So, you think that suffering can exist without awareness of it? I don’t think so. I think that suffering is possible exclusively in proportion to awareness: if awareness is 100, suffering is 100, if 50, 50, if awareness is 0, suffering is 0. The medical practice of anaestesia is scientific evidence of it. So, there is absolutely no difference between “actual suffering” and “awareness of suffering”. Suffering without awareness can produce body reactions, but these body reactions are not suffering: when only the body is suffering, nobody is suffering: when doctors are operating your body and you are totally under anaestesia, nobody is suffering. We can see that animals have degree of awareness as well and it is possible to practice anaestesia on animals as well. This seems to me scientific evidence hard to deny.

This makes suffering intrinsic to reality — Joshs

This seems dogmatic, which is, a truth without explanation, which, as such, is quite different from postmodern thought.

Perhaps it is good to specify that the problem I am talking about involves philosophy, not us in general as persons. It is easy to solve the difficulty from the point of view of us as persons, as some of you have already done: we as persons don’t need evidence, nor clear definitions, nor systems of thought, we just need to be human.
Philosophy, instead, either from a metaphysical point of view, or from what I think is like the current scientific drift of philosophy, needs definitions, clarity, evidence, logic, consistency. Even nihilists or postmodern thinkers need some kind of clear context where to put questions. This is where Chalmer’s hard problem, or my modification of it by referring to suffering, becomes a challenge.
It seems to me that, in the context of philosophy, not just humanity, however we define the self, we are in the Catch 22 situation: if the self is something clear, then we are like machines with some kind of particular phenomenon that we can call “self”, that, as such, can be referred even to computers properly made; in this case we have the challenge of agreeing that a machine can suffer and, as such, can deserve empathy, fighting for its rights, even making laws to punish those who make violence against computers. In the opposite case, if the self is unclear, then there is not anywhere anybody suffering, so there is no philosophical need to defend the rights of oppressed people.

there is no self, doesn't necessarily imply there is no suffering — Agent Smith

This is exactly the point of my question: if there is no self, who is suffering?
I think that, even about animals, when we think that they suffer, we are assigning to them at least some degree of “self”.

Putting god/s inside the frame of existent/non existent condemns us to limit the discussion inside that frame, preventing a widening, expansion of horizons beyond that frame, preventing us from thinking about god/s with ideas really worth to be applied to god/s. If you think your god/s exist/s, then you have put your god/s in a cage; if you think that god/s do not exist, you have put your atheism in a cage as well.

Objective does not mean "valid for everyone". — 180 Proof

When I say

valid for everybody — Angelo Cannata

I don’t mean “valid in the opinion of everybody”: obviously, everybody can have different opinions. By saying “valid for everybody” I mean that we can find evidence of its objectivity against any objections. For example, if we think that the existence of a stone is objective, it means that we think we are able to give evidence of it against anybody thinking differently. In this sense the existence of that stone is valid for everybody, despite their opinion.

non-fallaciously — 180 Proof

Non-fallacy doesn’t exist, because it is everytime evaluated by human people.

I mean history as a set of elements that make our human condition. For this reason I specified that I mean all levels of history. I don’t mean it as a fixed system of understanding. It is just a starting point that seems efficient in connecting meaningfully most other points. By “history” I also include the present.

Does "pedophilia" cause more needless harm than less? Does "genocide" cause more needless harm than less? Each Yes "definitely condemns" ... and No raises more questions. In any case, on what grounds can it be non-fallaciously assumed that 'needless harm' is not a disvalue. — 180 Proof

You cannot establish objectively that paedophilia or genocide cause more needless harm than less. You can establish it from specific perspectives only. There are not perspectives valid for everybody, everywhere, everytime. The same applies for the concept of “needless harm”: there is not an objective ground to tell if it’s a value or a disvalue.

I cannot call it a system, because it is not static, definitive. It is my today’s method, that actually I have been practicing for many years. But tomorrow I might change idea.

