The Codex Quaerentis

The title looks a bit pretentious.

Reply to Virgo Avalytikh Any part of it in particular?

Codex Quarendae - just looks a little pretentious to me. The subtitle is good though.

Also, I don't believe this is grammatical, since codex is masculine but quaerendae is a feminine form. Maybe quaerendi? Is it a genitive that you're looking for?

Or maybe quaerentis.

Reply to Virgo Avalytikh Thanks! That's actually one of the things in particular I was wondering about, because I don't actually know Latin very well at all and cobbled this title together from online dictionaries and translators.

I think I am looking for the genitive, yes. "Book of/about Questions/Questioning" is the general notion I'm trying to capture.

(I am pretty attached to calling it "the Codex [something]" though, so despite the pretentiousness I think that's not going to change. At least it's not "Codex Sapientiae" anymore; even I thought "Book of Wisdom" was too pretentious).

Codex Quaerentis is what you want, then.

Reply to Virgo Avalytikh Thanks so much! I'll try to edit that soon.

And it's edited now. Thanks again.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'm looking for feedback both from people who are complete novices to philosophy,

That's me.

I am not sure I will be able to do all the readings, but here are some initial impressions...

I thought your text was very accessible. There was very little that required multiple readings, which is what I prefer if I am being introduced to a subject. I don't know enough about philosophy to know if you are always right, but your history of the various philosophers/philosophies was clear and understandable.

I think the perspectives of the philosophically educated are likely to be more important, but I am happy to let you know that, as a novice, it seems understandable so far :smile:.

From what I've read of you, I would not call your approach to philosophy "pragmatic." This isn't intended to be an insult, it's just not your approach.

Reply to ZhouBoTong Thank you, that’s very good to hear!

Reply to BitconnectCarlos In what sense do you mean? I mean it in the sense of the philosophy called “pragmatism”, focusing on philosophical questions through the lens of what practical endeavor an answer is meant to facilitate. Do you mean some other sense?

Reply to Pfhorrest

In what sense do you mean? I mean it in the sense of the philosophy called “pragmatism”, focusing on philosophical questions through the lens of what practical endeavor an answer is meant to facilitate. Do you mean some other sense?

That was the sense that I was talking about - the philosophical sense.

Obviously I don't know your whole philosophy, and yes it's your book so its your decision.

Do you remember our discussion about the existence of non-moral oughts? You said that there wasn't because the non-moral oughts in the end just basically come down to moral oughts, if I remember. You were trying to find the truth behind the language, but I just don't think this is how a pragmatist would approach it. Pragmatists would probably be more partial to ordinary language philosophy where we just take the meanings as they are commonly used in the language.

I've tended to view you as more on the abstract side of things, generally, but again it's you we're talking about so you're the authority.

Quoting BitconnectCarlos

Do you remember our discussion about the existence of non-moral oughts? You said that there wasn't because the non-moral oughts in the end just basically come down to moral oughts, if I remember. You were trying to find the truth behind the language, but I just don't think this is how a pragmatist would approach it. Pragmatists would probably be more partial to ordinary language philosophy where we just take the meanings as they are commonly used in the language.

This is probably better saved for the chapter on philosophy of language, but I don't see that view as being at odds with ordinary language philosophy at all, because I wasn't really talking there about what ordinary words mean, but more how the concepts they refer to relate to each other. And the way those concepts relate to each other, in that particular instance, seems very pragmatic to me, in that morality isn't something beside ordinary practical reason, but rather something completely continuous with it: "moral oughts" are just "non-moral oughts" that are sufficiently (to some arbitrary measure of sufficiency) detached from immediate personal decisions, and to draw a distinction between them would be like drawing a distinction between "real" as in rocks and trees and "real" as in quantum fields and superstrings: they're parts of the same picture, just "foreground" and "background" so to speak, little things up close vs distant big things lying behind all those little things.

Reply to Pfhorrest

Let me try another example:

If I were to ask you to defend libertarian socialism would you respond with something along the lines of "Well, here's case study 1, here's case study 2, and here's case study 3 where the practical application of libertarian socialism led to x,y, and z as opposed to these implementations of capitalism here...."

Now, I haven't studied pragmatism academically, but from what I understand about it is that it's a ground-up approach where you're starting more with whether the approach has actually worked in the past and there's no meaningful sharp distinction between "in theory" and implementation.

I've just always read you as more of a theoretician; it would seem to me that a pragmatist's first impulse would be to respond with actual empirical data or historical fact to an issue rather than theory.

That doesn't sound much like pragmatism as I understand it; it doesn't really sound like philosophy per se at all, but rather some more special science. I mean pragmatism as in...

Quoting CS Peirce as quoted in Wikipedia on The Pragmatic Maxim

The study of philosophy consists, therefore, in reflexion, and pragmatism is that method of reflexion which is guided by constantly holding in view its purpose and the purpose of the ideas it analyzes, whether these ends be of the nature and uses of action or of thought.

Reply to Pfhorrest

Maybe a thread about it would be useful.

Pierce also said: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." This was his version of the pragmatic maxim.

If pragmatism is just about keeping purposes in mind then it's pretty innocuous, but I think it's founders had a little more in mind than that.

Reply to BitconnectCarlos I was originally going to refer to that exact quote, but when I pulled up the wiki to make sure I had it right, I saw that other even better quote and decided to use it instead.

Reply to Pfhorrest

I think by 'practical effects' he means the effects which actually happen on the ground, not effects that you theorize to happen. The ultimate verdict of a theory for the pragmatists would be if it actually works during its implementation, not whether the relations between the abstract ideas work out.

That is true, but that's not saying we do philosophy by experiment. "your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." It's saying that, for example, empiricism is a correct philosophical position, as opposed to speculating about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whatnot, because empiricism is concerned with the practical observables of things: the upshot of a scientific theory (a conception of what is real) is the observations it predicts, and the truth of that theory is to be judged by whether those observations actually take place when predicted. Empiricism says that we should do experiments to figure out what it true about the world. But we don't do experiments to tell whether empiricism itself is the correct philosophical stance.

But this is really getting off topic for this thread. There are multiple other places in later chapters where I apply pragmatism, and we should save more of this discussion for there, rather than weighing in on whether the "pragmatic" in the title is accurate without having read the actual work yet.

[quote=Codex into]Very loosely speaking, that general view I support is merely that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions about both reality and morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them such one day, but rather they are independent of anyone's particular opinions and grounded instead in our common experience. [/quote]

[quote=Ludwig Wittgenstein]For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.[/quote]

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Reply to unenlightened Wittgenstein here says nothing about how many ways in which askable questions can be answered, though; that is whether there is "one true answer" to any coherent question.

Reply to unenlightened I take it that's offering a Wittgenstein quote that you think encapsulates the same thing that I'm saying? If so, thanks! I'll try to integrate that somewhere soon, though I think it may be more appropriate for the essay on Commensurablism (where I lay out that general philosophy in more detail) than for the introduction.

Reply to Janus It sounds to me that saying a question can be answered is saying that there is a true answer to it. That answer may be broad and admit of multiple specific implementations, but if it can be truly answered that suggest that at least there cannot be contrary answers, i.e. mere differences of opinions.

Quoting Pfhorrest

It sounds to me that saying a question can be answered is saying that there is a true answer to it. That answer may be broad and admit of multiple specific implementations, but if it can be truly answered that suggest that at least there cannot be contrary answers, i.e. mere differences of opinions.

That sounds right. There may be many answers to a question, as the question might be considered in various contexts, but in any given context it would seem absurd to say that there could be contradictory answers to it.

