How can I make explicit my worldview?

Making explicit one's first-order position is extremely valuable to enter immediately and deeply into someone's philosophy. Unfortunately, this practice is not common amongst philosophers. But you can choose to go against this trend. For once, you can look at, and not through the glasses of your worldview. Stating one's position is like showing one's philosophical identity card. Every good thinker should have one, and be able to show it when needed.

I warmly invite researchers to do this same exercise, for them, and to facilitate debate with the research community.

Here is a short method proposed to answer first-order questions:

• 1) Provide tentative answers, here and now, to the 1st order questions
• 2) Reformulate them in a modern fashion

For example, taking into account the current scientific knowledge. Compare and integrate the different formulations of the problem proposed.

• 3) Answer the problem

As much as possible, reconnect the solution with first-order questions, apply many consistency tests, and a wide variety of tests to improve it (use e.g. the criteria and tests in Vidal 2009a).

Vidal, C. 2009a. Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison. Working Paper. http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~clvidal/writings/Vidal2009-Metaphilosophical-Criteria.pdf.