Do only redemptive figures live in you? How do you eliminate Pol Pot, Donald Trump, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Adam Sandler? — Tom Storm

I make efforts every day to reduce as much as possible the influence in me of people that I consider negative.

In which case is there any position that can't be justified using this personal approach, from pedophilia to genocide? — Tom Storm

You cannot find anything able to definitely condemn pedophilia or genocide. There are answers and counteranswers to everything, so, you and me are in the same situation: a strong reference point to condemn paedophilia or genocide does not exist. They can only be condemned by a kind of everyday work, research, dialogue, exchange of experiences and sensitivities. Laws can give punishment, but punishment is not evidence that society has been able to find a strong reference point to show that paedophilia and genocide are evil. Punishment made by society is just a practical choice.

Yes, exactly, my approach is subjective and interpretative and my intention is to address the OP. Jesus works on me, through me, on my daily life, and I don’t think he is the Son of God; he lives in me like other people I like live in me, like Socrates, Gandhi, Vattimo, Heidegger, Heraclitus and many others.

Every moment you make your best synthesis of all these things and you make your choices. Once you become familiar with this way, you can see that you have no need of principles, values, reference points.
— Angelo Cannata

That's a big claim. Can you demonstrate it? Isn't the act of making such a synthesis itself a reference point and value? — Tom Storm

Of course I can demonstrate it: my daily life, second by second, is a continuous evidence of what I said. The act of making a synthesis is a temporary reference point: the synthesis is never made once for all; instead, it is always criticized, revised, changed, modified, and criticism as well is criticized in turn. There is no absolute, static, fixed reference point.

I think that an essential element that is normally ignored in discussions about postmodernism is history. History considered at all levels: the history of universe, history of nature, of people, your own personal history. If you don’t think about it, history will make choices for you. History includes also your DNA, your body. As people that have some psychological feel of freedom, we try to bring some active contribution in history, by using awareness, intelligence, critical sense, emotions, spirituality, to make choices. This way you don’t need any fixed rule, any dogma, any principle: you received from history your humanity, sensitivity, emotions, intelligence, everything. Every moment you make your best synthesis of all these things and you make your choices. Once you become familiar with this way, you can see that you have no need for principles, values, reference points. You are just a human, a person, a good person, and, as such, you don't need moral systems. What are moral systems for?

...are just manifestations... — universeness

I think you are making the same mistake I already said:

By reducing the fenomenon of lightning to what science is able to understand about it, you are making exactly the same identical error that you mentioned

the young student Max Planck was advised not to study theoretical physics because there was little left to be discovered.
— Art48

The reasoning to be made is simple: if already happened in the past that people thought they had exhausted what was there to be known about certain things, while now we see that actually they had no idea of the infinite iceberg hidden behind what they considered all that we need to know, what makes you think that the same cannot happen in the present and in the future, even about the same things? — Angelo Cannata

Thinking of “Supernatural” as an empty, useless term is possible if and when you think that, by natural explanations, you are able to exhaust all that we need to know, essentially, about something. This is part of the scientific drift that I think is happening today in philosophy. Let’s leave to scientists the job of scientist. Philosophy is wider than science: epistemology is philosophy, it is not science. Philosophy is able to criticize objectivism, metaphysics, science cannot, because this way it would just destroy its own possibility of existing.
Once you have reduced the understanding of lightning to science, you haven’t exhausted at all the understanding of the whole that happens. The same way, once you understand that the crocodile, that ancient Egyptians considered a symbol of divinity, is just an animal, you haven’t exhausted all the stuff connected to that experience. Once you have mastered all the features and characteristics of a letter (how many words, how much ink, how much paper, its weight and anything else measurable), you have understood nothing until you are able to understand its language, its content, its style.
Any material object can be understood in an infinity of ways, from an infinity of perspectives, that make it really infinite.

By reducing the fenomenon of lightning to what science is able to understand about it, you are making exactly the same identical error that you mentioned

the young student Max Planck was advised not to study theoretical physics because there was little left to be discovered. — Art48

The reasoning to be made is simple: if already happened in the past that people thought they had exhausted what was there to be known about certain things, while now we see that actually they had no idea of the infinite iceberg hidden behind what they considered all that we need to know, what makes you think that the same cannot happen in the present and in the future, even about the same things?

