The futility of argumentation All argument involves the introduction of distinctions and the election of a specific perspective. The perspective and the distinctions afford a view that has in it a certain measure of reality but that is necessarily partial and relative and in a measure false. Two analyses of an initial situation, two theories, are not exclusive alternatives, one of which being true the other must be false. They are descriptions from different viewpoints, both equally true and equally false. That is why any theory can and will be countered with valid objections.
Philosophers argue as if a word, taken in isolation, can have a meaning.
A word only has meaning within a particular universe of discourse. Argumentation in philosophy is a game, a play with concepts. But it must always be consciously practised as a game. Philosophy cannot live except in an atmosphere permeated with the salubrious air of argumentation, and in its subsidiary disciplines has to make use of the methods and procedures of the sciences. But the arguments prove nothing.