything.

existing ideas have to be understood first in order to overcome them — simplyG

This is undoubtedly a good method, the best method, but history of culture shows that a lot of brilliant ideas have been discovered by ignorant people, probably because, thanks to their ignorance, they were less conditioned by traditional mentalities. This does not mean, of course, that ignorance is the best method for progress. It just happens sometimes, in all fields, and even in nature: some discoveries, or even important changes in the evolution of living beings in nature, have happened thanks to mistakes, wrong solutions, distortions, that in theory should just have been unproductive failures.

Philosophy is a special field in all of this situation, because it tries to be aware of it at the highest and deepest level. Now a crucial question arises: isn’t a lot of philosophical research aimed at gaining more and more control and power on what we do, what we think? Isn’t the search for awareness and knowledge equivalent to a search for power, at least to a great extent? Shouldn’t philosophy expose to criticism all of these things? How?

That’s why I think that today’s philosophy, like analytical philosophy, is a failure to a great extent: because it looks for power, hidden behind the mask of wanting to understand, wanting to know, so just still following passively the power mechanisms of nature.

That’s why I appreciate postmodern philosophy: because it tries to go against the inertia of nature based on power. I love, together with postmodern philosophy, the “weak thought”, elaborated by the great philosopher Gianni Vattimo, who died just a few days ago, on the 19th of September, ended up not very much appreciated, even almost unknown, as far as I perceive, if compared to the greatness of his philosophy, in my opinion.

This is also the revolutionary concept contained in the idea of Jesus as a God who ends up dying on a cross, that is, in a total failure; a revolutionary concept unfortunately ruined by the overimposed idea of the triumphant resurrection, at least if we consider the way it was developed in classical theology, not to mention all the betrayals made by Christianity after him.

Wouldnt that mean that getting a different experience from what the artist is communicating is impossible? That is, if art is only communicating experience of the artist then when someone gets a different experience (a different emotion for example) then we couldn't call it art. — DingoJones

Actually I agree with Gadamer's idea that, in interpreting something, there isn't much point in looking for the intention of the author. Once it has been produced, a work of art gains a state autonomous from its author. So, I think it is even legitimate to criticize the author's interpretation of their own work and disagree with them. But this does not mean that the author and their intention are just negligible. I still think that reference to the author’s intention is the best criterion, provided that we are aware that actually it is impossible to reach and that even the author might not be the one who has the best awareness about their own intention. I would add, also, a reference to the "hermeneutic circle": when I interpret art, I am also interpreted by it.

As I said, art is infinite, so “aesthetic experience” can have a lot of meanings. As a human, I don’t want to waste my time with low quality aesthetic experiences, so I want to look for the richest ways of enjoying art. This does not mean that what I consider less rich ways should not be practiced. It is just my way. I think that the richest way to live an aesthetic experience is when you try to think that there was an artist who tried to communicate themselves. This does not mean that enjoying a stone shaped by nature is meaningless. Personally I find myself very prone to admire the stones that I step on, for example, when I have a walk near the sea, and I admire them in themselves, as they are, I am not a believer in God.
However, I find that a work of art produced by a human gives me a richer experience than the one I can have with things produced, for example, by nature; I even think that I have to continuously educate myself to the appreciation of art produced by humans. Primarily, not exclusively. Secondarily, there are other things, like the works of art produced by nature and everything else, even including art produced by AI.

I think you misinterpreted what I wrote, as if I was talking about one single thing and nothing else, while actually I have been talking about degrees of importance. Degrees does not mean that what is secondary and below can be ignored. As in a house, you can’t have just the pillars, just because they are the essential. As in a path, starting is the primary most important step, but you cannot stop just after the start. Many other examples can be made. If an abstract painting is upside down and nobody notices it, this doesn’t mean that the correct direction can just be ignored.
We can consider that actually everybody approaches any work of art by steps, it cannot be otherwise, simply because we are humans and we are immersed in the flow of time. I think that, in the gradual personal approach that everybody builds in their enjoyment of art, the fact that art is communication of what the artist has inside themselves should be kept all the time as the essential reference point. This does not mean that you just need to concentrate on this aspect and ignore everything else. Art is an infinite phenomenon, so, stopping at any stage, at any aspect, is just disrespectful of it.