It’s like a catch 22 situation. If a madman agrees he’s mad he’s mad, even he recognises it! (should this not actually show sanity?), if he denies his madness well that’s because he’s clearly mad right? — Benj96

It is simply relativism: everything is relative, you can have relative certainties, but not absolute, ultimate ones.

In the twentieth first century, I am wondering how much further is philosophy going in the elimination of metaphysics. — Jack Cummins

First, I think that metaphysics, despite the extremely intricate forest of definitions and positions, can be defined as any system of ideas that you try to use to interpret how things are. So, when you say “I think that certain things can be thought as they were this and this, this way and this way”, you are making metaphysics. This coincides to what in science is called hypothesis: “let’s imagine that things are this way”; “let’s imagine that that planet changed its direction because there is another planet whose existence we don’t know yet”: this is metaphysics.

Now, we need to make a distinction between metaphysics and its usage: I think this is a confusion frequently present in most philosophers. The difference I am talking about is between considering an hypothesis as just an hypothesis or, rather, as something that actually is certain, more certain than proved scientific achievements.
If you say “let’s imagine that being is and not being is not”, since you premised “let’s imagine”, in this case you have made some metaphysics, but you are considering that metaphysics as just an hypothesis. Parmenides didn’t add this premise. He just said “being is, not being is not”. This is metaphysics considered not as just an hypothesis, but as something already obtained as conclusive, certain.

Now, we should also not confuse metaphysics with definitions that we can find in dictionaries. This is another thing that creates a lot of confusion. If a dictionary says that “an orange is a kind of fruit”, the expression looks very similar to a metaphysical hypothesis, but we need to realize that the dictionary is not trying to define what an orange is in reality. The dictionary defines the word, not the reality meant by the word. The dictionary is not saying “that thing that you are seeing out there is an orange”, nor “the thing that you are seeing out there is that kind of fruit with this and that characteristics”. Rather, the dictionary means “if you think that that fruit is so and so, then you can call it orange”, or “in order to call that fruit “orange”, you must check if it is so and so”. So, again, dictionaries are about words, not about the reality meant by words. According to this, we can notice that dictionaries can even contain definitions of things considered, at least by some people, not existing: for example, a dictionary can have a definition of the word “god”, but gods do not exist according to atheists. So, dictionaries are not about how things are, but about what we decided to agree about what certain words mean, independently from their connection with reality. According to atheists, the word “god” has no relationship with reality, but this is not a problem for dictionaries.
Now, going back to Parmenides, personally I consider his procedure an error, because he decided to consider his metaphysics not an hypothesis, but a description of reality that must be considered true, certain, real, objective. His statement has hypnotized a lot of philosophers because it seems fantastically obvious, able to have in itself all the ground, all the basis to make it true, without needing any further research.
I think that Parmenides’ statement is so hypnotizing because it is tremendously similar to a dictionary definition. By using a dictionary (dictionaries contain also some grammar notes) you can achieve the same conclusion of Parmenides without being a philosopher: in a dictionary (or in a grammar book) you can find that “being” is the present continuous of the verb “to be”, whose present simple form, third singular person, is “is”. Since “being” and “is” are different forms of the verb “to be”, then, if something “is being an orange”, then, at least “now, in this moment” it is an orange. We don’t need any philosophy to say this: grammars say this. E voilà, we have found the magic power of grammars, that was exploited by Parmenides: this way grammars and dictionaries can master not only descriptions of words, but descriptions of reality as well.
This is the big trick, I mean the big illusion made by Parmenides.
Now we can deconstruct this and realize that, as a statement about words and verbs, Parmenides’ statement can be easily adopted because, as such, it is a social agreement: societies create words and verbs and agree about their meaning.
But, as a statement about reality, about how thing actually are, how objectivity works, it should have been considered just an hypothesis; we can call it metaphysics if we agree that metaphysics is just an hypothesis.

