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Originally Posted by Kat_IV
The more I talk to people, the more I begin to see both sides of issues. I see that both sides have thier pros and cons. If I start believing one side, I look at the other, and start thinking "well, they're crazy." And then I look at the otherside, and see they also have a point, so I go over there. Then I look at the one I was just looking at, and think "well, they're crazy too." And then pretty soon, I'm crazy myself, and I just don't know what to believe in anymore.
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This form of thesis>antithesis analysis is unproductive if you want to investigate the world, as you also have discovered. The ancient sceptics dealed with the problem, but they had a rather specific goal, namely 'attaraxia', or tranquility of mind. They suspended judgement on all things to actually have no impulse for inquiry. Unless you also want this attaraxia, my suggestion would be not to take that route. It's one of the ways (tropes) sceptics used to suspend their judgement.
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So nobody is invalidated, but at the same times, nobody is right. And this realization makes it so much harder to have something of my very own to believe in, because I know on some level, it is probably wrong.
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If nobody is invalidated, and nobody is right, you have the classic case of Socrates and Protagoras, and I can say "Well, if what you say applies to everyone, it allso applies to everything I say. And I say you are plainly incorrect" (I'm not knocking on your views, this arguement is along the lines of what Plato has written in the 'Protagoras'). This is called 'turning the tables', and is possible because epistemological relativism (saying that everyone and no one is right) is self-referentially inconsistent, since it's arguement is self-defeating.
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So the question is, taking all this into account, how does a person hold their own truth, when so much of the structure of our society and our beliefs, are very grey, and left to personal interpretation?
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By doing philosophy?