First test would be to see if you can tell the difference between AI art and human art. If you cannot, that would imply the “hollowness” exists in your mind and not the artwork. — DingoJones

I think this is an important point to get clarifications.
Art can be analyzed critically, trying to define objective elements that witness its value, its richness of meaning, its depth. But this is only one way of approaching art. The most human way, I would say the authentic way, is deeper, intuitive, almost entirely subjective, but, exactly because of this, it is vulnerable, even exposed to be ridiculised. The Italian of the Modigliani hoax happened in 1984 is meaningful: those boys were able to deceive even well experienced and professional art critics.
I would answer: “So what?”
Yes, art critics can be deceived, even easily; we can even be mistaken if an abstract painting has been hung upside down. So what? This means nothing. Art is not maths. These facts do not affect at all what is really important in art.
The essence of art is human inner experience that is communicated. There are many other important aspects, but the essence is the event of communication of an artist’s soul, the artist’s intimate emotions, feelings. For this reason, I want to know who the artist was, I want to know his life.
For example, I might be a victim of a stupid mistake and I might have believed, for all of my life, that a Michelangelo’s painting was a Van Gogh painting. So what? The authenticity of art is not in the objective truth about it. The authenticiy of art is the sincere research for the deepest and richest things that we can achieve; even better if we can add truth as much as possible. But truth is not the condition for art to be authentic. I will look for truth with all of my energies and abilities, but what is important is not reaching it or not; what is important is having cultivated a research for the best that we can achieve; so much the better if we can add truth as much as possible, but this is not the essential condition; truth is not the most valuable thing in art.

Once we understand this, we can understand why art created by AI is not art: it doesn’t matter if it is able to deceive everybody. What matters is that, once we know that it comes from a computer, we know that it cannot contain the richness of a work of art created by a human being.

About this, we didn’t even need to wait for AI: the problem came out already with photography. A good photography can deceive anybody. So what? Being vulnerable to deceit is just a normal aspect of our humanity, that contributes exactly to make us humans.

What is important is not what we find, but what we are looking for.

I think I can add a further explanation about what I consider a misunderstanding of subjectivity, that makes possible the OOO.
OOO wants to make, as it is said in the video at 3:42, “an ontology in which no objects have any kind of special privilege, particularly the human object”.
But subjectivity is not an object. We make it an object when we talk and think about it. But, in that case, what we are talking about is not the real authentic subjectivity, it is the objectified subjectivity.
The real authentic subjectivity is the one you feel in your here and now of your present, while you are thinking about it. As a feeling, it precedes thinking.
If we objectify subjectivity, then we can get an infinite chain of timing, similar to the problem where we cannot establish if what precedes is the egg or the chicken. I mean, we can start saying that subjectivity comes first. But we are able to elaborate the idea of subjectivity by using certain mental structures, so that mental structures come first. But we make use of our mental structures from inside our subjectivity, so that, when we think of them, we do it in a situation of being already conditioned by our subjectivity. And so on. This infinite chain is possible because we are working with two kinds of objects: the object that we call “mental structures” and the other object that we call “subjectivity”. This is what makes possible to Harman to say something like “let’s make a balance between these objects”.
But, as I said, subjectivity is not an object, it is a feeling, exclusively limited to the present of when you are thinking: you feel yourself inside your body, inside your eyes, inside your thoughts, inside the structures that make you possible to talk, between you and yourself, about this feeling; a feeling inside yourself that you cannot share with anybody, because you cannot say to anybody “come in for a moment, come inside me and see what I feel in my feeling inside myself”.
Once you enter in this state of listening to your present feeling your experience of being inside yourself, you can realize that nothing else can precede it, because anything else you can think about would be an objectification, that you put in connection with your objectification of your feeling.
You cannot compare your authentic subjectivity with anything else without first objectifying your authentic subjectivity.
This comparison is what Harman makes with his OOO.

It seems to me the nth attempt to bring back to life metaphysics, realism, objectivity, by using a false interpretation of subjectivism to support it. They say that, with relativism, the subject is taken back to the centre of the universe, but this is not true. When we say that everything is subjective, it doesn't mean that the subject is the strong reference point that determines everything. A critical relativist knows perfectly that, once we say that everything is subjective, we also know that the subject is completely unreliable, otherwise it would not be a subject, it would be an alternative source of objectivity. So, the subject is not the new centre of the universe in relativism, postmodernism, weak thought. The subject is just the outcome of the self-demolition that metaphysics cannot avoid to get. As such, the subject is just an intuitive experience, not an objective entity able to be the centre of the world.