So, that might apply to ethical or moral questions, where different answers might be given in different cultural contexts. Or if such questions are merely matters of opinion, then a question that calls for an overarching answer would not be appropriate.

Quoting Janus

So, that might apply to ethical or moral questions, where different answers might be given in different cultural contexts. Or if such questions are merely matters of opinion, then a question that calls for an overarching answer would not be appropriate.

My position that unenlightened quoted is specifically taking a stance against that kind of thing (cultural relativism, everything being just matters of opinion), but it occurs to me that Wittgenstein's quote isn't. I am saying "P therefore Q" and he's saying "if not Q then not P", which both have in common "if P then Q" but I'm explicitly affirming P (there are meaningful questions, which therefore have answers) while from what I understand of Wittgenstein he's more likely, regarding moral questions at least, to deny Q, to say that there are no answers and therefore the question is meaningless.

Quoting Pfhorrest

while from what I understand of Wittgenstein he's more likely, regarding moral questions at least, to deny Q, to say that there are no answers and therefore the question is meaningless.

I think that's right, at least regarding the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. Later Wittgenstein would say that, for example, overarching ethical, aesthetical and theological questions are not meaningless despite the fact that no inter-subjectively determinable answers to them can be given. Instead they gain their meaning in relation to the common usages involved in their respective language games. Of course, it may then follow that there are meaningful questions to which no one true answer can be found.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I take it that's offering a Wittgenstein quote that you think encapsulates the same thing that I'm saying? If so, thanks

Well it came to mind as I read you. But I think on further consideration W realised that there are questions that can only be answered with one's life. "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?" It is not "I do" that answers, but the actual doing.

Reply to Pfhorrest :clap: :clap: :victory:

Wow! You have a book!! I have doodles on scraps of paper. :sad:

Quoting unenlightened

But I think on further consideration W realised that there are questions that can only be answered with one's life. "Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?" It is not "I do" that answers, but the actual doing.

Good point. My passage you quoted does have the "of reality and morality" clause, limiting the scope of my claim to just those two types of speech-act, which I elaborate upon later in my essay On Meaning and Language, which also briefly touches on the existence of those kinda of bidirectional speech-acts.

Quoting TheMadFool

Wow! You have a book!! I have doodles on scraps of paper. :sad:

This book started as doodles like this (later redrawn on computer obviously) in my notebook during my first philosophy class. (I'm glad I titled that file "nonsense", because even I can't make any sense of it now, 16 years later.) Maybe some day you will have a book too.

"Pragmatism" in philosophy refers to a specific movement, whose champions include William James and John Dewey. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/

Reply to Jim Grossmann Not sure if you're addressing me or BitconnectCarlos, but both of us mean it in that sense (CS Peirce is up there above James and Dewey among founders of Pragmatism, and we were both quoting him at each other), but we disagree about what the qualifications are to be counted as part of that movement.

Thanks for telling me about Pierce. :-) Good to know you've got a handle on pragmatism, whichever one of you you are! :-)

Quoting BitconnectCarlos

If I were to ask you to defend libertarian socialism...

I'm kind of going off-topic in my own thread / getting ahead of the game here, but for some reason this question just popped back into my head again and I wanted to give kind of a response to it.

The way I get to libertarian socialism from a pragmatic grounding isn't by starting with the question "is this the best political system?" but with much more general questions like "What do we mean by 'better'? And what is a political system supposed to do?" and tackle those in a pragmatic way. As we'll see in more detail in the later essays on these topics, I first address what prescriptive questions are practically asking for, then later what criteria are practicable ones by which to judge the answers to those questions, then what is a practical way of applying those criteria, and (glossing over all of that that will be covered later) end up with a liberal hedonistic altruism as the most pragmatic way of figuring out answers to prescriptive questions; of figuring out what to do. A political system is supposed to tell who has prescriptive authority, and from the "liberal" part of the aforementioned system it follows that nobody has prescriptive authority: in other words, philosophical anarchism.

But even the briefest reflection on the practical implementation of anarchism shows that to keep people from exercising prescriptive authority they don't rightfully have requires a general degree of equality, which is where the socialist aspect comes from. How exactly to keep people generally equal, so they can be free of each other's unwarranted prescriptive authority, without in the process exercising such authority oneself, is a question that leaves the domain of philosophy and enters the domain of a more applied ethical science (as I'll call them later), like political science, where case studies etc are applicable. The goal of libertarian socialism is a philosophical result, reached a priori with only regard for the practical ends that are in mind -- what are we trying to do, and what is a logically entailed sub-goal required to do that -- but how to get libertarian socialism is a scientific question, to be answered a posteriori.

I haven't had time yet to dive into your book, but I agree with those who say that you should remove any Latin from the title of your book. I think it would just annoy most potential readers rather than entice them.

I suppose the reason for this is that you seem to be implying, "Look! Look! I'm as smart and as important as Newton! Or at least Wittgenstein." And most people will just roll their eyes at that implicit statement.

|>ouglas

Reply to Douglas Alan That makes me sad. I'm very attached to the "Codex" title, having been working on this project under that name for almost a decade and a half now.

It's meant (along with the cover design) to be eye-catching to a lay audience who may not be familiar with philosophy: stark black book with gold writing and symbols and a weird name, followed by a subtitle with large "philosophy" to tell you quickly what the topic of it is about.

If I did away with the "Codex" part I'd probably do away with everything before "Philosophy" and leave it just "Philosophy: From the Meaning of Words to the Meaning of Life". That part of the subtitle is only a very recent invention... like last month recent.

I would hope that anyone who would read so far as the introduction wouldn't think I'm trying to sound as important as any big-name figures, as I feel like I'm very self-deprecating there, looking back with shame on the younger version of me who dreamed that maybe some day I would be.

That self-deprecation isn't an act either; I'm very... I want to say "ashamed" but that's not quite the right word, nor is "embarrassed"... something vaguely opposite of "proud"... of this work. Like it's really far too little far to late, it makes me look bad to have spent so long producing so little, and I maybe I ought never have begun it. But it's been my "life's work" for most of my adult life, and to abandon it completely feels like just giving up on life, which is something I'm struggling quite hard not to do these days.

And I've felt similarly about other major projects I've worked on, and though it might have taken over two decades, at least one of those has developed something of a fandom, some people who are glad I did it and think it was worthwhile to do, so I cautiously hold a tiny bit of hope -- so tiny I feel bad even admitting it -- that maybe this one might someday too.

Reply to Pfhorrest

I don't know if "codex" is too pretentious. It may be Latin, but it's also English. On the other hand, "quarentis" doesn't mean anything to me, but I can tell it's Latin, and hence it comes across to me as an attempt to appear more educated than I am.

|>ouglas

I just realized that I forgot to ask for one rather important piece of feedback, which thankfully has not applied to the five essay thus far, but will be important to ask about on the other seventeen still to come:

- Are there any subtopics I have neglected to cover?

I've added that to the OP of this thread now, and will include it in the OP of future threads as well.

I like the cover. Looks like it was wrestled from a Lich and you're about to level up big time after reading it.

Reply to bert1 Hahah, thanks :)

Tonight I made a pretty major reorganization of the start of this whole project. I moved the Metaphilosophy essay to be first, and then the essay on my general philosophy of Commensurablism to come after that, before the four Against essays. I cleaned everything up to make sense of the new order, and also expanded significantly on the Definition section of Metaphilosophy, adding a section about philosophy's relation to sophistry as a counterpart to its relation to religion (roughly correlating with my stances against nihilism and fideism).