At this point I would say that metaphysics, if it is considered not hypothesis, but a conclusive and definitive achievement about how reality is, how things are, how things really work, then metaphysics can and should be eliminated from philosophy. Considering something as a definitive and certain achievement should belong to the realm of religion, faith, belief. That’s good, because intelligent believers belonging to religions know that, since their belief is belief, their faith is faith, then it is a free choice, it is not based on any proven ground; if its essential basis has a proven ground, then it is not religion, nor belief, nor faith, it is science.

So, in synthesis, the mistake made by Parmenides, because of confusion between grammars and reality, made him and his followers think that metaphysics is able to be not just hypothesis, but conclusive achievement about understanding how reality is and works. This kind of achievement should actually belong to science, but science is limited to evidence, which, in turn, falls into all the difficulties raised by epistemology. Philosophers like Parmenides think that metaphysics is not based on scientific evidence, but on the power of reason, which is infinitely more powerful than evidence; since reason is free from objections coming from epistemology, it has the magic power of dictionaries and grammars.

In conclusion, I think that metaphysics, considered as a conclusive achievement about how reality is and works, can and should be 100% eliminated from philosophy, because it changes philsophy into religion dressed up as rationality. Metaphysics as just hypothesis is fundamental to work on everything, on science, philosophy, whatever, so it should remain in philosophy and should be well used.

I would say that Bloch’s idea of hope, without making hope an exact aim, has its root on Heraclitus’ idea that everything is becoming. Heraclitus’ idea is very primordial, of course, but then there is Heidegger saying that being should be conceived strictly connected to time: what is being and time other than, essentially, becoming? Obviously, Heidegger’ philosophy is much closer to humanity. Heidegger’s being towards death seems quite the opposite of Bloch’s hope, but I think the Heidegger’s idea about death is not an essential pessimism; rather, it is humanity.
We shouldn’t ask Bloch what to hope for, because, since it is quite a basic and abstract principle, it must remain rather undefined. But we can ask: why hope? I would say: because it is already in our humanity. If we cultivate it, we are just developing something already working inside us. We just need to build better criterions to make it fruitful as much as possible.

It seems similar to the problem of objectivity: objectivity is unable to justify itself: it aways turns out to depend on subjectivity.

I don't think so: to my understanding, for Plato the world of ideas is the world of absolute things, while what is accessible to our senses is the world of relative, perishable, imperfect, deceitful things. How are they the same coin?

All the schematic description I have made is actually Heidegger’s thought, it is not a creation of mine.

It is the consequence produced by the assumption that absolute truth exists. This is what happens:

A. let’s assume that an absolute truth exists
B. if it exists and it is absolute, then it must be universal
C. if it is universal, it must involve every object and every subject, including the subject who is making the assumption A
D. involving the subject who is making the assumption A means that the subject is part of the assumption
E. if the subject making the assumption A is part of their own assumption, it means that the assumption has, as a necessary structure of it, that it is necessarily and always made from inside itself
F. if the assumption A is necessarily made from inside itself, then it is relative to itself, it depends from its own perspective, so it is not absolute
G. if A is not absolute, then it is relative.

In short, we have the paradox: if A, then G, which is: if an absolute truth exists, then it is relative.

As a conclusion, we have

H. absolute truth cannot exist.

and, of course, we have also

I. H is relative.

So, yes, the statement of mine that you quoted is relative. The problem is that you cannot conclude from I that,

L. since H is relative, then

M. some absolute truth must or might exist

because

M = A.

So, my statement

“Absolute truth cannot exist”

is relative, but we have no way to deduce from it anything absolute.

This is our human condition: we are forced to think that everything is relative, and we cannot even use this very thought as an absolute starting point for anything, because it must be relative as well. We cannot exploit its relativity, we cannot exploit anything.

In a similar way it is possible to realize the paradox that “if something exists, then it doesn’t exist”.

