I don't know how you fail to see that what you described is the same thing I described. What is optimizing and systemizing if not efficiency and realism except concerned primarily inwardly, and vise versa? It's all thinking, and thinking is concerned with reasoning and logical wholes. The only difference is how it's directed naturally. As you age, you realize that your natural preference is not whole without it's counterpart. Inward, systematized understanding is unwhole without quantifiable, empirical understanding. What are you systemizing except the very things you perceive, which is necessarily dependent upon empirical observation? Or even if you put real effort into sticking to a priori, where do you actually go with that information? What's next except what's perceived, which is, as I said, empirically understood?
What happens when someone points out to you, for the first time, that philosophy is masturbatory? I mean, it is. It has no real function once you've learned how logic works, except you enjoy it. And why do you find that offensive?
Further, I have discovered that many people jump to many conclusions that are either false or non-conformable for one reason; They do not check their beliefs against logic or empirical observation or both. I care that the things I think are true, the systems I create in my inner world are actually correct, and that requires both logic and[/] empiricism. While those beliefs may be entertaining or reassuring, they have no reason to actually think they're true. Even if you don't care if your beliefs are actually useful, I cannot empathize with being alright with believing things that are just as likely false as they are true, or even worse.
For me, the fact that only the truth can be functional came after I searched for the truth. What mattered to me was truth, not how the truth could be used.
