If you are honest with yourself, you will see it in yourself. You can ask yourself, what does this philosopher have that the other philosopher doesn't have? Answer: He appeals to you more. — spirit-salamander
Only if they call into question those vital philosophical positions which one is drawn to. How could one so troubled not?Can we make an effort to read and understand thinkers we are not drawn to? — Tom Storm
Often the matter of truth does not seem to be quite clearly distinguishable from the matter of taste. ... ...
A certain relativism cannot be denied here. It seems to be objectively given. Individuals are the standards of their chosen philosophy. Everyone truly needs to realize this. — spirit-salamander
There are simply people who are more inclined to pessimism, others to philosophical optimism. Some are more oriented towards the concrete, others more towards the very abstract. Then there are those who prefer to proceed analytically and others prefer to proceed continentally synthetically. There are many who prefer a poetic philosophy, many others like it very dry and prefer gray theory. Some love only the deconstruction of everything, the epistemic nihilism, others would rather dwell in their thoughts in a well-constructed theoretical edifice built on solid foundations. — spirit-salamander
Everything (logic, religion, metaphysics, ect) is just a way of life. We are like people running on fire and everyone changes their minds many times in their lives — Gregory
If true, it raises follow up questions - can this be overcome or dealt with in some way? How is it identified? — Tom Storm
Can we make an effort to read and understand thinkers we are not drawn to? — Tom Storm
There is One True Philosophy?
Why should we think that? — Banno
That there is more than one path up the mountain is pluralism and not "relativism". — 180 Proof
The true philosophy is one that somehow reconciles all of those different “tastes” together into a single cohesive whole. Optimistic and pessimistic in the ways that each of those is practical. Bridging the abstract to the concrete, the analytic to the synthetic. Both mathematical and artful, well-structured but also well-presented. Breaking old things down and building new things up out of those parts. Etc. — Pfhorrest
The trouble is with those who view their fact-based arguments as backed up by truth rather than just including true things. It's not the same as talking about an actual fact. — Judaka
This totality stuff again? The "one complete" map of the territory is the territory itself, which is useless as a map and therefore why we make and use abstractions – simplifications – of the territory in the first place. The one is many but the many is not one – how could it be (e.g. Eudoxus' exhaustion method, the continuum hypothesis, incompleteness theorems (re: Gödel & Chaitin), lack of absolute reference frame (locality, SR), computational irreducibility)? Sorry, Pfhorrest, I don't see how philosophy can, in the end, do anything other than reflectively problematize the ineluctability of ignorance (which the above theoretical discourses corroborate) rather than discovering / uncovering / justifying "the one truth".Because there is at most one complete truth about anything. — Pfhorrest
C checks and yet extends B while also deflating / defeating A. YMMV.(A) relativism denotes that all truths or paths are equally justified (re: sophistry of self-subsuming categorical nonsense)
(B) perspectivism denotes that experience is bias/body-dependent and varies in interpretabillity as a bias/body changes (re: subjectivity)
(C) pluralism denotes that there are two or more incommensurable, complementary aspects to each object, problem or domain constituting a non-flat 'landscape of discrete values' (re: objectivity)
“What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can accept or reject as we wish, it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it.” — spirit-salamander
Taste may decide which direction we fail at philosophy, but succeeding at it requires overcoming such biases. — Pfhorrest
I use these terms / distinctions a little more precisely:
(A) relativism denotes that all truths or paths are equally justified — 180 Proof
For one cannot agree even on the deepest philosophical foundations. Whoever says that non-being is always and in every form and without form preferable to being, does not come to a common denominator with someone who says that being is better in and for itself and in every manifestation than non-being. — spirit-salamander
I’m not sure we really overcome such biases entirely, though — Possibility
That's a nice picture. But do you think it's ever feasible? For one cannot agree even on the deepest philosophical foundations. Whoever says that non-being is always and in every form and without form preferable to being, does not come to a common denominator with someone who says that being is better in and for itself and in every manifestation than non-being. — spirit-salamander
According to my theory, however, your vision could be achievable if people become more and more alike and similar. That is not excluded, provided that one believes in biological and also cultural evolution. The corners and edges in the different personalities, which corners and edges just seem to dispose philosophically haphazardly, are carried off so slowly until everything is smooth and equal. All would then devote themselves in the future merely to the one philosophy. — spirit-salamander
Other than grammatically, I don't see any significant difference between our respective definitions.Not all relativism accepts the claim that all truths are equally justified, but rather, take the position that all justification is relative. — Fooloso4
but that the ‘vision of unity’ is at the heart of true philosophy. — Wayfarer
Often the matter of truth does not seem to be quite clearly distinguishable from the matter of taste. — spirit-salamander
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