I think your question is important. In a radical philosophical way, I find useful to think of evil as objectivity and good as subjectivity; this is equivalent to say that evil is what goes against me, good is me. I think this framework has the advantage of being based on our natural instinct, that in other brutal words would be called natural selfishness. But this would be only a starting point. Then we can realize that good and evil are never 100% separated, as well as subjectivity and objectivity. As a next step, I think the best way to go on is to adopt Heraclitus’ mentality of becoming, which is the basis of what I said in my preceding message. In this context, I think that there is no point in throwing out or taking out any thoughts from our mind: it would be almost equivalent to throwing out our mind itself, and even ourselves. Instead, I think we need just to build in our mind an attitude, a familiarity with a dynamic mentality, based on becoming, changing, progressing, fighting against anything static.
So, in a synthesis, I would say: I am subjectivity, I am good, but contaminated with objectivity, with evil. The world and other people are evil (Sartre: “Hell is other people”), but there is also a lot of good in them. In this context, I just need to elaborate, to plan my activity, to find continuously better solutions, better dialogues or harmonies between subjectivity and objectivity, better contaminations between good and evil.

Certain things we talk about in philosophy are not so much concepts: they are much more experiences. Conceptualizing experiences can be useful, but it is not the best way to deal with everything. Many mistakes and misunderstandings in philosophy come for mixing these two perspectives. Saying that some evil is necessary for good to exist is a total conceptualization of evil and, as such, it looses sight of a lot of human aspects of it, especially personal involvement. On the opposite, complaining, crying, without any further action, happens when the intensity of experience overwhelms our ability to think. The solution is not in finding a balance between experience and concepts: such a balance cannot exist and, actually, there is progress, movement, becoming, exactly because of imbalance: a too perfect balance turns into absence of life, of progress. I think the solution needs to be dialectic, which means, a permanent action of work, movement, progress, self-criticism, among the different elements and imbalances.
So, facing the OP question “What to do...”, what is important is looking not for a conclusive answer, but exactly for something to do, which is, a kind of doing that must be never expected to stop, like instead conclusive answers are.
In other words, a conclusive answer to evil not only does not exist, but we need to be vigilant to avoid any temptation to find or to built it; a conclusive answer must not exist and we need to work actively to make impossible for it to exist. Conclusive answers to evil are worse than evil itself, because evil can change, but conclusive answers are aimed at not changing: they block progress.
So, from a philsophical point of view, facing the question “What to do with evil”, I think a good answer is working on philosophy to make it dynamic, permanently self-critical and in dialogue with experience and subjectivity, avoiding conclusive answers, conceptualizations that can make us disconnected, forgetful of personal human experience.

I think there is a big mistake in that article. Apparently, it makes the big and valuable step of including subjectivity into consideration, together with the traditional objectivity that has been already considered by science so far. It makes creditable statements, such as “We can’t know any consciousness other than our own” and “it’s turning the very lens of consciousness back on itself”. Actually, it doesn’t realize that, as soon as we talk (or think) about subjectivity, we automatically turn it into objectified subjectivity, that is not anymore the true subjectivity, the one that it is impossible to talk about, exactly because of this phenomenon. What I am saying is very clear when he says “while the study of subjectivity, as a physical phenomenon, is different to some degree because it’s turning the very lens of consciousness back on itself, it is not different in kind from other scientific objects of study”. Here is, very explicit, the operation of objectifying subjectivity. He forgets Wittgestein’s important statement “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”: this applies specifically to subjectivity.
It is impossible to truly talk about subjectivity. Then you might ask what I am talking about by saying “true subjectivity”. I am talking about a hope: the hope that you will go beyond my words and think about your own personal, inexpressible experience of subjectivity. We can’t do anything more than hope.

absolute truths — Cidat

Absolute truth cannot exist, because truth is a relationship between two things, the thing that gets known and another thing (like a mirror) or a subject (like a person) that does the action of knowing. As a consequence, it is impossible, for the thing or the subject who is knowing, not to condition the information. For example, it is impossible for a mirror to be 100% faithful to the content of what it mirrors, for the simple fact that the mirror is not the mirrored object.

