why do you think mysticism is inherently radical? — Tzeentch

I think that mysticism in inherently radical because I conceive mysticism as a spiritual experience that connects with its content with an intimacy, depth, strength, superior to any other kind of spiritual experience. So, for example, a Roman Catholic mystic experiences the content of his/her religion in such a way that these things become to them like daily food, emotional fulfillment, the source of each moment of their life. This way, a dogma like the doctrine of the Trinity could be something exposed to many perspectives to a theologian, or to a normal believer, but to a mystic it becomes something so strong, so deep, that can be compared, emotionally, to a sexual intercourse. This means that the mystic will experience the dogma of Trinity in an extreme radical way, not in ways so open to discuss different perspectives.

That’s why I said that mysticism today is difficult, but not impossible. I agree with you, but I think that what you said represents some kind of theoretical mysiticsm, not what really happens. What you said is true in theory, but in practice an orthodox Catholic, for example, cultivates a strong intimacy with God conceived as Trinity, God incarnate in Jesus Christ, God who is the founder of the Roman Catholic church, that is meant to be as the only authentic place where you can experience the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ. Whithout these things, a mystic can be a mystic, but not a Roman Catholic mystic. In this situation he cannot, as you said,

say the same thing about the mystical as a non-theistic Taoist — Fire Ologist

.

I think that, even from a Roman Catholic context, what you said is possible, but only with enormous efforts, difficulties and problems, which make it possible just in theory.

I think that today genuine mysticism is more difficult than in the past, because it cannot escape the challenges coming from radical criticism about our categories, conditioning, connections between different religions and spiritualities. How can you experience today a really deep mysticism, experiencing a strong closeness to God, while, at the same time, having to admit that there are other religions, other Gods, other theologies, criticism about metaphysics? I am not saying that it is impossible, but a today's mystic person cannot just adopt the same mystical attitudes and ways that were adopted by the mystics of old times.
Today we have to admit that too radical mysticism is equivalent to fanaticism or naivety, unless it takes seriously the challenges I have talked about. But a mysticism that is not radical and not deep is just not mysticism: what makes mysticism is exactly radicality and depth. This makes mysticism difficult today.

And it may well be the case that -- again, uniquely to this problem of subjectivity -- what we think about the self constitutes the self. — J

I think that there is a risk in every attempt to describe the self: turning the description into a rule. This creates the premises for racism, violence and dictatorship. If we say "the self is for sure this and that", the automatic consequence is that those who look like having a different concept or experience of the self are at risk of being conceived as less human, less conscious, less intelligent, deserving less respect. When I try to describe my being lost in the sea of my experience of myself, other people might tell me that they do not perceive at all all these intriguing thoughts and feelings. Think, for example, of Buddhists, who think that our self has to disappear in the unity of the whole, of the universe, although I am not sure that now I am describing properly Buddhist ideas about this. Or think of extroverts, who find themselves happy and fulfilled not when they think deeply about their self, but when they experience other people's living presence, connections, relationships. Or think about languages (I am not sure about this, but I have heard something like this) that don't have at all the first singular person pronoun "I", or perhaps "you" as well.
In this context I think that any kind of philosophy of the self should be conceived like a special branch of art, like, for example, the music of Mozart. Mozart is a marvellous, great and fantastic musician, but if someone tells us that they don't like Mozart, they rather like Haydn and Beethoven and they find Mozart meaningless and boring, there is nothing we can complain about, despite Mozart being universally recognized as one of the top musicians of all times.
This is one more reason, in my opinion, why we should be skeptical about attempts to find scientific or quantum explanations of our experience of the self, consciousness, or of the self of other people.
On the contrary, if these things are framed in the much freer mentality of art, they can become great points for reciprocal dialogue, exploration, with a mentality of openness, interest and respect towards those who have radically different ideas and experiences about the self.

it's that there is nothing useful to say about them — T Clark

is not interesting and valuable — T Clark

I think that, by referring to usefulness and interest, you have touched an important point. I think that an essential reason why philosophy today is in a crisis is because it seems not useful nor interesting. I think this is a result of becoming more and more technical, professional, scientific, precise, this way becoming so abstract that even professional philosophers can't clarify what this clarity is supposed to be used for, once it is (hypothetically) reached. Today's philosophy has become less and less human, less and less related to life, to the human experience of existence. I think that attention to experienced subjectivity, even at the cost of renouncing to some control, power, clarity, precision, has an ability to recover philosophy to life. We would just need to work on it, especially to make it in a dialog with the precision of analysis.

