**TL;DR – Practicing self-reflection and examining the consistency of our own beliefs is just as useful as arguing about arriving at a true proposition and is also needed to justify our conduct and beliefs.** In modern society, arguments and debates tend to be conducted to arrive at a true proposition or for pure rhetorical competitions. When we see someone arguing about anything, it's usually to determine the truth or falsity of the statement or convince an opponent and/or spectators that your argument is true or favorable. However, arguing for only these reasons removes the ethical need to examine one's beliefs and the truth behind our own thoughts. Before arguing any withheld belief, we must engage in self-reflection and examine our own rational discourse's consistency to justify our lives and conduct. Socrates and other ancient ethicists understood that caring for oneself was to exhibit an attitude toward oneself and others and society, attend to one's own thoughts and attitudes in self-reflection, and engage in ascetic practices aimed at realizing the best version of ourselves. [We must not aim to be right about our propositions as much as we need to be consistent about our own way of thinking](https://iep.utm.edu/fouc-eth/#SH4a). This is particularly recommended for political beliefs and arguments; many people support inconsistent ideas to their own way of living. An example of this would be an anti-vaxxer claiming to live a healthier lifestyle and refusing to take a vaccine, [which would cost several lives](https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2021-02-11/lies-cost-lives-the-anti-vaxx-movement-and-its-impact-on-covid-19). Anti-vaxxers clearly do not hold much consistency in their arguments; therefore, if we promoted a discourse that recognized the need for self-examination on our beliefs, it would prevent many fallacies from fact/rhetoric-based arguments. Anti-vaxxers can always argue to arrive at a truth proposition by using case-by-case arguments on the potential side effects of vaccines, and they can also argue in terms of rhetoric convincing spectators by using misinformation.

**In general, academic "philosophical position creation" tends to be about testing your ideas' consistency against the "greats" and their bodies of work. If it stands quite well against those, then you are sometimes considered to have a very "valid" position.** - If your position has a consistency to it that stands the test against other philosophers---if it's "made of" the right amount and configuration of ideas so as to interact well with and/or compare nicely against previous famous work---then it's often considered a "go" in academic philosophy settings. It often takes a lot of work and intense self-examination of the entirety of your own views to arrive at a place like this: You need to know as much as you can about why you think what you do and how you can change the way you think and whether you need to at any points. - The consistency of your beliefs is thus likely more important than arriving at a "true" proposition, at least in the academic respect, since [the nature of truth](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/) is so elusive as to be considered impossible by most philosophers at its root. The idea is more to test the consistency of your ideas against theirs to see what work can happen there. "Truth" itself is perhaps always in question by the very nature of the philosophical examination and enterprise. Sometimes all you can do is test the consistency of your ideas against others'.