# A basis for truth & INTP vs. INTJ stuff



## ManWithoutHats (Jun 2, 2012)

*<This post is a response to a private message that was too long to post as a private message. Nonetheless it might still be an interesting thread for anyone with enough time to waste reading it>*



Interesting indeed. I was afraid that might have been completely irrelevant to your situation but I'm glad it wasn't. It owes much to my reflections on my own philosophical development. The most important realization for me was the idea that trying to ascertain objective truth through science is not only arbitrary to the human experience but fundamentally impossible. 

I'm a little fuzzy on the details of your predicament, so I'm not exactly sure what direction to go as far as advice. If your main problem is that you can't find a foundation for resolving intellectual problems then I would recommend reading up on some of the great great thinkers who built their philosophies from a foundation of absolute skepticism or nihilism. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism is perhaps the most fundamental (since many of the others are heavily influenced by it). Beyond that, Nietzsche is probably essential for anyone trying to come to terms with what the hell truth actually is. Then there are Sartre and the Existentialists. I'm not really very familiar with the Anti-Realists and I'm sure there are numerous other great thinkers who would be relevant. Heidegger (who I know very little of) comes to mind. If you're not familiar with them and are interested, here are some links from the good old Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy --
Kant, Immanuel: Metaphysics*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Transcendental Arguments*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Nietzsche, Friedrich*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Phenomenology*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Existentialism*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

If it's not so much that you lack a foundation for truth, but that your skepticism makes you unable to find a firm position on specific problems, then I would recommend searching out some thinkers who present original and thought provoking views on them. In our mass-populist-democratic society (assuming you live in the West and especially the U.S.), redundant mediocre ideas tend to flood the media and permeate in politics. For any well-minded novel thinker, this may promote a feeling of arrogance and a view that there are no good solutions or right perspectives, since shallow and sometimes blatantly naive ideas are often the most prominent and readily available on intellectual matters. For a particularly (what i consider) thought provoking site--
Piero Scaruffi's knowledge base

From what I've read, yours sounds like a problem that a lot of INTPs run into since they tend to think about everything as a part of some unified truth, INTJs are more likely to compartmentalize problems and search for specific answers before moving on to other problems. As a result INTPs sometimes feel like they can't find mental peace if they can't find answers that fit a convergent theory of truth, whereas INTJs tackle each problem specifically and are less stressed if the answers don't form a unified picture. 
To put it another way, INTPs are inductive thinkers; they develop a sort of personal system of truth (iT) as they take in new information on various problems(eN), striving for a coherent framework from which they can draw specific unified answers (the system itself is the priority, the problems at hand are the means for discovering it). INTJs are deductive thinkers; they generate unique solutions almost as hypotheses (iN) and use them to deduce answers to the problem at hand (eT), naturally providing ingenious solid answers but leaving the conceptual framework open. 
If the universe is a neglected run-down house, INTJs fix the plumbing in one bathroom, then another, then the kitchen, and then get to work on restoring the power with ingenious solutions for each; meanwhile the INTPs walk from room to room observing and redrawing the blueprints from scratch and seeing how the distribution of pipes and wires might have led to these problems. 
For one more thought, I find meditation extremely beneficial to maintaining a clear perspective among other psychological benefits. Art in all its mediums is also priceless (for me) in 'opening one's mind', to sound as cliche as possible.


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