Consciousness can be studied just as much as oranges can — T Clark

I think that my perception of the situation of consciousness can be compared to a house inhabited by ghosts. Science can see the house and it says “Here is consciousness: we can see the house, we can study it, that’s all”. My feeling is that there are ghosts in that house, but, since they are ghosts, I have no way to give any evidence of them. On the other side, science cannot say “There are no ghosts in that house; the whole is the house, there is nothing else”. In other words, science cannot say that what it cannot study does not exist. It would be easy to object to this: how do you know that something does not exist, since you acknowledge that you cannot study it? In this situation the conclusion is that no dialogue is possible. It is similar to the question about the existence of God: it is impossible both to prove that God exists and to prove that does not exists. Science cannot claim that consciousness can be entirely reduced to what science is able to study of it. How can you know that you have exhausted all that is possible to know about any topic? So, I think it is more correct to say that science can study some aspects of consciousness: this is clear, provable. But, once science has given evidence of those aspects of consciousness that it can study, how can it say that there is nothing more?

Despite this situation of impossible dialogue about ghosts, I like to explore possibilities, if something more can be clarified, if some kind of dialogue is possible yet.

Perhaps a point of dialogue is the concept or experience of uniqueness.

Science can study what is shared, repeatable, measurable, but is completely unable to understand things that are absolutely unique. In every object of study and knowledge science selects things and aspects that are shared and studies them. About consciousness, science can study what is shared, repeatable, measurable. Every single object has its uniqueness, obviously, but normally this doesn't make it specially interesting. For example, a flower might have tiny shades that make it unique, actually every flower has its unique aspects, an identical flower will never exist again, but this doesn't make it specially interesting. The unique moments and aspects of consciousness and subjectivity are different, because they are what makes us feel that we exist and we are not just working machines.

If I think of myself, I get lost in the question why I am in this body and not in another body, in this period of history and not in another one. From a scientific point of view there is a quick answer: you feel yourself in your body because your atoms and molecules do not coincide with the atoms and molecules of other people. This answer can give me an idea how my brother can feel different from his friend. But both my brother and his friend have an essential aspect: no one of them is me. I feel myself in a completely different situation from my brother and from his friend, because I cannot command either of their bodies, but I see that I can command my body. When you say that I am me because of my atoms, this assumes a perspective that can be the perspective of my brother, or the perspective of his friend. But, if I consider seriously my perspective, the special fact that I am inside it, from my perspective there is something special in my situation. I cannot tell myself that I am just one like a lot of other ones. If this was true, why don’t I feel me in the body of other people? Why does my perception of myself have this special feeling, that I feel in me, inside myself and not inside anybody else? If I pay attention to my feeling of myself, it is impossible to me to tell myself that I am just another one: I would lie to myself. My brother’s friend is just another one, both he and my brother are “others”. But I am not “other” to me: how is that? How is that all other people are all “others” and I, instead, am not “other”, but me? Why am I not just another one to me, the same way, from my perspective, his friend is another one to my brother? Instead of being I in these years, in this body, it could have been somebody else, so that my perspective would not exist, the same way it didn’t exist in the past. Somebody else might have been born in my body, so that today there wouldn’t be me feeling me and exploring these questions. Why there is me now here? What makes me be and feel me? It would be easy to say that I feel me because there are mechanisms in me that produce this feeling. The problem is that this answer ignores the inevitable speciality that my perspective has to me.

I think that oranges are different from consciousness, with reference to this discussion. I think that oranges are not very subjective. That's why science is able to say a lot about orange, a lot of strong, measurable and very unquestionable things. About consciousness, science is even unable to determine if it exists and what it is exactly. The reason, in my opinion, is that our experience of our subjectivity here and now is almost entirely coincident with the concept of subjectivity itself. I think that our experience of subjectivity that happens in the present is the most subjective thing that we can think of. In this situation, wanting to objectify subjectivity, to be able to study it, is like wanting to put a kiss or a hug in a slide to be able to observe it with a microscope.

I didn't mean that real things are different from the study of them. Of course everyone knows that studying an orange is not an orange. What I meant is that they think that they are studying subjectivity, they think that subjectivity, or consciousness is what they are making their research about. Against this thought, I oppose that they do not study subjectivity, they do not study consciousness. This criticism of mine, obviously, can be applied to everything, if we generalize it. Obviously, a lot of work of physicists who study the stars, for example, is not strictly and directly connected to the real stars, but to our ideas of them. This is inevitable. However, I think that certain topics can be objectified more easily, while other ones are more exposed to completely losing any connection with them. I think that objectifying stars, for example, is not a big issue. On the contrary, I think that science is so powerful and so valuable exactly because of its strong objectifying methodology. But objectifying subjectivity sounds to me like wanting to answer to a hug and a kiss with a mathematical lecture. I don't deny that even hugs and kisses can be reduced to maths, although infinitely complex maths. But I think that the task of philosophy is not just reducing and understanding. As I said in my opening post, I think that, for some topics, the criterion of wanting to understand is wrong even in philosophy. I think that philosophy can relate itself with topics in ways different from wanting to understand, to reduce, to explain. We know that philosophers, especially the ancient ones, were not all just thinkers and "understanders": philosophy was to many of them a style of living.