I think your question is very important, especially today. In my perception, today’s philosophy is going more and more towards a scientific way of considering questions. Perhaps this is an effect of the weight that the “analytic” philosophy is going to have in philosophers’ minds, in opposition to “continental” philosophy. I think this is going to be a big loss in philosophy.

As you wrote,

is a more objective window — Skalidris

. That’s exactly the problem: philosophy is going to ignore more and more what cannot be grasped in an objective way. What cannot be grasped in an objective way is precisely subjectivity and everything related to it, like, for example, relativism, consciousness. With this “scientific drift” of philosophy, a dangerous mentality can become more and more a normal habit of thinkers: the mentality of thinking “what I cannot understand, what I cannot grasp, does not exist, or is not worthy of interest”. According to some philosophers, for example, Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness” does not exist, simply because it cannot be defined objectively. Similarly, consciousness is being explored by philosophy as a phenomenon whose ultimate answer is expected to be given by neuron sciences. More dramatically, the problem of subjectivity, which I mean, relativism, just does not exist. Relativism is considered only in the perspective of social relativism, that can be easily turned into an objective phenomenon. For example, morality is subjective, because different people in society think differently, but this social perspective makes philosophers think that, once we understood the social dependencies that cause different opinions, we have ultimately gained an objective final image of the question. Essentially, what happens is that the philosopher forgets and ignores their own subjective existence; subjectivity is the plurality of others’ opinions, forgetting that this is being thought inside the subjectivity of who is thinking of it.

There is a tiny opposite tendency that is going to be explored in the world: it is philosophy as experience, as meditation, as a chance for an experience of meeting between people, where what is most important is not the discussed topic, but the persons who are meeting each other. This recovers philsophy as a spiritual experience, as it was in ancient Greek, as Pierre Hadot has shown. This way philosophy explores more deeply its connections with literature, art, music, life. These connections are going to be ignored by philosophers with an “analytic”, which is scientific, tendency.

"We" is anybody thinking that neuroscience has not explained consciousness and qualia.
"Meet our subjectivity" is my formulation of what is considered not explained by those who think that neuroscience has not been able yet to explain consciousness and qualia.

Consciousness and qualia will never be explained by neuroscience because actually they can be considered already explained by neuroscience, but we realize that the neuroscience explanation is unable to meet our subjectvity.
They can be considered already explained: they are simply a product of the activity of our neurons. What else do you want to be explained?
I will tell you what else: your inner feeling of being a "I", a subject. Any explanation cannot but be objective and, as such, will always make you feel unsatisfied.
So, actually, we are just pretending that they have not been already explained.

I would like not to be misinterpreted as somebody who has not respect for science: I appreciate it infinitely, I think I have a real scientific mentality and I am proud of it, against pseudosciences and against confusion between science and philosophy. What I said is limited to the level of philosophical radical criticism.

the fact that scientific theories keeps being test by experiments is, in my opinion, a more objective window to the world then the endless debates of philosophers which are based on other debates, which are based on other debates and on and on — Skalidris

Science is more objective from the point of view of science, which means, from its own point of view, which means self-referential. Even a drunken man is objective from his own point of view.
Some philosophers try to make a difference by admitting their dependence on their own point view; as a consequence, they are aware that everybody and everything is conditioned by their point of view. In this context, the fact that science is based on experiments doesn’t make it more objective at all, because, at this fundamental level of criticism, we don’t even know if reality exists, we don’t even know what the meaning of “reality” and “exist” is; so, how can any experiment make science more objective, since it is based on something we don’t even know if it exists?

and on and on where no one really knows where a theory comes from except from pieces of logic and imagination. — Skalidris

This is true for science as well: if we go backwards on and on, asking for the base of every answer we receive, we end up in infinite and totally ungrounded theories and postulates; one of the most basic of them is the assumption that reality exists and that we know the meaning of “reality” and “exist”.