I also realized that at some point in this version of the project I had lost the use of the term "Analytic Pragmatism" for my metaphilosophy, which is why "A Pragmatic Analysis" is part of the title. I think perhaps part of that was because I was unhappy with the word "Analytic" in there, as I mean for it to be sort of the opposite of "Pragmatic", as in concerned with language and ideas in the abstract, rather than practical action. But I can't think of a better alternative, and I'd appreciate some help if anyone can lend it.

The problem is that:

Analytic is already the opposite of synthetic.

Abstract is already the opposite of concrete.

Idealistic is already the opposite of materialistic.

________ is the opposite of pragmatic, but not in a pejorative way, just a way that means something like analytic/abstract/idealistic?

("Theoretic" occurs to me, but elsewhere I pair that with "Strategic", so I don't want to reuse that here too).

Speculative.

________ is the opposite of pragmatic, but not in a pejorative way, just a way that means something like analytic/abstract/idealistic?

("Theoretic" occurs to me, but elsewhere I pair that with "Strategic", so I don't want to reuse that here too).

Personally, I would use theoretic as an opposite of pragmatic. I would never pair theoretic and strategic as opposites. The opposite of strategic would be, if I had to think of something, unthinking or reflexive (meaning - acting on reflexes) or short-term thinking or impulsive maybe. Honestly, I know it's boring, but unstrategic or poorly thought out work well here.

Good strategy often involves months and months of theoretical planning - take military plans.

Reply to Mww Thanks for the idea, but that doesn't really seem the right fit. Analytic philosophy is juxtaposed to speculative philosophy, for instance, and the meaning I'm looking for it more like "analytic", though of course I'm trying to replace that word in this instance.

Reply to BitconnectCarlos I don't mean I juxtapose theoretic and strategic as opposite approaches to the same thing, but rather as parallels in different things. Theory is about explaining how things happen, strategy is about planning how to make them happen; one is about beliefs, the other is about intentions. They're both equally well thought-out, but in different domains, and in that way both of them are equally pragmatic, but also similarly... abstract? Analytic? Whatever the word I'm looking for here is.

I'm considering maybe doing away with the "quaerentis: a pragmatic analysis of philosophy part" and just making the second word after "codex" something clearly identifiable as relating to philosophy. Like "Codex Philosophia", but that mixes Latin and Greek.

Reply to Virgo Avalytikh Do you have any suggestions in that regard?

Reply to Douglas Alan Would that seem better to you as well?

Also considering working in "No Unquestionable Answers Or Unanswerable Questions" in there somehow, since that is the succinct summary of my entire philosophy, but that seems like the title would get awkwardly long in that case. Like "The Codex Philosophia: No Unquestionable Answers Or Unanswerable Questions, from the Meaning of Words to the Meaning of Life". Too long, no?

Reply to Pfhorrest "The Codex Philosophia ..." isn't really that much more quixotically prolix than (e.g.) On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason ... :nerd:

Quoting Pfhorrest

Are there any subtopics I have neglected to cover?

All of them. I’d advise sticking to one in depth piece of writing rather than scattered pieces that try to cover everything - and essentially fail.

It feels like you’ve given me a collection of synopsis’s and want me to view it as a singular piece of writing.

Can you elaborate on what kind of thing has not been covered, say just on one subtopic as an example? I.e. what questions from that subtopic have not been addressed?

In any case I'm definitely not going to completely change the entire point of this project, which is to present a complete system of philosophy, relating positions on different topics to each other and grounding them all in the same common principles. That relational aspect is the most novel thing in here, e.g. my deontology and my epistemology are just descriptive and prescriptive applications of the exact same general principles.

But if I need to go into more depth some place or another I would like to know what is not adequately explained, and why not. I have tried to err on the side of being less wordy, especially when in many cases there are other authors who have already given much wordier explorations of the same or similar subjects.

Reply to Pfhorrest Who are you writing for? Who is your audience?

Primarily I am writing for someone like myself, especially someone like I was when I had first discovered philosophy and was trying to find, for lack of a better word, "an identity", in the field; I tried on a bunch of different -isms and none of them were really me, for years and decades I couldn't find any existing all-around philosophical position that I didn't find any problem with, so I started writing down what I though the best take-aways from the various different competing positions on different topics were, or my syntheses or new ideas when none of them had anything worth taking away, and how they all seemed to relate to each other, how many positions I found problems with had the same problems as common premises, and conversely all the positions that seemed sound to me in many different sub-fields all had the same deep premises as each other (those being the negations of those ones underlying all the problematic positions).

Reply to I like sushi I'm curious if you read through this from the beginning, or (if you just clicked into a random essay) if you followed the links back to earlier essays when they're mentioned? The whole thing builds on itself; no one essay is meant to stand entirely on its own, and most of the later, topical essays refer back to at least the essay on Commensurablism or the four Against essays for the primary argumentation to support them.

Cut the autobiographical tone then (cut the ‘I’). No one cares who you are or what your views are. People read to explore not to be shown what you know, why you know it or what ideas you have to share.

If it’s for your own purposes, great! If written for others to read, it’s poorly thought out possesses little structure for the reader to grab onto (nothing of any immediate interest or concern - present a clear problem/argument EARLY). It might help to start at the end to garner interest/curiosity by showing the reader the potential use of the problem/argument.

You start off by literally showing us what you know. It is exactly the style of writing reminiscent of high school students. You’re not writing for teachers. We don’t care about what you’ve learnt we’re reading for US.

Note: I am not critiquing the content only the presentation. Your intent isn’t clear - meaning you’ve not presented the reader with a problem to engage with or offered up critique of your given topic (which is nebulous at best).

With the above criticism in mind I'd like to commend you for having the courage to systematize your thoughts. Everyone has a personal ontology and making that plain is unusually useful for communication.

Reply to Zophie Agreed. It’s incredibly useful to write/speak what you think.

Reply to Zophie Thanks for the praise but I don't understand what's courageous. Are other people afraid to systematize their thoughts?

Quoting I like sushi

Cut the autobiographical tone then (cut the ‘I’).

I was taught that proper philosophical writing is done from the first person, and lots of (if not most) notable historical philosophy has been written this way. I'm also trying to be humble in my presentation, and avoid sounding like Tractacus-era Wittgenstein, like I did when I was younger: just stating my core premises as facts authoritatively and then deriving all of the consequences from that. I'm also trying not to sound combative, like I'm attacking anyone's worldview, because that is not a productive way to change anyone's mind about anything. (I already rearranged the order of the essays so it doesn't begin with an attack on faith; the old structure was an attack on fideism, an attack on nihilism, attacks on things that reduced to either fideism or nihilism, and then finally my own moderate viewpoint; now I put my view first, and then go into why those alternatives are wrong). I even say in the introduction:

Quoting The Codex Quaerentis: Introduction

I don't even intend to, properly speaking, argue in a persuasive way that you the reader ought to change your mind in this way or that. Instead, I intend merely to state what it is that I think, and why I think it, and leave it to you to consider the merits of those thoughts and my reasons for them, and what if any impact that ought to have on your own view of the world. I am merely presenting my worldview here for you to try on for size, and see how you like it.

That is also in keeping with the very philosophy I end up laying out, where the proper method of investigation is not by starting with some kind of iron-clad indisputable foundational principles and then building an unassailable castle of impenetrable reasoning out of that, but instead by starting with a bunch of initially-equal possible opinions and then whittling away at the ones that can be shown problematic.

In the Codex I am elaborating on my views as a possibility that perhaps hasn't yet been considered by the reader, showing what the problems are with broad swathes of alternatives to it, and then further elaborating on how all the myriad of different topics can be accounted for under my view. E.g. my core principles have immediate implications on ontology, epistemology, and normative ethics, which have their own sub-topics that then need to be addresed; but those views on those topics then raise immediate questions about the mind and the will ("but if the world is all physical and causal then is there no consciousness or freedom!?"), educational and governmental institutes ("but if appeals to authority are wrong then are all religions and states unjustified!?"); and issues about language (including logic, mathematics, rhetoric, and the arts) need to be addressed to make sense of all of that; and all of that together then finally provides a ground to answer the big questions people are really looking for answers to, about the meaning of life.