Essentially I agree: I think that it impossible to get rid completely of objectivism, both in our language and in our ideas. But this doesn't mean to me that objectivity is the world, is reality, is where everything ultimately ends up to. What I do is an effort and I think that this effort is condemned to be unable to give any evidence about itself, about its own existence. On the other side, I am sure that objectivity is condemned as well to be exposed to criticism, because it is unable to give evidence of being independent from subjectivity.
I think that the best way is trying to build a dialog between subjectivity and objectivity. This sounds very similar to me to the dialogue that, at the end, "analytical" and "continental" (or postmodern) philosophers have tried to elaborate.
In this context, personally, I have a tendency to favor subjectivity, relativism, postmodernism.
I also agree, essentially, about the problem of questioning and self-questioning. It is never possible to give evidence about our questioning being really radical: it can always be accused of being just hypocrisy. Still, I think that efforts are worth doing: if nothing can be proven, not even questioning, we can at least make attempts. I think that this criterion of "making attempts" is very useful to avoid getting stuck in infinite and sterile polemics.

Emily Dickinson is provocative, critical, rebellious, of course, and I appreciate this. I agree that the very act of doing philosophical research about consciousness can hide an attempt to assert a specific concept of consciousness that wants to meet or even impose the specific expectations of a specific society. In this context I agree that even what I interpret in myself as an instinctive perception, feeling of my present self, could be nothing but a result of what my society has been able to introduce into my way of thinking and perceiving myself.
However, it seems to me that my feeling myself as a living perspective, as a point of view present here and now, still deserves consideration. After all, I make no metaphysical claims of being somebody. My feeling me is just a feeling and I take care not to want to understand it, as I think that trying to understand is not a faithful approach to this feeling.
I think that my concept of self feeling in the present can help to have respect of others, not only people, but also plants and animals.
In this context I even think that, probably, my feeling I and Dickinson's saying "I am nobody" are almost the same thing, despite looking like the contrary of each other, because both of them are against a metaphysical understanding of the I, rather taking the way of humility, criticism and self-criticism.

From a humorous point of view, I find this topic very similar to this one, that is about knowledge rather than language.
In both cases, a thought comes to my mind: so you think that human language (or knowledge) is now so advanced, so great, so powerful, so perfect, that now the problem is not about finding its possibilities, but about finding its impossibilities! So, now our difficulty is about finding what is not perfect in our language or knowledge. We have serious difficulties at finding limits in our language and knowledge! In other words, we are discovering that we are gods and now, just out of curiosity, we would like to see if there is something able to show that we are not exactly 100% gods!

Epistemology includes criticism about the limits of our scientific knowledge and it warns us against the idea that we can get ultimately objective knowledge. So what does it mean "epistemically objective"?

Actually, from what I said, we can deduce that nothing can be expressed by language. When I say "your subjectivity", I guess and hope that you will be able to find in yourself what I mean. Actually this happens continuously whenever we communicate and use language, even when we communicate with ourselves, which is when we just think.

I think that the idea that, by definition, you cannot express by language, is your subjectivity. When we express things by language, we objectify them. That's why we can talk about subjectivity in general: because we objectify it. But your specific subjectivity cannot be expressed. If we try, we are objectifying it, it isn't anymore your subjectivity. This also means, of course, that by saying "your subjecivity" I cannot know what I am talking about. What I am talking about is actually my hope that you will find inside yourself something similar to what I consider "my specific subjectivity".

The example of Daniel Dennett shows that we don't need to be believers to be human. It's the same debate when atheists show that they are able to have humanity, sensitivity, empathy, without needing a religion or a metaphysical morality. I agree with them. When I say that, once we limit ourselves to objectivity, nobody is suffering when someone is tortured, I don't imply that attention to our inexpressible subjectivity is necessary to be human. This would mean posing subjectivity as the basis for a new dogmatic religion. Rather, I think that attention to subjectivity should be considered like art. If someone doesn't have the spirit of a musician, or can't see anything interesting in Van Gogh or Shakespeare, it doesn't mean that that person is a beast ready to kill and torture anybody. Attention to subjectivity is not something that we need, it's not the salvation of humanity. It is just something that some people talk about, refer to.
In this context I think we should acknowledge that there is no way to definitely, strongly, ban violence from human behaviour. This is the confusion contained in the New York declaration. They want to define a scientific ground to ban violence from humanity, but violence is subjective, you cannot avoid it by taking science as your weapon against violence. Dennett was a good hearted person, he didn't need to add anything to his objectivistic mind to be a generous heart, but that's all. The New York declaration is an attempt to go beyond this: they try to turn science into the necessary thing that religions and morality have been revealed unable to be.
This is, I think, where attention to subjectivity can not only do something, but especially show the correct methodology: the correct methodology is integrating in a dialog acceptance of unprovable arguments, of which subjectivity is the main one, and science.
The mixture, the messing up of references to subjectivity and objectivity in the New York declaration is not a completely bad thing: attention to subjectivity and objectivity need to go together, but in a clear dialog, aware of their different characteristics, rather than just in a confused mix, where science is surreptitiously tempted to fill the place that has been left empty by the deconstruction of religions.