I think your ideal of independent thinker doesn’t work because this effort of independence is exactly the effort already practiced by all philosophers. The independence imagined by you is already a contradiction itself, because it has already a lot of dependency from your culture, your mentality, your psichology, everything of you. Independence just doesn’t exist. Since we are all in this situtation, obviously including me writing these things, the best thing is not to try to be independent, but rather try to gain, as much as possible, awareness of our dependencies, awareness of the cages we are into. This is the real wisdom. That’s the reason why your professors seem not based to science: because they know, I assume, that science isn’t independent at all: it depends as well on our structures, culture, mentality, everything of us.

Important concepts are those ones considered important by the persons. Obviously, they are different according to different people, but we can make discussions and see if we can find agreement on some concepts. So, some concepts are deep for me, other ones for you, other ones might be important for both of us.

Depth is subject to a lot of shallowness and meaninglessness, because anybody is able to make a cocktail of evocative words. Real depth can be proven by certain criteria:
- connection with important concepts
- openness towards further important connections
- connection with the richest elements and aspects of today's culture
- connection with humanity.

This way we can even determine degrees of depth, for example "heart" is deeper than "mind", wich is deeper than "car", which is deeper than "34523".

The fact that the universe seems to your mind to satisfy your cause-effect scheme does not mean that your mental scheme expresses entirely how everything works. This is the mistake made by Russell's inductivist turkey.

So, God should exist to satisfy your cause-effect mental scheme, the same way God should not exist to avoid conflicts with the mental schemes of atheists.

It seems that you have quite a moderate idea of "objective", since a few checks are enough for you to think that something is objective. This makes the discussion very ambiguous and confused. In philosophy "objective" means absolutely, totally independent from our judgement. That's the reason why I think objectivity is just a human fantasy, since you cannot refer to anything without making it automatically related to your judgement.

what our our reasons for trusting reason — Paulm12

It is important to note that it is reason that defeats itself. Realizing that reason is a circular process, as you have shown, is an entirely rational process: you don’t need any element external to reason to show that reason is fundamentally unreliable, self-contradictory.

This means that the statement “everything is relative” is not an external idea introduced by relativists. It is reason itself that says that reason is invalid. As a consequence, once reason has concluded that reason is invalid, you cannot apply the criterion to the sentence itself, to say that, as a consequence, the statement is wrong. This is the mistake made by those who apply the statement “everything is relative” to itself, to conclude that the statement itself is relative and, as a consequence, something must be non-relative. This is a mistake, because, once reason has said that reason is invalid, you cannot apply the conclusion to the statement itself, because, applying the conclusion to itself would mean ignoring what it has said: once reason has said that reason is invalid, the consequence is that we must stop reasoning, which means we cannot carry on by applying the conclusion to itself. After reason has said that itself is invalid, applying this to itself again is an invalid action. Applying the conclusion to itself would mean treating reason as something that is still valid, still working.

As a consequence of all of this, such concepts like “foundation”, “fundamental”, need to be abandoned. We need to resign ourselves to give up the comfort and reassurance given by the idea of foundation. There are no hard props to rely on, everything is like liquid.

It is important to note that “liquid”, “relative”, does not mean “nothing”. Liquids have a certain degree of consistency. We just need to calibrate our actions to that degree of consistency. You cannot stand on water, but you can swim and a ship is able to travel on it; water is even able to make holes on rocks and metals, if sprayed with enough pressure.

Here is the difference: theology is done from the inside of a religion: you must be a believer, belonging to that religion, in order to produce theology. An atheist or a Muslim cannot do Christian theology, a Christian cannot do Muslim theology. Theology is this: you belong to a religion and you try to build a structured understanding of your religion.
Instead, anybody can produce philosophy of any religlion, because, as a philosopher you are independent and you are free to produce your philosophical understanding of that religion, from the point of view of your philosophy. In this case, what you are doing is not theology: in philosophy of religion you can even question in full every meaning of that religion. An atheist can do a philosophy of Christianity, interpreting the phenomenon of Christian religion from his point if view.
In your philosophy of Christian religion you can even claim that God does not exist. Instead, if you are in the context of Christian theology, saying that God does not exist is a nonsense, a contradiction, it just means that you are not doing Christian theology.