I do say a variety of things like that in several parts of the introduction, both at the very beginning and at the very end:

Quoting The Codex Quaerentis: Introduction

When many people think of philosophy, the first thing that comes to mind is often a vague question about the meaning of life. Besides that, people will most often think of big social questions regarding religion or politics, or perhaps more psychological questions about consciousness or free will. In these essays I will address all of those topics. But to do so I must first address more general topics about knowledge and reality, justice and morality, and even more abstract topics about the very language we use to discuss any of this, including logic, mathematics, rhetoric, and the arts. And before even that, I must address the nature of philosophy itself, and the different possible ways of broadly approaching it.

[...]

In the essays that follow, I will begin by laying out my metaphilosophy, my take on what we are even trying to do in the practice of philosophy, followed by a picture of what kind of philosophical view I very generally support, and then the broad kinds of philosophical views that I am consequently against. [...] In the rest of the essays that follow, I will lay out more specifically what my positions are on a wide variety of particular philosophical topics, ranging from abstract matters concerning language, art, and math; through descriptive matters concerning reality and knowledge; through prescriptive matters concerning morality and justice; and finally on matters of empowerment and enlightenment, inspiring the pursuit of goodness and truth, practical action, and the meaning of life.

But maybe I could punch up that first paragraph some (you actually gave me an idea to begin with the same sentence that I end with), and make it more explicit how all these topics relate to each other and what the point of going over them all is. Possibly rearrange and rephrase some of the intro more too. I have a little time this afternoon, maybe I'll give that a go soon.

Quoting I like sushi

You start off by literally showing us what you know. It is exactly the style of writing reminiscent of high school students. You’re not writing for teachers. We don’t care about what you’ve learnt we’re reading for US.

The point isn't to show off my knowledge, but rather to not assume anything about the reader's knowledge. I'm picturing trying to explain my philosophy to my (largely uneducated) mom when I write; or, as I said, myself from twenty years ago, when I barely even know what the word "philosophy" meant. As I say in the intro already:

Quoting The Codex Quaerentis: Introduction

These essays are targeted primarily at a lay audience, one without professional philosophical education, and as such I will be attempting to include a brief education on the arguments that have been had thus far on each topic that I will discuss, definitions of the technical terminology used, and so forth.

Okay, I tried to punch up the opening a little bit, by combining the elided bit from the last section that I quoted above, with the old first paragraph, heavily rephrased, much more dramatically, and beginning with the same sentence as the last essay ends with:

Quoting The Codex Quarentis: Introduction

It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway.

Trying to succeed, trying to act properly, trying to live a meaningful life, trying to be the best person I can be. Trying to empower and enlighten myself and others, to bolster and support the right institutes of governance and education, that will best promote justice and knowledge, helping bring ours wills and our minds into alignment with what is moral and what is real, respectively. Trying to understand what it even means for something to be moral or for something to be real, by understanding the language we use to even discuss any of this, be it descriptive language making claims about reality, or prescriptive language making claims about morality — and to understand all that that entails about logic, mathematics, rhetoric, and the arts, as they shape our use of such language.

Maybe that endeavor is hopeless. Maybe life is meaningless, all social institutes are incorrigibly corrupt, justice and knowledge are impossible, the mind and will (if there even are such things) powerless to grasp what is real or what is moral, if anything is actually real or moral at all, if it even makes any sense to try to talk about such things. Maybe that's all hopeless. But just in case it's not, I think we stand a better chance of succeeding at that endeavor, should success be at all possible, if we act on the assumption that it's not hopeless, and we try anyway.

That is the core principle at the heart of my philosophy, that I am to elaborate in the following essays. I consider the general philosophical view supported by that principle to be a naively uncontroversial, common-sense kind of view, from which various other philosophical schools of thought deviate in different ways. In these essays I aim to shore up and refine that common-sense view into a more rigorous form that can better withstand the temptation of such deviation, and to show the common error underlying all of those different deviations from this common-sense view.

Put most succinctly, that common error is assuming the false dichotomy that either there must be some unquestionable answers, or else we will be left with some unanswerable questions. All of the deviations from the common-sense view I defend stem ultimately from falling to one side or the other of that false dichotomy, on some topic or another. In contrast, my philosophy is the view that there are no unanswerable questions, and no unquestionable answers.

Very loosely speaking, that means that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions, both about reality and about morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those correct answers from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them so, but rather, they are independent of anyone's particular opinions, and grounded instead in our common experience. Put another way: that what is true and what is good are beyond the decree of any of us, yet within reach of each of us; and that we can in principle always eventually tell whether someone's opinion is right or wrong, but we can never immediately assume any opinion to be such, and must give each the benefit of the doubt until proof is found one way or the other.

That general philosophical view is the underlying reason I will give for all of my more specific philosophical views: everything that follows does so as necessary to conform to that broad general philosophy, rejecting any views that require either just taking someone's word on some question or else giving up all hope of ever answering such a question, settling on whatever views remain in the wake of that rejection.

The core principles I will outline have immediate implications about what kinds of things are real, what kinds of things are moral, the methods of attaining knowledge, and the methods of attaining justice, which will each be covered in their own essays. Those positions then raise immediate questions about the nature of the mind and the will, and the legitimacy of educational and governmental institutes, which will again each be covered in their own essays. All of that requires a framework of linguistic meaning to make any sense of, which will be covered in its own essay, along with attendant essays on the related topics of logic and mathematics, and rhetoric and the arts, each covering different facets of communication in more detail. And with all of that in place, we finally have the background to tackle the most practical questions of enlightenment, empowerment, and leading a meaningful life, each of which will be covered in its own essay as well.

But before any of that that, I must first address the nature of philosophy itself. As I will elaborate, I see philosophy as the most central field of study, bridging the most abstract of topics like language, math, and the arts, to the physical and ethical sciences that in turn support the development of all the practical tools used to do the jobs of all the world's various trades. It is in light of that far-reaching pragmatic role of philosophy that I will begin my approach to the subject.

It's almost even more first-person than before, but I think it's also a lot more engaging. At least I hope.

I also made smaller modifications to the rest of the intro, including removing the mention of my degree, which I agree just kind of sounded boastful.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'm also trying to be humble in my presentation

Yes, because it’s for the ‘layman’. If you’re dumbing down the text you’re addressing philosophers so you shouldn’t be writing a philosophical piece - pick your audience rather than trying to cater to all (it won’t work).

You absolutely have to grab your reader early on. It is not ‘combative’ to present a problem and to say something someone says is wrong - that is telling the reader why your piece of writing is of value.

Quoting Pfhorrest

that is not a productive way to change anyone's mind about anything.

That’s another problem. People don’t read things to have their mind changed. You present a problem they care about, offer a better solution (a brief explanation of the solution) and then investigate it at length (warts and all).

Quoting The Codex Quaerentis: Introduction

I don't even intend to, properly speaking, argue in a persuasive way that you the reader ought to change your mind in this way or that. Instead, I intend merely to state what it is that I think, and why I think it, and leave it to you to consider the merits of those thoughts and my reasons for them, and what if any impact that ought to have on your own view of the world. I am merely presenting my worldview here for you to try on for size, and see how you like it.

Who cares? What’s the point? What are you selling? Pose some questions for the reader to ponder (a great many pop-science books do this because it engages interest in the reader by interacting with them.