Thank you very much for this information. I think that the attempt of these scientists is remarkable, especially because they compromise their seriousness by involving themselves in a field that is extremely important, but also very confused and exposed to criticism. I think it is an important sign of a cultural sensitivity that we are getting more and more in last decades.

I believe it would be useful to clarify the points that can cause confusion.

The core basis of the declaration is in the few lines paragraph that starts with “What is consciousness?”:

What is consciousness? The term has a variety of meanings. The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness focuses on one important meaning, sometimes called “phenomenal consciousness” or “sentience.” The question here is which animals can have subjective experiences. This can include sensory experiences (say, the experience of a particular touch, taste, sight, or smell) as well as experiences that feel good or bad (say, the experience of pleasure, pain, hope, or fear). This sense of the term “consciousness” is what Thomas Nagel had in mind when he famously asked “What is it like to be a bat?”.

Essentially they say that what consciousness is is completely unclear. Their ultimate reference point is Nagel’s famous article, which doesn’t clarify anything, remains ambiguous, so that, at the end, these scientists have no idea of what they are talking about in their declaration. I am saying this not to ridiculise these scientists, but, on the contrary, to point out their courage, as I said.

I think that the essential reference point in talking about consciousness is the dialectic relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. This is what is never clarified by Nagel, nor by these scientists, nor by anybody else, as far as I know in my quite limited bunch of information on the topic.

The paragraph I mentioned “What is consciousness?” is confused exactly because it mixes and messes up references to objectivity and subjectivity in trying to explain what consciousness is.

If consciousness is an objective phenomenon, it coincides with Chalmer’s “easy problem of consciousness”. As a consequence of this, suffering does not exist, since it is just a series of physical and chemical reactions happening in our body, that has been programmed by nature to favour our survival. This means, for example, that, when a human is tortured, nobody is suffering, what we have is just a series of objective, mechanical, material, measurable phenomenons, the same way when you hit a computer that has been programmed to show signs of suffering, actually nobody is really suffering, despite whatever that computer has been made able to show: it is just a “show”, there is not any actual “somebody” suffering inside that computer. This means that, even when I feel bad, I feel pain, I must interpret it the same way: I am just a theatre where a show happens. Any feelings, pain, suffering, desperation of mine, has to be considered by myself just as mechanical phenomenons. When I am suffering, actually nobody is suffering. This coincides with certain metaphysical constructions that we can find in spiritualities and religions, where everything is explained in terms of a system that works as a whole, despite its complex, diversified or even conflicting and opposing components.

For some unexplained and inexplicable reason, we humans talk also about subjectivity, which coincides with Chalmer’s “hard problem of consciousness”. To the extent that it is exactly “subjectivity”, it cannot be explained and it has to be impossible to explain it. When we explain something, even when I explain something to myself, we can’t escape using shared concepts and reference points. To the extent that they are shared, they are not entirely subjective anymore. This means that, whenever we talk about subjectivity, we cannot escape turning it automatically into an objective concept made and expressed by objective and shared reference points, so that what we are talking about is not anymore the subjectivity we wanted to explain. This meets Wittgestein’s statement “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. According to Wittgestein and to what I said, we must give up any attempt to talk about subjectivity. I disagree with this, because language is not exclusively objective and shared, otherwise art wouldn’t exist, it wouldn’t make sense. Actually there are people who think that art can be entirely reduced to objective phenomenons. This coincides with people who answered Chalmers that a “hard problem of consciousness” does not exist. The same way it is not possible to give evidence of the existence of consciousness meant as subjectivity: if such evidence exists, as those scientists agree in the declaration, then it is not subjectivity anymore, it is objectivity.

I don’t think we can build any morality, as the declaration tries to do, basing on an objectivistic interpretation of consciousness. They wrote

“Third, when there is a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal”.

Why is it irresponsible? In a mentality that relies on objectivity, a stone that has been broken into small pieces is not something worse than when it was intact, just in one whole piece. The same way an animal, or a human, or a plant, that has been torn in pieces, it doesn’t matter how much “suffering” has been caused, is not something worse than a living being happily enjoying their life. At the end, this is what our cruel universe shows us, not caring at all if our minuscule planet Earth exists or not.

At the end, we can see that the declaration, by talking about “irresponsibility”, tries to create a scientific basis upon which to build some kind of morality, which is destined to failure, because morality, by definition, cannot be scientific.

Fortunately the declaration is confused, because it contains references to subjectivity as well. They just don’t realize that subjectivity cannot and mustn’t be proved. As I said, if we prove it, then it is not subjectivity.