We can consider that what is light and what is darkness can be very subjective from a psychological, emotional point of view. As you hinted, a harsh and violent revenge can be considered light from a subjective point of view.
The opposite of the enlighted rationality are emotions, irrationality, intuition. We can even say that, from a subjective perspective, darkness is just a different kind of light, like a different colour.

Not saying evil is good, I am however saying evil is in one sense inevitable — simplyG

Saying that evil is inevitable is equivalent to say that it is good. Inevitable means that our world is the best possible, so, the kind of good we can afford is the one we have in this world, so, it is the maximum good we can have in this world. This means that any evil we have in this world is just part of the general maximum good we can have in this world. Evil is part of good. Evil is good.
Moreover, from a historical point of view, saying that evil is inevitable prepares a good ground for another holocaust.
Moreover: how do you know that evil is inevitable?

There is a generic widespread mistake in most people who try to face the problem of theodicy. The mistake is in dealing with the problem by making use of logic as the essential instrument to solve it. So, this is the mechanism: we look for some logic, according to which we will become able to get the conclusion that evil is logical, evil can be explained. The consequent conclusion of this mechanism will be that evil is acceptable, evil is fine, evil is good. As you can see, this radical wrong method contains in itself the intention to reach the conclusion the evil is good. Trying to rely on logic to solve the problem of evil is not really a very logical way, because, logically, we can also understand that logic is unable to found itself. So, why should we trust logic, especially in facing this important problem? It is much better to adopt a dynamic and rich approach, that tries to use all of our experiences and abilities, without putting a definitive conclusion in our purpose. Rather, the purpose should be dynamic. Instead of sayng "Let's find an answer to the problem of evil" we should say "Let's work continuously to find better and better, ad infinitum, ways of living this human condition of our existence".

It is not by chance that the Enlightenment was a movement that considered rationality the main reference point for humanity. Rationality is a tremendously powerful and useful instrument, but it also create risks. It seems to me that today philosophy is experiencing something like a new Enlightenment, which means that today philosophers seem unable to appreciate, or even to understand, what is not rational, not logical, not scientific. I am referring especially to analytical philosophy.
It is true that darkness is quickly referred, in human experience, to fear, lack of reference points, not knowing about possible threats, Obscurantism. I said “quickly” because actually it seems that babies don’t fear darkness, until life drives them to develop this fear.
But darkness is also the time for dreams, sex, lovers, meditation, contemplation, slowness, irrationality, the unconscious, deep emotions. Darkness is where life in conceived and grows in the womb, until it becomes “coming to light”, that actually coincides exactly with the very first experience of high discomfort and desperate crying. All the nice and deep things of the darkness seem to be the things that today philosophy has left aside, leaving them, if ever, to literature and art.
Today is the era of lighted screens, primarily our great god the smartphone, then smartwatches, computer screens, tablets, TVs, Satnavs, all things that again push us towards what can be seen, what can be visual, controlled, making us dismiss what cannot be explained. I would say that even music belongs to darkness rather than light, and even painting belongs to it: a great master of lights in painting was actually the master of shades: it is Caravaggio. One of the most important paintings of all times is Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.

I think that all of this has a lot to say to philosophy today. I call it spirituality.

What percentage is faithful then? 60%, 40%, 2%? And the percentage that is not faithful - how does this reinterpret or efface the percentage which is? What is a Christian to do? — Tom Storm

Once we realize that the Bible cannot be considered entirely faithful to historical facts, the next step is to analyze it, word by word, sentence by sentence, and study which things can be considered true and which ones cannot. Moreover, we need to consider the different perspectives from which what is true can be considered: for example, there is a difference between historical truths and theological truths.
This mix of truth and non-truth is not a problem for historians, archaeologists, scholars, scientists: for these people this mix is very normal in everything they study. Believers are those who most feel the problem of truth in the Bible. Believers have built theologies to explain why the Bible, that from their perspective is God’s Word, contains inaccuracies. One easy explanation is that God, in revealing himself, decided to use, as instruments, sinners, as those who wrote the Bible were, people with all their imperfections, problems, defects. In other words, theologically, the Bible is a particular example of God deciding to become human, flesh, mixing himself with the flaws and imperfections of humanity. At this point the hard problem is: how do we find what is true in the Bible? The problem is not so hard about historical truth; the hard problem is about theological truth. We can quickly say that this problem has never been solved. In the Roman Catholic context, the Church decided to believe that the Holy Spirit guides it in keeping and elaborating the right doctrine. The problem is that this theology is actually a vicious circle: the Church believes that the Holy Spirit assists it in keeping itself in the truth; who established that the Holy Spirit does this? The Church! So, the Church founds the action of the Holy Spirit, that founds the action of the Church. It is easy to perceive this circle like a trick just to hide an unsolved problem. Protestantism decided to believe that there is not an official Church in charge of establishing the truth, because God reveals himself not just to the high hierarchy of the Church, but to every believer. As a result, Protestantism has ended into a scattering of a lot of sub-churches, each one with its own specific doctrines. Additionally, we should consider that the problem of truth has to be examined in comparison with the philosophies of truth.