That is basically like saying I have some opinions about life. That is the nebulous part I was talking about. You hinted at relativism earlier on but never explicitly mentioned it - that would’ve anchored the reader a little.

Look here:

The core principles I will outline have immediate implications about what kinds of things are real, what kinds of things are moral, the methods of attaining knowledge, and the methods of attaining justice, which will each be covered in their own essays. Those positions then raise immediate questions about the nature of the mind and the will, and the legitimacy of educational and governmental institutes, which will again each be covered in their own essays. All of that requires a framework of linguistic meaning to make any sense of, which will be covered in its own essay, along with attendant essays on the related topics of logic and mathematics, and rhetoric and the arts, each covering different facets of communication in more detail. And with all of that in place, we finally have the background to tackle the most practical questions of enlightenment, empowerment, and leading a meaningful life, each of which will be covered in its own essay as well.

But before any of that that, I must first address the nature of philosophy itself. As I will elaborate, I see philosophy as the most central field of study, bridging the most abstract of topics like language, math, and the arts, to the physical and ethical sciences that in turn support the development of all the practical tools used to do the jobs of all the world's various trades. It is in light of that far-reaching pragmatic role of philosophy that I will begin my approach to the subject.

This would turn off the majority of your readers. You tease your reader by building up then evade. The reader still has no reason to continue nor any knowledge of what they’re reading or of any potential value for themselves. You’ve just constructed a huge barrier between the writing and your reader (note: not YOU and your reader; you don’t matter to them at all).

If you think my points aren’t valid hire a professional editor to look at your work and see if they echo what I’ve said. I’m certain they would.

Note: to repeat, this has nothing to do with the philosophical content.

Quoting I like sushi

You hinted at relativism earlier on

Where? I think you might have misunderstood something.

Quoting I like sushi

This would turn off the majority of your readers.

What would? Saying that I’m going to talk about metaphilosophy (for one chapter) before all the other philosophy I “teased”? Saying that philosophy is of wide practical importance to everything else, and that I’ll elaborate why? What?

Reply to Pfhorrest I’m not asking for critique of my critique. Take it or leave it. I’m only responding because there is potential - for what, I’m still unsure because I have no idea what you’re going to do with this.

Reply to I like sushi I’m not critiquing your critique, just asking for clarification. I don’t understand specifically which part you find problematic and why.

I welcome specific, actionable criticism, suggestions for how I can do what I’m trying to do better. The only thing I dislike is responding is to “how do I do this better?” with “don’t do that” — i.e. scrap the whole thing.

Reply to Pfhorrest All of it. The structure and layout is not engaging. Reread what I’ve said, I;ve told you this already. Failing that, hire a professional to get some feedback.

Examples of problems in the text:

It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway.

Instantly turned off. That is no way to engage the reader. Essentially you just said, what I’m about to say is most probably useless (whether it is or it isn’t doesn't matter). It would be better to start with a ‘gist’ sentence.

Trying to succeed, trying to live a meaningful life, trying enjoy myself, trying to do the right thing. Trying to empower and enlighten myself and others, to bolster and support the right institutes of governance and education, that will best promote justice and knowledge, helping bring ours wills and our minds into alignment with what is moral and what is real, respectively. Trying to understand what it even means for something to be moral or for something to be real, by understanding the language we use to even discuss any of this, be it descriptive language making claims about reality, or prescriptive language making claims about morality — and to understand all that that entails about logic, mathematics, rhetoric, and the arts, as they shape our use of such language.

Too much, too many ‘trying’ broken up by a needlessly long sentence doing the same thing - listing. People don’t like to read lists.

Note: You’ve still not given me a anchor. No question or clear problem revealed.

Maybe that endeavor is hopeless. Maybe life is meaningless, all social institutes are incorrigibly corrupt, justice and knowledge are impossible, the mind and will (if there even are such things) powerless to grasp what is real or what is moral, if anything is actually real or moral at all, if it even makes any sense to try to talk about such things. Maybe that's all hopeless. But just in case it's not, I think we stand a better chance of succeeding at that endeavor, should success be at all possible, if we act on the assumption that it's not hopeless, and we try anyway.

One key word ‘But’. It comes far too late after two long lists spattered with terms that don’t encourage the reader (eg. ‘hopeless,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘trying,’ ‘powerless’).

And here’s a clunky part:

That general philosophical view is the underlying reason I will give for all of my more specific philosophical views: everything that follows does so as necessary to conform to that broad general philosophy, rejecting any views that require either just taking someone's word on some question or else giving up all hope of ever answering such a question, settling on whatever views remain in the wake of that rejection.

That’s one sentence!? Fair enough if you were outlining some specific point of import and selecting your words carefully and economically to get the thrust of your point across ... but you weren’t.

Note: I write like this too often enough. I try my best to edit as I write, but in reality editing some time after you’ve written your original piece with a highly self-critical attitude will improve both your ability to edit as you write and leave less work later on.

It could be that you’re looking at your writing as a set of ideas instead of a piece of writing. Forget what you’re saying and focus on how it reads. Pick up any pop-science/philosophy book and analyse how they open their subject matter up and the kind of questions they pose.

Examples from my shelf (four books picked at random):

‘In her book, Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer remarks that certain ideas burst upon the intellectual landscape with tremendous force...’

We know this person has studied something and also setting up a potential ‘But...’ (Opening Chapter directly after preface)

‘All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities.’

The subject matter is clear and there is a hint of ‘But...’ (Opening chapter after dedication)

‘Greek and Roman mythology is quite generally supposed to show us the way the human race thought and felt untold ages ago.’

Preempting an obvious ‘But...’ (Opening sentences of Intro)

‘The extraordinary interest aroused all over the world by Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige (The Sacred), published in 1917, still persists.’

I sentence that displays both subject matter and the value of the coming content. (Opening sentences of Intro)

Your first few lines sound like the start of a novel as do the lists.

I would start something like this:

Throughout the history of human civilization we have found ourselves struggling with numerous questions, be these intellectual, moral and/or socially concerned. Even today a great many people will be asking themselves what the point is, or holding to some way of life based loosely on the life and thoughts of people long dead - be this Epictetus, the slave, Christ the Savior, or Albert Camus’ and his ‘absurd’ view of human existence. But is there really a ‘best’ way to live our lives? Should we cut our own uniques paths through time or live by the ideals set out by others? How should we live?

Have you abandoned this now? Do you understand what I’m pointing out in terms of presentation?

Note: To repeat; nothing to do with the content. The point being if you’re not engaging with your target audience then the content doesn’t matter because no one will be willing to read further.

If you want critique of your ‘ideas’ that won’t happen until you improve how to present them. It’s bloody hard work, and for the most part the process won’t be particularly rewarding or fun because you’ll have to cut away swathes of yourself as you refine and remake how you think/articulate to the point where you can be your own audience rather than simply throwing ideas at a wall without considering at better technique to make them stick.

Sometimes the fault is mostly with the reader and sometimes the fault is with the author. There is always some fault in both. You have to be honest with yourself and with your audience. Very few people will just pick something up and read it start to finish. People may select something at random, but they decide relatively quickly whether or not they are going to continue reading or move on.

The narrower your target audience the harder it will be to judge the impact of your words. If you’re writing for academia then you need to study academic writings in your area of interest. If there is no ‘area of interest’ and what you have is ‘original’ you just have to accept the fact that it’s not ‘original’ but simply ‘unwanted’. That doesn’t have anything to do with the ‘value’ of your writing though.

Note: You may find it both interesting and useful to look at literary theory, and to research different forms and styles of writing - maybe practice writing the same thing for different audiences (for early teens, adults, students, teachers, professionals, amateurs, intellectuals, etc.,.)