I think that, if we want to include references to subjectivity in our minds, talks, discussions, mentalities, we need to stop with Wittgestein’s mentality and accept that language and philosophy have to accept and welcome their ability to refer to unprovable things and concepts. We need to welcome the methods and styles that are typical of art, poetry, music, and accept the fact that frequently, when somebody asks us to give evidence and clarity of what we are talking about, we cannot give it, they cannot claim evidence and clarity as something always essential, always required and necessary.

In other words, we need to integrate analytical philosophy, which wants clarity and objectivity, with continental philosophy, that accepts to venture into unprovable concepts.

This is like the joke of those who lost their keys in a dark place, but decided to look for them in another place, because in the other place the was light. You can’t solve problems by ignoring them just because they are uncomfortable. If you see that your car is going towards a wall, the solution is not to close your eyes.
Philosophy shows us that everything can be criticized. The very concept of knowledge can be criticized. This can be uncomfortable and depressing to those who don’t like to explore different ways of thinking. If you don’t like to explore different ways of thinking, what is the point of doing philosophy?

You have already mentioned what we can never find out: what is the physical universe? Whatever you answer will just move the question to the concepts you used in your answer. So, at the end, what we can never find out is the meaning of your question itself. Is there anything in this world that we have been able to understand in a definitive way? Is knowledge possible? What is knowledge?

If there is no other 'world' for us, then there is nothing behind this world of ours, so there is no meta-physics — Wolfgang

Metaphysics in philosophy is not when you refer to some other world; you can be fully metaphysical even without any reference to any other world.
Therefore I think my question is still without an answer. We can refer it to your latest message: what is supposed to make it non metaphysical? Are you able to say something that is obviously non metaphysical and not just because you say that it is non metaphysical?

What is supposed to be non metaphysical in your reasoning, what makes it non metaphysical? Saying that you don't want to be metaphysical, or that you want to criticize metaphysics, doesn't make it automatically non metaphysical.

It depends on your definition of metaphysics. There isn't a simple and universally agreed definition, so I will give you my definition: metaphysics is whenever we build a system of ideas. As a consequence, we cannot escape doing metaphysics, because, as soon as we think, we automatically build some organisation of ideas, so we do metaphysics. What can make a difference is how we deal with it. If we consider our constructions of idea as just hypotheses, acknowledging that they can never be true, then it's fine, we are recognising our human limits. The problem is when we think that our construction is true or might be true. Then we are putting ourselves in an anthropocentric mentality, thinking that reality is, or at least might be, the way we imagine it.
I agree that this scheme subjectivity/objectivity needs to be criticized, but how? What I see is just people building and rebuilding new or more complex metaphysics, pretending that this way they have done something different, something beyond. But I can't see where the difference is.

Every existent is instantiated in the world with its modality and interacts with it by means of this modality — Wolfgang

This is a metaphysical statement. As such, it is exposed to the problems and criticism that metaphysics is exposed to.

World 1 is the world that exists independently of humans, World 2 is the anthropic world — Wolfgang

You cannot escape metaphysics, with all of its problems, just by acknowledging an unknown World 1. You have already built a metaphysical view, because you have built a system of ideas. As such, it is exposed to all criticism that metaphysics is exposed to.

So, that's not my brain doing anything — AmadeusD

On the contrary, your brain is doing everything: it interprets the presence of the eggs, it counts them, it calculates them, draws conclusions and, finally, you used it to write your message. This is actually the essential problem of realists: they decide to ignore their involvement in whatever they think and say, as if what they think and say was something fallen from the heavens and they were invisible and non-existent. This is also the essence of all tricks made by magicians: they try to convince you that what you are seeing is just reality, without any interference of them.
The same way, like a magician, you are trying to convince me that, in calculating that the eggs are four, your brain has done nothing! Who decided that they are four then?

Logic, is not an opinion — AmadeusD

Who establishes that it is not an opinion?
Saying that logic is not an opinion implies that you can validate its correctness without using your brain. Can you do this? Can you give evidence that 2+2=4 without using your brain? Even if you use any kind of external instruments to get evidence of it, at the end of any validation process there is your brain drawing the conclusion “...then 2+2=4 is correct”. Who guarantees that the final conclusion made by our brain is correct?

The psychologist's perspective is limited inside the field of science. Philosophy wants to understand ultimate questions: that's why philosophy tries to criticize knowledge itself and even criticism itself. Science is unable to transcend its own level, because doing this is not a purpose of science. Philosophy tries to transcend systems, to be able to criticize them from a wider and wider perspective. Science cannot go wider than its own field, because science is a closed system, limited by what can be measured, repeated, expressed with maths. Philosophy is not limited to this, philosophy wants to criticize any system, including science. In this perspective, it doesn't matter if science is supported by experiments: philosophy wants to go beyond what can be supported by experiments.
In this context, thinking that psychologists can solve the problems of philosophy doesn't make sense. Actually, this is not even an intention of psychologists. On the contrary, they have respect for philosophy, because they know that philosophy studies things at a different level.

