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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 5079965" data-attributes="member: 40359">Ah... should I break out Wittgenstein's language games or just go all out with Pragmatism (not pragmatism in a general small 'p' sense, but capital 'P' official philosophical theory)? Yes, I'll warn you that I am working on my Ph.D. in philosophy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm with you, which is in broad strokes much of the Pragmatist viewpoint. The OP mentioned Platonic absolute Truth which, in some form or another, has shaped thousands of years of thought and philosophical debate. There is a Truth out there that we can get at through rationality. You can have Knowledge (justified True beliefs) based upon this Truth.Pragmatism says that's all a bunch of hogwash. Whether or not there is some objective Truth out there or Reality to be discovered is senseless. Everything we believe and everything we perceive is based upon prior assumptions. Now, any one of those background assumptions can be changed. But to do so, you need to rely on other assumptions or experiences to make that change. So any belief can be altered. You just can't alter them ALL, at least not at once. Overtime, you can re-shape and alter them all so that you have an entirely different set of beliefs, but you need to get there one step at a time.Now obviously some beliefs work far better than others. Dropped objects will fall fits with nearly every experience I've ever had and explains them very well. So it is true in that it's the best fit that we've got. However, trying to make the leap from "true" to "Truth" is where a Pragmatist thinks you start talking gibberish.And much of the inspiration for this came from science. Some scientists may think they are discovering the Truth of Reality, but when you really dig into what science is and what it does, it epitomizes this view. It is just a vast collection of hypotheses that are tested and refined in an extremely systematic way. But every scientific "fact" is "true as we know so far" and are all open to refinement (and in some cases even refutation) based on future experiments. Not to mention each individual science operates on a set of assumptions and point of view. So the truths of biology don't disprove the truths of chemistry or physics. Each has it's own domain of discourse and investigation, and the truths hold within those domains.Now, as for RPGs... uh... well... um... Plato wrote the first campaign setting! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> In the Republic (I think), he said there should be a society where all children are tested for mental and physical aptitude. Then the best of them become wards of the city-state to be trained in physical/combat and philosophical arts to become an elite philosopher-warrior caste as adults. The best among them would rise to the ranks of philosopher-kings and jointly rule the City-state. Sounds like an interesting basis for a setting to me!</blockquote>

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