Reply to I like sushi I haven't abandoned anything, I just have very limited time to do things on the computer these days, and haven't had time to say or do anything productive in response to any of this yet. (Your advice seems to be to scrap the entire project and do something else in place of it, or at least to recreate it entirely in a different style, so I don't know what kind of productive response you expect to see in two days anyway).

I will share this one thought I had though, which sounded too defensive to share before but since you're getting impatient for a response:

Quoting I like sushi

Throughout the history of human civilization we have found ourselves struggling with numerous questions, be these intellectual, moral and/or socially concerned...

This sounds to me (and my English major girlfriend) like the start of a bad high school paper.

I also asked her to read the new intro I wrote, and she said that it gets a lot better in the second section -- i.e. the section that goes back to the old style that the whole intro used to be in, before I rewrote the first section trying to address your critiques.

All in all this makes me wary of the value of your stylistic critique. (She straight up says I should ignore you, but I can't bring myself to ignore anybody outright; I always try to take something of value away from any criticism).

Quoting Pfhorrest

She straight up says I should ignore you

I second that.

Quoting jamalrob

She straight up says I should ignore you — Pfhorrest

I second that.

That is heartening to hear, thanks.

Reply to Pfhorrest :cool:

BTW, if anybody cares to read the abandoned attempt to write this in narrative / dialogue form from about a decade ago, you can find that here:

http://geekofalltrades.org/codex/xindex.php#intro

Be forewarned, I am absolute crap at writing dialogue, which is why that version of the project was abandoned.

Also, the ideas presented in that are not all my current ones.

Reply to Pfhorrest I wasn’t being impatient? Just said that in relation to your other post where you made explicit your waxing and waning on this project.

You sound like you have the right attitude as does your gf. She’s meant to encourage you and support you. I’m not here to support you and encourage you in anything like the same manner.

Again, I’m not the one asking for a critique, but you are? I gave a quick example of how to engage with the reader quickly. Given that you missed the point of it I’ll make this clearer ...

1) Gist sentence about subject matter.
2) Pose a problem to the reader and hint/show ‘value’ - things like ‘many people,’ ‘but,’ and ‘although’. Why should the reader care?
3) Questions make the subject more concrete and actively engage with the reader - rather than passively absorbing words.
4) Avoid long lists, especially in an introduction to the subject matter.
5) State position as clearly as possible before explaining why you have this position.

When I said ‘high-school’ I meant that in such essays you are writing to show comprehension. If you’re writing a book/essay you’re writing for your audience and given the subject matter you have to address the audience differently because the audience is different.

I’m still unsure what your aim is. You seem to be writing something that is an introduction to philosophy, an educational resource, your own personal philosophical view, and a critique of philosophy in general. If it’s educational (textbook) then terms like ‘I’/‘we’/‘us’ should be avoided as much as possible. I don’t need to know about your personal story or journey; I don’t care (in terms of a educational piece of writing.

If you’re going for something more like ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ though, I’d certainly go into more personal detail.

The thrust of what I’m saying is that I don’t know who this is for and I not convinced you do yet either. I’m getting mixed messages due to how it is lain out. The ‘set up’ matters a lot because people like to know what they are getting themselves into.

My own critique of my critique here would be to say I should really give positive feedback too. I like a lot of the content because I’ve looked at your essays before. I judged you to be someone less concerned with compliments and more likely to take criticism seriously if it was straight up - if you were a student it would be a different matter and I’d likely use a more ‘encouraging’ tone.

Trying to go to sleep but a quick partial response...

Quoting I like sushi

The thrust of what I’m saying is that I don’t know who this is for and I not convinced you do yet either. I’m getting mixed messages due to how it is lain out. The ‘set up’ matters a lot because people like to know what they are getting themselves into.

I just gave an explanation of the target in the other thread.

(edit to quote it here for posterity:)

Quoting Pfhorrest

Before I even knew what philosophy was, I was looking for something. Something fundamental. I didn’t know what to call it.

When I discovered philosophy, I thought that that field was the place where I would find what I was looking for, and that that was the name of what I was looking for: a philosophy. The right one.

I didn’t find it. But I found lots of partial attempts at it, and partially successful attempts at it, and generally, altogether, most of the parts of it. They just needed to be shaped and polished a bit, assembled together in the right way, and a few gaps filled in.

That’s what my book is meant to be: the thing I came to philosophy looking for, but never found. And it’s targeted at people like me from 20 years ago, who are looking for the same thing I was, and who have just learned that something called “philosophy” is where something like that may be found, but don’t yet know the first thing about it.

Quoting I like sushi

My own critique of my critique here would be to say I should really give positive feedback too. I like a lot of the content because I’ve looked at your essays before. I judged you to be someone less concerned with compliments and more likely to take criticism seriously if it was straight up - if you were a student it would be a different matter and I’d likely use a more ‘encouraging’ tone.

Thanks for that, but it’s really not the lack of compliment that’s been discouraging, but how the gist of your critique has seemed less “here is how to do this better” and more “don’t do that, do something else instead”; and also shades of “don’t argue, just do it, or pay someone else to critique this for you”.

I would like to instead explain what I am trying to communicate (which is not arguing with the critique) and get suggestions on how that could be better communicated.

When I have the time at my desk, not on my phone in bed.

The straightforward latin noun for question or inquiry is 'quaestio' , genitive plural quaesti?num
The Book of Questions - Liber / codex quaestionum

quaerend? is the masculine genitive singular of the verb future participle quaerendus
The Book of What is to be Asked - Liber / codex quaerend?

quaerentis is masculine genitive singular of the verb present participle quaerens
The Book of Questioning - Liber / codex quaerentis

So you have got the choice :)

Reply to TheArchitectOfTheGods Thanks for that! I think the last is what I’m going for: it’s a book on the topic of the act of questioning.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I would like to instead explain what I am trying to communicate (which is not arguing with the critique) and get suggestions on how that could be better communicated.

So here's a quick attempt at that, looking at the current version post-revisions-based-on-your-critique:

"It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway."

This is the moral of the story, so to speak. It's the maxim that everything boils down to. It's also catchy. (Someone in the other thread liked it as catch phrase, and my girlfriend said it caught her attention immediately). I hoped it would make people ask "what is hopeless? what are you trying?"

"Trying to live a meaningful life, by empowering and enlightening myself and others. Trying to bolster and support the right institutes of governance and education, that will best promote justice and knowledge, helping bring ours wills and our minds into alignment with what is moral and what is real. Trying to understand what it even means for something to be moral or for something to be real, by understanding the language we use to even discuss any of this, and all that that entails about logic and rhetoric, mathematics and the arts. "

The book is about philosophy. These are the things philosophy is about, so these are the things the book is about. Three sentences, for the three general sections of topics, in reverse order: the practical how-to-live-your-life stuff, the core sequences about reality/knowledge and morality/justice, and the abstract communication stuff. They're in reverse order to start with the stuff people might care more about, the less abstract stuff, first, even though in the book itself I have to start with the abstract stuff to ground the more practical stuff.

"Maybe that endeavor is hopeless. Maybe life is meaningless, all social institutes are incorrigibly corrupt, justice and knowledge are impossible, the mind and will powerless to grasp what is real or what is moral, if anything is at all, if it even makes any sense to try to talk about such things. Maybe that's all hopeless. But just in case it's not, I think we stand a better chance of succeeding at that endeavor, should success be at all possible, if we act on the assumption that it's not hopeless, and we try anyway. "

This is that 'moral of the story', applied to that subject matter. These are the things at stake. Meaningless, incorrigible corruption, impossibility, powerlessness, incomprehensible nonsense, etc, are the threats posed by lack of a good philosophy. But I'm offering hope against those, in the face of apparent hopelessness.