Logic, being (in the context Im taking it) a closed system, doesn't need to be 'checked'. Its either accepted or not — AmadeusD

If accepting logic is ultimately up to you, then logic is just an opinion. Since you get from logic the hypothesis of the existence of an external world, then that hypothesis is an opinion as well.
This seems to confirm my idea that philosophy is, or should be, art. An artist doesn't claim that things are the way they conceive them; rather, an artist just shares their opinions, emotions, subjectivity, feelings. This way logic is just a particular way of expressing and sharing our subjective, artistic, emotions and feelings.

unless im being dishonest — AmadeusD

You don't need to be dishonest to mistrust reason and logic. The problem is that the only way we have to check the reliability of reason and logic is to use them on themselves. How can we trust reason and logic, given that we have no way to assess them without using them again? How can I trust my brain, since I have no way to assess it without making itself in charge of making the assessment, without giving it the responsibility of assessing itself?

using reason and logic — AmadeusD

What makes you trust reason and logic?

This last option is from Berkeley? — Joshs

Yes, it is very similar to Berkeley.

It would seem to just reverse the roles that subject and object play in a realist account, by placing an idealist subject in the position of the really real object. What you left out is a relativism which eliminates the distinction between reality and appearance. This allows for the existence of that which is outside of or other than the subject without claiming any foundational status for what appears. — Joshs

I think that your point shows again the essential importance of taking perspectives into account.
I agree that, until what I said, we have just replaced the external reality with our subjectivity. We can call it solipsism.
But we need to go further.
Once we realize that the very idea of “reality” is a creation of our mind, it needs just a step forward to realize that anything we think is a product of our mind. This means that the very idea of being and any logic that we use to structure our thoughts cannot be trusted, because they are products of our mind. The conclusion is that, at the end, we can never know what we are talking about, we have no idea of what the verb “to be” means and we even have no idea about what “having no idea” means.
At this point, many people object that, this way, philosophy itself becomes simply impossible, because we never know what we are talking about. This objection is, essentially, what produced the creation of analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophers say something like this: “In the middle of the great confusion of perspectives, criticism, interpretations, let’s concentrate on making clarity, precision”.
I would notice that, when those people say that “this way philosophy itself becomes simply impossible”, it is not philosophy that becomes impossible, but what they think philosophy is, or must be, that becomes impossible.
They keep an essential idea of philosophy as “understanding”, or “finding truth”. I think that, for any philosopher, it should be obvious to ask “who established or establishes what philosophy is or must be?”.
At the end, the remedies and objections of realists and analytics seem to be very similar to the funny story where some people lost their keys in a dark place, but they look for them in another place, because in the other place there is light.
If our research takes us into difficult and uncomfortable places, what is the point of rejecting our research just because it makes us uncomfortable?
My conclusion is that we are forced to accept that philosophy needs to consider a concept of itself as art, rather than as science. If this makes difficult to understand each other and to distinguish serious research from rubbish, we just need to have patience and to work on the problem, rather than reject it.
Actually, if the objection about understanding each other and about rubbish was serious, how is that art is possible? Is art itself entirely just a lot of rubbish, confusion and misunderstanding?
I think this is what makes some philosophers adopt sorts of middle ways, by saying that external reality might exist and so on.
I think that the hypothesis that external reality might exist is a nonsense: the hypothesis that reality might exists ignores that this hypothesys conceives reality in a subjective way, of course. So, what’s the point of supposing that reality might exist the way we imagine it? It cannot be the way we imagine it, because any imagination is a mirror and any mirror can never be the reality it mirrors: it is always a distortion of what we call “reality”. This means that we have no idea about reality, mirrors, mirroring, being; we have no idea about anything and we cannot escape this conclusion.

I don’t think so: I think that, at that point, an infinite number of questions, perspectives, horizons, hypotheses, come up, waiting for us to explore them.

For if one is unable to know anything about the external world, then one can not make any claims about it at all – even claiming that knowledge about it is impossible, because that too is knowing something about the external world – namely, that it is unknowable — Thales

I think that you are right from your own perspective.
Actually, what makes a lot of confusion in these discussions about external reality, metaphysics, truth, and so on, is the fact that perspectives are ignored. Instead, perspectives, and the way how they develop and interact in the debate, are essential.
Let’s try to clarify this question.
Let’s start from realists’ perspective. They say “Reality, meant as an external world that exists independently from our subjectivity, exists”.
Non-realists’ perspective starts from agreeing with realists. Non-realists say “Let’s agree. Let’s think that reality exists”.
Next step taken by non-realists is to aknowledge the existence of subjectivity: whatever we say about reality comes from our subjectivity.
Until this point, the two perspectives coincide.

