Perspectival Methodology

For every philosophical methodology, certain presuppositions can be identified. If the results of the application of a philosophical methodology are conditioned by those presuppositions, then it would appear that philosophy is relative to the presuppositions of its methods, prompting an attitude of skepticism with regard to the possibility of genuine philosophical inquiry. This study seeks a solution in the structure of this apparent problem, by using the alleged relativism to presuppositions as a methodological expedient. Different theories on a philosophical topic are treated as perspectives that get triangulated to a new solution according to the ways in which a putatively relativistic system can be reduced to a non-relativistic system. The result is a meta-methodology that preserves the progress that philosophy has already made, while enabling new research by means of this proposal for perspectival reduction. In the course of arguing for this methodological direction, a number of issues in philosophical methodology are reinterpreted according to this proposal, including: naturalism, inference to the best explanation, reflective equilibrium, phenomenology, intuitions, thought experiments, as well as the nature of philosophy itself.