"That is the core principle at the heart of my philosophy, that I am to elaborate in the following essays: to always try, and so to act under whatever assumptions trying tacitly necessitates, namely that success is always possible, but never guaranteed. I consider the general philosophical view supported by that principle to be a naively uncontroversial, common-sense kind of view, from which various other philosophical schools of thought deviate in different ways. In these essays I aim to shore up and refine that common-sense view into a more rigorous form that can better withstand the temptation of such deviation, and to show the common error underlying all of those different deviations from this common-sense view."

Restating the kind of thing I'm going to do in the book: defend the common-sense view that things aren't completely hopeless/meaningless/etc, using that core principle.

"Put most succinctly, that common error is assuming the false dichotomy that either there must be some unquestionable answers, or else we will be left with some unanswerable questions. All of the deviations from the view I defend stem ultimately from falling to one side or the other of that false dichotomy, on some topic or another, because doing so in either way constitutes a failure to even try to genuinely answer the relevant questions. In contrast, my philosophy is the view that we must always try to answer our questions, and must therefore always proceed on the assumption that there are no unanswerable questions, and no unquestionable answers; that every question can in principle be answered, and every proposed answer is open to question."

Overview of what is wrong with the competition, and why what I'm offering is better.

"Very loosely speaking, that means that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions, both about reality and about morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those correct answers from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them so, but rather, they are independent of anyone's particular opinions, and grounded instead in our common experience. Put another way: that what is true and what is good are beyond the decree of any of us, yet within reach of each of us; and that we can in principle always eventually tell whether someone's opinion is right or wrong, but we can never immediately assume any opinion to be such, and must give each the benefit of the doubt until proof is found one way or the other."

Overview of what the thing I'm offering is, in more detail.

"That general philosophical view is the underlying reason I will give for all of my more specific philosophical views: everything that follows does so as necessary to conform to that broad general philosophy, rejecting any views that require either just taking someone's word on some question or else giving up all hope of ever answering such a question, settling on whatever views remain in the wake of that rejection.

The core principles I will outline have immediate implications about what kinds of things are real, what kinds of things are moral, the methods of attaining knowledge, and the methods of attaining justice, which will each be covered in their own essays. Those positions then raise immediate questions about the nature of the mind and the will, and the legitimacy of educational and governmental institutes, which will again each be covered in their own essays. But all of that first requires a framework of linguistic meaning to make any sense of, which will be covered in its own essay, along with attendant essays on the related topics of logic and mathematics, and rhetoric and the arts, each covering different facets of communication in more detail. And with all of that in place, we finally have the background to tackle the most practical questions of enlightenment, empowerment, and leading a meaningful life, each of which will be covered in its own essay as well."

Structural overview of the rest of the book to follow.

"For these far-reaching influences, I see philosophy as the most central field of study, bridging the most abstract of topics like language, math, and the arts, to the physical and ethical sciences that in turn support the development of all the tools used to do the jobs of all the world's various trades. It is in light of that pragmatic role of philosophy that I will begin my approach to the subject, and it was likewise that centrality that initially drew me to it."

Another take on why this subject is important, and segue to the next section where I explain why I found this important and how and why I'm sharing it with others now.

...

That's the first section for now, gotta run.

Reply to Pfhorrest Put that in your intro then and dump the other opening because it doesn’t work (I would recommend you change one of the iterations of ‘something’ though).

Reply to I like sushi You seem not to have actually read that post at all, because that is the "other" opening (the one that's currently up, that you were critiquing before), with commentary on what it's trying to communicate, in case you wanted to offer suggestions on how that could be better communicated. Which I said in the quoted bit at the very start of that post.

It was a response to this:

Quoting Pfhorrest

Before I even knew what philosophy was, I was looking for something. Something fundamental. I didn’t know what to call it.

When I discovered philosophy, I thought that that field was the place where I would find what I was looking for, and that that was the name of what I was looking for: a philosophy. The right one.

I didn’t find it. But I found lots of partial attempts at it, and partially successful attempts at it, and generally, altogether, most of the parts of it. They just needed to be shaped and polished a bit, assembled together in the right way, and a few gaps filled in.

That’s what my book is meant to be: the thing I came to philosophy looking for, but never found. And it’s targeted at people like me from 20 years ago, who are looking for the same thing I was, and who have just learned that something called “philosophy” is where something like that may be found, but don’t yet know the first thing about it.

Oh okay. I'll look for a way to work something like that in then.

Quoting Pfhorrest

This is the moral of the story, so to speak. It's the maxim that everything boils down to.

Yet all you give the reader is this:

Quoting Pfhorrest

It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway.

For a novel, yes it’s an intriguing opening. For a philosophical work I don’t care for it and it doesn’t tell me anything directly ... remember this is the opening sentence. If it’s the maxim of the book then why not simply state that it is the maxim of the book?

I literally said I do the same thing (ie. Not try hard enough, and that being human is the reason for this). The little bit at the end was directed at all humans. We try to try, to keep trying to try. The :D means *joke*

I think you’re just upset because you claimed you were looking for something yet did your best to avoid it. It happens, and it will happen again to you and me both. I’m not at all sorry if I touched a nerve. Sometimes things are better said than not and if in this instance I shouldn’t have pointed out what I pointed out it’s moot now - I said as I saw fit because I get upset seeing myself and others miss what’s right under their noses.

I don’t hold grudges because I know everyone has a necessary capacity to change - for better or worse. If may ‘feel’ like I attacked you, but I didn’t attack you because I don’t know you.

I spent the first half hour of free computer time I've had in days trying to adjust my work in light of your criticism and that's "not trying hard enough"?

Not devoting that tiny bit of time to your meaningless "chair" exercise instead is not "trying my best to avoid" actually constructive collaboration on something that means something to me.

I try enough because I try as much as I can, and if the results aren't enough then tough shit, I'll try again when I can and see if it gets better.

You're not my fucking boss, this isn't my fucking job, this is a passion project I do when I can as best I can, and I know it's not enough, it's not enough for me, and I don't need you fucking telling me it's not enough for you, because your opinion doesn't fucking matter.

You've outed yourself as a concern troll. You pretend to care so that your attacks will hurt more. You're not worth the pixels your words are printed on. From here on out I'm considering you a hostile actor not to be trusted.

I'm looking for people who like what it is that I'm trying to do and have thoughts on how I can do it better. It seems you don't think I should be even trying to do this, and your only thoughts are on how it's awful, with no constructive suggestions for how to make it better.

Quoting Pfhorrest

I'm looking for people who like what it is that I'm trying to do and have thoughts on how I can do it better. It seems you don't think I should be even trying to do this, and your only thoughts are on how it's awful, with no constructive suggestions for how to make it better.

This isn’t true at all. You asked for criticism and I’ve clearly offered constructive criticism.

Anyway, you’ve made yourself clear enough. If you have a change of heart let me know, if not no problem. I’ll not be bothering you anymore than I have appeared to already.

Reply to Pfhorrest Reply to I like sushi
I like sushi has a point Pfhorrest. From experience of my own, here is some advice about seeking feedback on your writing;
1. Do not expect useful literary criticism from anybody close to you emotionally. There are reasons why they have that connection to you, all of them sincere, and that are likely to bias their approach to your writing whether they are aware of that bias or not. That bias may, of course, be negative or positive.
2. Find someone close enough to your target audience as you can and who has no, or very little, vested interest in your emotional wellbeing, and ask them to devote some time to reading your work. You will no doubt have a clear picture of that kind of individual, so you can perhaps identify a suitable person or some suitable people within your circle of loose acquaintances. You might find such a person on this board, but I have my doubts. When you do find that person, ask that they be brutally honest and convince them that you have a thick skin, even if you don't. Do not expect that person to advise you what to do to improve the book, you are writing it, not them. When they do come back to you with a list of problems, and from personal experience with following this advice myself, they are likely to have quite a number of them, address those issues yourself and try to convince them to reread your work to see if they believe it has improved.