Now let’s go forward: if everything we say about reality comes from our subjectivity, we have no way to have any contact with reality.

Last paragraph, that I have highlighted in italics, is where you find the logical inconsistency. The inconsistency is produced because this point forces us to create a new perspective, that is the non-realist perspective. At this point we have an inconsistency because the new perspective is actually not fully created yet: we realize that we don’t have contact with reality, but we are still thinking in a mentality that assumes the existence of reality, or, at least, assumes it as possible.

In order to solve the problem of this inconsistency, we need to complete the creation of the non-realist perspective. To make it complete, we need to realize that, given the described situation, we not only don’t have any contact with reality, but actually, as a consequence, we have absolutely no idea about what the word “reality” means. We need to realize that thinking that it is possible to think of the concept of “reality” is an illusion. If whatever we think comes exclusively from a contact with our own subjectivity, then the very idea of “reality” is an illusion. It is like those who have been born blind and, nonetheless, that try to figure some ideas about what colors are. They do it, they say that they have tried and they have been able to produce some ideas, but it is clear that, whatever idea they have been able to produce inside themselves, it can only be an illusion.

At this point we can reinterpret and make clear what non-realists say to realists: they actually say “What you call reality must be considered something we cannot have any contact with”. To make it better, they should say “What you call reality is just an illusion produced by imagination”.

Now you can see that there isn’t inconsistency anymore, because we have clearly separated the two perspectives. We don’t say “Reality cannot be reached”, but “What you call reality cannot be reached”.

You have touched such a lot of the deepest questions that have been faced for thousands of years by all human beings. The specialists in these questions habe been essentially philosophy and religion.
So, first thing first: you are not the first one person in the world raising these questions. People have spent lives, energies, every kind of resources to deal with these questions. Their results can help you a lot, but you cannot understand anything if you want get quick answers: this would be the marketing mentality, of getting things easily, quickly, simply. The problem with this mentality is that it, because of this way of proceeding, says implicitly, and contradictorily, that these questions are not important. I am not saying that this is your mentality: it is just a risk, if you don’t have the patience of dedicating to your questions an appropriate amount of time and study.
After making your list of questions, I would suggest you to put them in order, any order, whatever order seems best to you. Then start from the first one and start doing some research. At the same time, try to organize your familiarity with philosophy, by organizing a path of study of it.
This way you will have taken your questions seriously and you will show yourself continuously that you are taking them seriously.
On the contrary, if you will get randomly distracted by one random question, random discussions, random everything, you will enter the contradiction I referred to: you are giving importance to your questions now, but the way you will end up dealing with them might tell that actually you aren’t.

One of the main latest phenomenons in philosophy has been the distinction between “continental” and “analytical” philosophy. More specifically, I think that continental philosophy has become essentially postmodern philosophy, while we know that analytical philosophy is essentially philosophy of language.

Postmodern philosophy has ended up realizing that we cannot talk about truth, reality, objectivity as if they were free from the relativization coming from subjectivity, that is present whenever we think and talk.

It looks like analytical philosophy didn’t like this final result, because it attacks radically our human pride of being able to get in control of everything. As a result, analytical philosophers decided to reveal (I am saying this intentionally: they decided what to reveal before finding what would have been revealed) that whatever we think is managed by language, including whatever we think about subjectivity. This way they have felt like they recovered philosophy to its pride of being in control of everything.

On the other side, postmoderns can still object that, while studying language, analytical philosophers cannot avoid to do this from inside it, so that the philosophical study of language cannot make any claim of being objective. To the degree that it is objective, it is not philosophy, it is just science. In all aspects where it is not objective, it falls, despite its intentions, into the category of postmodernism, that is, subjectivity.

You can see that this story, behind the external line, is a story of emotions: the human desire to get in control, get power, understanding, knowing what we are doing. Another side of emotions, instead, likes to dive into them, not to get in control, but to listen and enjoy them; this swimming inside can reveal to us what we are, much more than the method of gaining control can.

We might say that the whole history of philosophy is an emotional history. When we discuss if reality exists, what being is, whatever line we follow, our decision about our choice on the direction to follow is largely dictated by our emotions. Afterwards, we make all efforts to tell others and ourselves that our choices are a product of logic and reasoning, because admitting that they come just from emotions and desire would make them weak in a debate.

That said, I think that today a good philosophical way of appreciating emotions is to cultivate the awareness that, whatever we talk about, we are always under its influence, we talk from inside it. Even if I talk about a tree in the forest, I am talking from inside it, because, as soon as I start thinking about it, my emotions and my thoughts are already influenced by it.

Facing this awareness, we can decide if we want to enjoy the pleasure of swimming inside what we are talking about, welcoming the awareness of our weakness as human beings, or if we still want to behave like immature children, who want control, power, domination. Science is, to a certain degree, on this side, but science does this from inside its well limited framework, science doesn’t make claims of ultimate and universal understanding, that is instead what has made and makes a lot of philosophy childish, immature, psychopathic: wanting total power, universal power.

