Saturday, March 23, 2013

Finding truth using arguments

I have seen almost everyone arguing about one thing or other. People argue for various reasons. Most of the time, I have found, whether knowingly or unknowingly people argue to feel better, by winning the argument. I am somehow uncomfortable with this. Should we argue only for sake of winning an argument. During school days, we used to participate in debates. One used to get "for" or "against" a certain issue for proposing the arguments. Once, you have been given a "for", a thought somewhat gets implanted, that I need to justify and win this argument.

Arguments can also be seen as method to gain insight into different viewpoint and to build an evolving hypothesis to find truth. But in order to use arguments for this purpose, the persons involved or listening to the arguments, need to get detached from the arguments. They should be willing to adapt new arguments, relinquish older ones. When one listens to lot of arguments, there can be confusion. It is essential that argument worth looking into should be filtered. Usable arguments can be grouped in multiple clusters depending on the hypothesis they favour. Some arguments are isolated and if they are violating fundamental axioms, should be discarded. As the arguments evolve, usually few hypothesis will remain. By evolving the hypotheses, we can come closer to truth which we are seeking.