David asked:

From Russel/Whitehead, Frege, Gilbert, Godel, Wittgenstein et. al., there has been a concern for the
reflexivity of a system that expresses a thought pattern which can't escape (i.e., explain) its own
self-validation.

To your knowledge, has anyone solved the problem with respect to "expressions of thoughts" such
as this very question? That is, can the question be raised so that it is not 'paradoxical' or 'biased' in
any way?

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The reflexivity of philosophical inquiry is an exceedingly difficult problem to grapple with.

My question to you would be, Why is it so important that you should be able to raise your question
from a completely neutral, 'unbiased' standpoint?

It is an error to think that because a question has presuppositions, it is impossible to investigate those
presuppositions. What you do instead is formulate a new question (yes, with new presuppositions!)
which investigates the presuppositions of the first question.

In other words, when faced with the impossibility of 'starting from nowhere', one adopts a dialectical
approach. The resulting inquiry will necessarily be open-ended, but that is not an objection to
undertaking the inquiry in the first place.

It's worth looking at Hegel's 'Science of Logic' for the most impressive attempt ever made to solve the
problem of beginnings in philosophy. Little of it is believable, but it is nevertheless highly instructive to
follow the determined efforts of a philosopher who was very much aware of the problem you describe.

Geoffrey Klempner