Phyllo, that just means that even though 2 objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time, you can still say they’re the same.
How do I live a good life?
good question, but is it an ultimate question?
fair enough. The reason why I don’t read loads of philosophy books, is so that I can look at what people are saying by what it is. If you say ‘law of identity’ I think, well firstly there can be no such thing, but i’ll ignore that and debate the topic in hand according to what I think You mean by YOUR words. I admit I equally loose something in that, I dunno is that a deficit overall?
Or i’d say ‘everything is not what it is’, as whenever you observe and describe a thing, it is always composed of or part of something else.
What is “good” for you?
It is a tautology, but it is also a platitude.
Unfortunately, Only Humean has not answered my question. His question could be or even is also my ultimate question, if I have such at all. But I would prefer the question “How do we live a good life” instead of his question “How do I live a good life”. Usually humans live in groups. My main philosophical interest is life. So, to me, life philosophy is the most interesting philosophy discipline - supported by anthropology and epistemology.
If I could tell you that, it wouldn’t be much of a question, would it? The primacy of the question is in its immediacy and application to a running project.
“What is good?” is a subsidiary question, insofar as it’s relatively uninteresting besides in its application to the main question. It’s also a question that can lead you off down many blind alleys. “Good” is a profoundly contextual word. There’s little value in abstracting what makes a good cupcake, a good novel, a good day and a good haircut and trying to tie that into a good life, for me. It would be more instructive to prioritise those four (and many others) in their importance/necessity in leading a good life.
I like your refinement of the question; a good life (for me) unquestionably is lived in a social setting, and the good and health of the society and the culture is an integral part of that. Thank you for clarifying my question 
Good answer by OH but Arminius rightly raised that question.
OH answered that too, but the trail does not end here but goes well beyond.
After what is good, the next question in the line would be how can you know what is good?
And, at last, all boils down to what means you have to know the good?
And, that is the seeker itself. The trail ends here. So, the ultimate question in the philosophy is know thyself.
You have to know, working and the limits of calibrating tool before calibrating anything from it, as nothing is possible without it. Everything else comes later.
with love,
sanjay
But then this:
You think this through and come to conclude that “the good” pertaining to any particular human behavior is X. But it becomes X only because of the manner in which you thought it through.
And then someone else thinks it through and comes to conclude that “the good” pertaining to that particular behavior is Y instead.
So, what “means would we have to know” in order to establish what is truly “the good” here?
And yet pertaining to actual flesh and blood men and women down through the ages, the “trails” are always embedded in particular historical and cultural and experiential contexts.
How then does the philosopher chisel away at all of the extraneous factors in order to come down to that frame of mind which would allow us to truly “know thyself” such that secure in this knowledge we will always choose Good over Evil, Right over Wrong.
That’s right. So we have to and obviously like to live with the question and can say: “this is our ultimate question in philosophy”. That’s okay.
No problem. Thanks for your response.
The answer to that question is indeed not easy. But I think that the answer can sometimes appear by thinking and talking about the question. I had such moments, but after them, when I was in another mood (!), they always faded a bit. 
If on the other hand there is no ‘you’, then the question becomes, ‘what is good’.
Are there any ‘you’s’?
If there would be not you, there would not be any need know what is good, in the first place.
You have to have some you(ego) in order to know what is good for you.
Former predates later.
The question what is good implies what is good for x,y,z….
with love,
sanjay
Good point. The fact of the matter though is that there are multiple functions which combine to be ‘you’ but there is no actual physical thingness of you. So ‘what is good’ is a universal thing as opposed to ego based ~ what is good for me and therefore others too. This is where we seem to go wrong, we take the personal perspective and apply it to all others. Whereas if we took the position that ‘we don’t matter’ in the equation, and then that everyone matters equally, then we wouldn’t be judging others who don’t meet our standards.
Then, we come back to square one, know the mean of knowing, which is again you. You cannot know others also if do not know you.
[b]
Thus, no matter how you look at the issue, every angle would require Know Thyself before anything else. That alone is the cornerstone of philosophy and sole purpose as well. Merely know yourself, and you would be done with the whole of philosophy, or rather knowledge. It may seems be an exaggeration prima facie, but it is not.
And, know thyself is the combination of metaphysics and Epistemology. When you start digging deeper, you will realize that as deeper you go, more converging they both would seem to be. And lastly, a point would come, when there would be absolutely no difference between the two.[/b]
with love,
sanjay
HaHaHa,
Could you provide a graph of some sort depicting those points of Sanjays and what hill of beans it would amount to?
Why can magic be real?
To me thats the ultimate mystery.
Zinnat
I don’t think it is possible to know thyself. 
The aspects of ‘you’ observing cannot also be observing itself [except via an alt-perspective [indirect]], and 90billion neurons have more info than any consciousness can comprehend even about 1% of.
Info aside, I suppose we could say that knowing you is not the same as knowing the info in your brain. Yet its still tricky if et al possible, for the observer to observe [directly] itself, and perhaps that is why we are thrown into this world together!
indeed. We can know everything about physical reality and the human form, and yet are left with the mystery which remains; that you exist!
Two ways:
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As you are tying a really small rubber band around your finger, make a very mindful mental note that it represents your assumptions which get in the way of thinking effectively.
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When one of the assumptions is being called to mind, pull hard, really hard on that rubber hand and then let it go.
What the process of a change of habit doesn’t teach, pain ultimately does.
Then you must define “think” as you’re using it here.
How can there be a “thinker” without a being in existence?
How does essence come before existence? First there is the conceived, then the birth, then the being experiencing his unique existence in all that that entails, including shaping his own meaning and purpose, again and again, through his emotions and mind, the influence of others and the outer world.
Essence can only take shape and “become” out of the unique human being being born and then experiencing.
The rose is the experiencer - it’s essence is it scent. There can be no scent without the rose.
There can be no essence without the process of the human being and its experience of living.
Maybe because the human mind evolved to consciously needing to question.
How else would we eventually come to ask the ultimate question - what does it mean to be human?
Or what does it mean to be me?
Does reality lead us to ultimate questions or do those questions ultimately shape our reality?