PhiloType is a free service. From your answers to 36 questions about everyday situations, it introduces the type closest to your way of thinking and the philosophers grouped under that type. This page describes what the service is for and how we make decisions.
Mission
Creating a place to rediscover thinking
「考える」に出会い直す場をつくる
PhiloType is a place for people to notice how they think. What you notice can be revised as many times as you like.
“Rediscover” has three meanings.
Meeting philosophers
You get to know philosophers, such as Sartre and Kant, who thought in ways close to yours.
Meeting your own way of thinking again
“So this is how I think.” You notice ways of making judgments that you usually do not pay attention to.
Updating as many times as you like
If you answer again, your result can change too, so it does not end after one time.
Vision
A world where it is normal to keep asking, “How do I think?”
Just as MBTI made “knowing your personality” common, PhiloType aims to make “continuing to question how you think” common.
In a personality test, the result is settled at “I am type X.” PhiloType assumes that the result changes, as in “I am close to LATS now, but six months from now I may be a different type.”
Values
Not to give answers, but to keep asking
答えを出すためではなく、問い続けるために
The type result is the entrance. The experience of continuing to think beyond it is the value PhiloType offers. Every product decision is checked against this one sentence.
The core value is the “why.” The three design principles below are the “how.”
Honest Framing
We do not hide the violence of sorting people into 16 groups. We also state the incompleteness of the framework itself. When we are unsure whether to write something honestly even though it may cost us trust, we write it.
Designed Serendipity
We introduce the philosophers at the opposite pole. The reading guide recommends books that go against your type. When we are unsure whether to give the expected result or to prioritize surprise, we prioritize surprise.
Provisional, Not Permanent
A type is a provisional coordinate, not a fixed name. Even so, we present the current coordinate clearly. When we are unsure whether stressing revisability has made what we present vague, we present it clearly and say that it is provisional.
The five pledges
Sorting people into types tends to lead to labeling and to fixed self-images. We set out our countermeasures as five promises.
A type is a hypothesis, not an essence
It is a snapshot of the tendencies visible in your answers. It may change tomorrow, and that is fine.
We cannot tell you who you “really” are
Our position is that a “true self” does not exist in the first place.
No type ranks above another
All 16 types are equally interesting and equally incomplete.
An unexpected result has value
A result that does not match your self-image is exactly where new thinking starts.
The framework itself is incomplete
Classifying human thinking along four axes has limits. Question it.
Limits of the framework
PhiloType is an entrance to philosophical thinking. It is not designed as academic philosophical research.
The four axes are built on binary oppositions from Western philosophy. They are not a universal model that applies equally to every culture.
The placement of philosophers is a hypothesis based on analysis of their published works. It has not been approved by the philosophers themselves or by anyone connected to them.