Because the very concepts of "perfect" and "consistent" are far from being perfect and consistent, because we are unable to assess them without using our brain, and our brain is unable to give foundations, guarantee of perfection or consistency, about itself.

You wrote that 90 or 99% of people will carry on looking for a meaning. As a consequence, you should agree that, by posing your question, you have automatically put yourself in this group. Then you wrote that people find toxic answers. If this phenomenon is so widespread, we should at least suspect that the question itself is toxic. It is not difficult to find reasons for this: for example, the question is reductive: it tries, surreptitiously, to reduce life to something else, to a meaning. Besides, that meaning is already supposed to be better than life, because the question itself implies that life without a meaning is not a good thing. Thus we can see that your question is really toxic, because it contains the ready made assumption that life is not a good thing, unless it finds some meaning as its justification. Such a toxic question needs, of course, to be thrown away and we need to keep ourselves vigilant to avoid any other surreptitious coming back of it under different masks.
Once we have gained this step, a better question could be: what are the best ways to approach life, to connect ourselves with life, to have an as much as possible good and fruitful relationship with life?

You cannot know what is real from a philosophical perspective, because the words used in the philosophical question "What is real?" were born in an absolutely non philosophical context. Think of the primitive humans: for them real and being was instinctively related to practical everyday experiences completely missing any precision, any exactness that we expect in philosophy. Then philosophers came and they pretended to force these words and concepts to get exactness and precision. They didn't realize that, in doing this operation, any criterion, any concept, any mental structure they used were already affected by the same lack of precision. It is like wanting to build a solid house by using milk as a material, water as tools, air as mental criterions: I mean, a lot of extremely fluid materials and tools.
This is what real and being are: extremely fluid, slippery, flexible concepts, and now you, like a lot of philosophers, want to establish something solid by asking "what is real?". In this sense I think the first two answers you got are meaningful in my interpretation, because they have tried to bend your question towards some evidence of the fluidity, the playfulness of our human discussions. Touch your body: can you feel the softness of your flesh? We know from science that even diamonds are not absolutely solid.

Yes, essentially I am a relativist / skeptic / postmodern, although I have got some criticism against these positions as well.

Some criterions may be helpful for this problem and discussion.

The Bible is not a 100% faithful recording of what really happened, what people really said and thought. This applies to the Gospels and to Jesus as well. As a consequence, there isn't much point in quoting this or that text of the Bible, because all those texts are already interpretations; then we interpret them, doing interpretations of interpretations.

Jesus was not a maths theorem, nor the Bible is. There is no surprise that the Bible is full of a lot of contradictions; we should add to these contradictions the contradictions that are already contained in our thoughts when we try to interpret the Bible.

This means that this discussion should be made while being aware that we just try to build humble interpretations, without expecting these interpretations to be 100% free from contradictions. You cannot build a perfectly consistent theological system: it is just impossible.

I think that an element that makes Sartre's reasoning incorrect is the implicit assumption that it is possible to make a clean-cut distinction between thinking and non thinking, consciousness and non consciousness. These things exist by degrees and kinds: there are many degrees and kinds of thinking, many degrees and kinds of consciousness. As a consequence, it is impossible to have a precise idea of what thinking is and of what consciousness is. This is a general problem of all philosophy: human words and ideas were born in a context of instinctive human experience, completely devoid of any precision. Then philosophers started using this language to get precise concepts, which implies a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions. I think that philosophy should just accept this essential limit: 100% precise and 100% consistent concepts and ideas are impossible for several reasons. One reason is the one I have just described. Sartre's reasoning seems to ignore this situation of philosophy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said “apparently”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If a person is happy who needs it ? — simplyG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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