Philosophy can dialogue with science, but, if it wants to be philosophy, rather than an immature child who pretends to make science behind the mask of a philosopher, I think it should explore this experience of swimming inside emotions, concepts, logics, reasonings and openly admit it.

Those monks and so called spiritual masters who cultivate control of emotions do it always from inside a specific understanding of what emotions are, what the world is, what we are, otherwise they wouldn’t have any reason why they should control emotions. At the end, they are still inside this immature will of power, that is raised in our emotional world whenever we try to build metaphysics. It is clear that, according to what they do, they consider emotions as something negative, that needs to be put under control. But how can you know yourself if you embrace the road of metaphysics, framing your mind inside a castle of ideas, wanting to master and to understand, rejecting the way of listening, of weakness, of diving in, swimming, admitting your subjectivity, enjoying your humanity from the inside where you already are?

These are the ways I see about philosophy and emotions:

1) let’s leave to science any work that is inspired by control, maths, measurement, power;

2) let’s be philosophers and do philosophy with the essential awareness of being inside our humanity, weakness, subjectivity; there is a lot, an infinite world to explore from this perspective, because it involves our entire existence;

3) let’s cultivate a dialogue with science without pretending to go beyond its limits by trying to build confuse, ambiguous, not so honest mixtures of science and metaphysics.

Conclude that not everything is relative? — Banno

We cannot conclude that not everything is relative, because this actually brings us to the contradictory consequence that everything is relative. Let me show the process. The starting point is

1) something is non relative.

But from here we have these consequences:

2) non relative means universal, that is, same for all subjectivities, able to take into consideration all subjectivities.

3) As a consequence, "universal" means able to take into consideration the subjectivity of those who say that something is universal.

4) If we consider that, whenever someone thinks that something is universal, this is always conditioned by their subjectivity, we have the consequence that the idea of "non relative" is always relative, which is equivalent to say that

5) everything is relative.

If we think that 5), as a consequence of itself, is relative and this takes us to the conclusion that something is non relative, we are taken back to point 1). But we have seen that point 1) has, as a consequence, its opposite, that is, point 5). Moreover, as I said before, we cannot apply point 5) to itself, because this would mean adopting a logic that it shows as being unreliable, because it is relative, as point 5) says.

In this situation, I think the best thing is to adopt point 5), but not considering it as an absolute statement, which would take us to point 1). Rather, we should consider the statement in point 5) as just the best we can conceive, the best way we have, as humans, of thinking about everything. This way we can adopt point 5) without considering it an absolute.

I know this objection. I'm going to explain you the question.

If we say that everything is relative, we are forced, by the content of the statement, to apply it to itself: if everything is relative, it follows that the statement itself must be considered part of everything, so that it is to be considered relative. As a consequence, we are forced to conclude that it is impossible to say that everything is relative, because this statement makes itself relative. Actually, we can reveal a trick in this conclusion, because it chooses to accept and adopt a logic that has to be considered relative, that is, unreliable. Let’s see in detail how the trick works. What follows is the first sight, apparently correct and complete, of the reasoning:

1) we say that everything is relative;
2) we apply the content of the statement to the statement itself;
3) we conclude that the statement itself is relative.

Now let’s reveal and show the steps that are actually hidden and ignored in this reasoning.

1) We say that everything is relative.

1a) Hidden step. We accept and adopt the logic that allows to formulate the statement, in order to deduce its consequences.
2) We apply the content of the statement to the statement itself.

3) We conclude that the statement itself is relative.

3a) Ignored step. If the statement is relative, its logic cannot be adopted, because relative means unreliable.
3b) Ignored step. If its logic can’t be adopted, we must nullify point number 2).
3c) Ignored step. As a consequence, the statement “everything is relative” can’t be criticized, because, in order to criticize it, we need to make use of its logic, but we have seen that adopting its logic brings to negate its logic itself.

As is shown, once we have realized that everything is relative, we can’t carry on by applying the statement to itself. If we want to carry on with something, we need to adopt different logics, different structures, different languages and ways of reasoning.

If we think that, since its logic is invalid, then even point 1 must be negated, this conclusion, actually, doesn't take us to any better situation: we will have to face even more difficulties and contradictions.

My conclusion is that, since we cannot think without using our mind, therefore whatever we think cannot claim any truth, any reality, any objectivity.

It is, but I cannot understand how you get the conclusion "therefore one cannot think".

Can you give any evidence that in what you said there is anything, even just a tiny bit, free from any conditioning of your mind?

I cannot know why I am barking loud: it is like wanting to explain why we do philosophy. We just do it, we don’t know the reason. We don’t even know what “reason” means, so how can we know the reason?
You cannot believe me, because we believe what we think is truth, but I am not saying truth, I just bark.