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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas that pretend to be able to withstand any criticism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- analytical philosophy has actually several issues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Given that, as you said, it is unexplainable,

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

2) how do you know that it exists,

3) how do you know that it is unexplainable,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Witness and testimony cannot be connected to faith — javi2541997

This is a misunderstanding of how witness and testimony are meant in the context of Christianity. They are not meant like objective or scientific evidence, they are not meant like an instrument that, once you have it, you don’t need faith because you have the evidence of witness.

Moreover, faith in the context of Christianity does not come just from a spontaneous decision to believe in God:

Faith comes from the point that you believe in something so blindly — javi2541997

Faith in Christianity is meant like a chain: there is an experience given by God and this experience is transmitted by those who decide to communicate their subjective experience. Witness in Christianity is exactly like witness of beauty given by artists: their witness doesn’t prove anything, because art is a subjective experience. Nonetheless, it works very effectively in the world of humanity, if we consider how many artworks are considered art masterpieces all over the world. Like you need artists in order to be involved into the passion for art, and this way artists work as witnesses of art, the same way you need other believers who work as witnesses, in order for you to be involved in faith. In this process, faith is anyway necessary, because, as I said, this kind of witness has nothing to do with the scientific kind of evidence.

You confirmed what I said: if those who talk are expert people, you are not interested in considering their flaws: it is like you think “They are experts! They must be right! We don’t need evidence!“, and, on the other side, “Angelo Cannata is not an expert, so, it is good to ask for empirical evidence!”.
The funny thing is that these “experts” are not expected to give evidence of something that can be easily verified (which is a clear definition of consciousness), while at the same time you ask me to give evidence of its non existence! So, you put the burden of proof on those who deny the existence of something that is supposed to be easily verified.
According to this criterion, if somebody says that Santa Claus exists, the burden of proof is on those who question its existence!
So, those who say that the Emperor is naked are to be considered “armchair philosophy”, by principle, whithout any need to check, and viceversa.

I refer to their expertise in the area. If you have equivalent expertise or some other reason others should value your opinions highly then do tell us why? — universeness

It looks like you aren’t even so much interested in understanding the problems contained in the topic: for you what is enough is that they have expertise. As a consequence, what they say must be necessary correct, it must be solid.
What’s the point of making discussions here if experts have to be just honoured because of their expertise, and we have to ignore purposedly our perplexity? Isn’t this just the situation of the Emperor’s New Clothes story?

I could never be that defeatist — universeness

As I said, we are talking about science. In science there is not defeatist or non defeatist, optimism or non optimism. Science is made by scientific procedures, hypotheses that must be clear, experiments, repeatability.

What is clear in research on consciousness?

I will continue to value the work being done by Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Steve Pinker, Demis Hassabis — universeness

Science is not made by respect or value. It doesn't matter how famous or respectable these people are. Science is made by experimental evidence, clarity, strict definitions.

a full and complete definition or concept of consciousness does not exist.
— Angelo Cannata

Why do you feel qualified to make such a statement, — universeness

The question is very simple:
1) either such a definition does not exist
2) or it does not exist.

If 1) then I am right, if 2) then I would like to know it.

It is a complete nonsense that science is doing all over the world, for the following reasons: a full and complete definition or concept of consciousness does not exist. This means that all scientific researchers all over the world don't know what they are looking for; whenever they think they have found something, it is impossible to know what it has to do with consciousness, because when they say "consciousness" they don't know what they are talking about. If they build some definition of consciousness and they find something related to it, it will still be impossible to know if that conscious being is really experiencing consciousness, because you cannot enter inside other beings and see how they experience their own consciousness.
So, scientists have no idea of
- what they are looking for
- what has to be considered evidence of what they are looking for
- how to get evidence that what they found works as what they are looking for and is what they are looking for.

Nonetheless they are spending so much time and energies and conferences on it!

You are mixing scientific understanding and philosophical understanding. Science is based on experimental evidence and is never ultimate, philosophical understanding is based on systems of ideas and is aimed at ultimate understanding and, in this sense, coincides with metaphysics. The philosophical one is impossible for the reasons you said: we are immersed and involved in whatever we try to know. A philosophical understanding is possible if we try to conceive it as provisional, limited, conditioned, imperfect, rather than ultimate.

We get the very idea of being evolved from its very properties and mechanics from the very fact of being inside our being evolved from its very properties and mechanics, so, the very idea of being evolved from its very properties and mechanics is unreliable.

considering we evolved from its very properties and mechanics - we may be perfectly equipped — Benj96

That's exactly the reason why we cannot trust our understanding. The very concept of "understanding" is undermined by the fact that we try to understand what we are part of. Every aspect and element of the action of "understanding" falls into the influence of our subjectivity, so that there is no reason why anything in our understanding should be reliable.

It is because, by saying it, we put us as a reference point to understand the universe: by saying that the universe has intelligence, the reference point to understand what intelligence is is human intelligence, even if we think that the intelligence of the universe is superior to us. It is the same mechanism of imagining God with anthropomorphic attributes: the reference point is human, even if we think that God is infinitely superior to us.

Can you better explain, please?

It seems to me that in the background of this discussion there is the idea that intelligence and consciousness are extremely important elements of the universe, so that we have some tendency to even interpret it entirely under this category, like a conscious universe or an intelligent universe. This is still the ancient human tendency and desire to conceive ourselves as the center of the universe.
From a scientific point of view, intelligence and consciousness are just things that work in the universe, like all other things, like our arms or legs, or nose.
Imagine to interpret the universe as a pan-leggism, or pan-armism, or pan-nosism. It would be ridiculous, of course, because we immediately realize that our legs or arms don’t have such a great importance to make them a key to interpret the whole universe.
Well, is intelligence or consciousness more important than legs or arms? How can we trust any judgement, since it is intelligence evaluating itself? From this point of view, our arms and legs are really much more intelligent than our brain, because, at least, they do not cultivate the pretence to be the center of the world or the basic key to interpret the universe.