Some fields of academic inquiry have lots of fixed points, just immovable bedrock. In Philosophy, I think, has none. Hardly a one, maybe the law of non-contradiction, according to Aristotle. What we have are candidates for fixed points. We say, in effect, suppose for the sake of argument, we treat this and this and this as fixed points. Now, what follows from those three points? Triangulate those, see what kind of a theory you can make of that. See how the questions look if we take those as fixed point. And that's a very valuable tool in itself.

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