On a different note, if you goal is to see this book in print and to be published by someone other than yourself, you need to be able to convince a literay agent that you have a target audience that is crystal clear from a marketing point of view, and sufficiently large to give a chance that there will be some profit to be made. Agents and publishers are in it for the money, although perhaps not exclusively. What you have said about your target audience seems to me to be too nebulous to meet those commercial requirements.

Of course, if you don't care about seeing the book in print, and you are doing this just for yourself, then I do not see why you need the advice of anyone concerning your writing style, just keep writing and rewriting and make of yourself your own worst literary critic.

Reply to jkg20 :up:

@Pfhorrest

@jkg20 is spot on.

Sushi made it obvious from the start he didn't give a shit about your feelings and was just going to say what he was going to say. Which is exactly what you should ideally expect (and hope for) in criticism.

As an aside, I've just finished re-editing and relaunching a book of short stories, which I put a lot a lot of work into and which I've been highly emotionally invested in. But it took me over a year to go back and see some of the fuckups in there because it can take that long away from a creative project to divest yourself of bias and look on it in a way similar to a detached critic. Of course, you'll never be fully objective, but you'll get nowhere without giving yourself time to be so. Your reaction to Sushi suggests you're not there yet. But if you want your work to be better, you need to get there. That's just the way it is.

Also, you're not even supposed to be promoting your own work here or getting feedback on it. Normally, I delete that kind of stuff as self-promotion/advertising. And now I've got another good reason, which is people getting pissed off that everyone doesn't love their stuff as much as they do.

Quoting jkg20

2. Find someone close enough to your target audience as you can and who has no, or very little, vested interest in your emotional wellbeing, and ask them to devote some time to reading your work. You will no doubt have a clear picture of that kind of individual, so you can perhaps identify a suitable person or some suitable people within your circle of loose acquaintances.

Nobody in my close circle of friends seems to be that kind of individual. I would generally characterize that kind of individual as “philosophy fans”: non-experts with an interest in the field, the kind of people who might otherwise be philosophy students. I thought a forum like this would be full of them.

Quoting jkg20

Do not expect that person to advise you what to do to improve the book, you are writing it, not them.

I don’t understand what to do to improve something when the feedback is just “I don’t like this” or “I don’t understand this” and any attempt to get more details about what or why is taken as defensive. When I have tried just blindly rewriting something from scratch, like I did for sushi, the response was just more “I don’t like this”. I don’t even know if the change was in the right direction or the wrong direction. I have no idea where to proceed from feedback like that.

Quoting jkg20

On a different note, if you goal is to see this book in print and to be published by someone other than yourself

It’s not. I don’t see what the point of that would be, I’m not doing this for money, I’m trying to give away something useful to the world.

Quoting Baden

Sushi made it obvious from the start he didn't give a shit about your feelings and was just going to say what he was going to say.

It’s not about him not caring about my feelings. I was trying to work with his criticism, as useless as it was, as best I could. I was trying to get better clarification on what kind of change would be more in the direction he wanted. I had just finished another round of attempting to adjust for his comments and came here to say so only to find that he had just attacked not the work but my character (in the other thread), saying I’m not trying hard enough. That personal attack is the only thing that made me angry.

Quoting Baden

And now I've got another good reason, which is people getting pissed off that everyone doesn't love their stuff as much as they do.

I never expected anyone to love it. I think I’m garbage and everything I make is garbage. (Even that game mod that lots of people love still looks like garbage to me). All I hope for is someone to find it interesting garbage with potential and give constructive feedback on how to make it less garbage.

And as I said, I only got pissed at the personal attack on my character, not the criticism of my work.

Reply to Pfhorrest

It’s not. I don’t see what the point of that would be, I’m not doing this for money, I’m trying to give away something useful to the world.

I did not say or imply that you were in it for the money. Publishers and agents are. You might, however; want your work published to reach a wider audience than a bunch of insomniancs with nothing better to do than try to prove other people are interpreting Wittgenstein incorrectly. If you do want to do that, you will need to have a sharper target in sight than just "people who in other cicumstances might have been philsophy students". If you sharpen your target you may also have to sharpen the focus of the work, of course, and turn it into something with more limited scope.

In any case, if your target audience is people interested in philosophy, then my single piece of advice to you, and I think Sushi made much the same point, and which you can certainly do something about very easily without affecting the content, is to depersonalise it. The "I" count is very high in the sample chapters I have skimmed through and, speaking as a person interested in philosophy, it is off putting.

Quoting jkg20

You might, however; want your work published to reach a wider audience

The audience of people willing to pay for something is wider than the audience of people willing to read something for free? That seems counter-intuitive.

Quoting jkg20

depersonalise it. The "I" count is very high

I still think this advice is countermanded by people with better standing to give such advice, such as all of my philosophy professors, who explicitly instructed everyone that philosophy is written from the first person; and a survey of most of the historical philosophical literature, which bears out that instruction, being written in the first person unless it's a dialogue or some kind of literature review not putting forward its own arguments.

I understand that other kinds of disciplines, and high school teachers apparently, drill first-person writing out of people, which is why the philosophy professors have explicitly hammered on how that kind of advice is to be ignored for the sake of philosophical writing.

I just did a quick search for philosophical writing advice and found these choice quotes:

“Philosophers often use the first person, especially when announcing their argument.”
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/writing/wp-content/uploads/sites/164/2016/10/phil-papers-handout.pdf

Some examples of “good writing”:
“In this paper, I will refute Smith’s argument against the existence of free will by showing that it trades on an ambiguity.“
“ As I have shown clearly in my reconstruction of Smith’s argument, the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s
first premise (meaning uncaused) must be interpreted differently from the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s third premise (meaning unforced) – otherwise at least one of those premises would be highly implausible. But in that case, Smith’s argument is logically invalid.
It might be objected that I have interpreted Smith’s argument unfavorably. I can think of only one other reasonable interpretation of Smith’s argument. It uses the same first two premises but...”
https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf

All of this article generally:
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/should-i-use-i/

Also of interest:

“There is no need to point out that your topic is an important one, and one that has interested philosophers for hundreds of years.”
http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/resources/writing.html

It kind of sounds like many of you have never actually written a philosophy paper and are running on old high school writing rules.

Reply to Pfhorrest

my philosophy professors, who explicitly instructed everyone that philosophy is written from the first person;

Questionable advice, and in any case open to interpretation. The suggestion was not that you should, or even could, write without dropping in the odd first person pronoun here and there where it makes sense. However, your use of it seems extravagant and very often entirely unnecessary. Compare your use of it with, say, Kant's and perhaps you will see. In any case, you wanted opinions from people interested in philosophy and who read philosophy, and, being such a person, I gave you one. What you do with it is entirely up to you.

Reply to Pfhorrest @PfhorrestPerhaps you have edited your replies without indicating as much or perhaps a short night's sleep has made me come at this with a fresh set of eyes, in either case, there are links and suggestions in your remarks above now that I did not take into account last night, so I have taken the liberty of editing my earlier remarks.

Please do read, or reread, the "should I use 'I'" article you provided. As you do so, ask yourself the question whether you might be using the first person pronoun so much that you undermine any potentially positive effects of doing so.

It kind of sounds like many of you have never actually written a philosophy paper and are running on old high school writing rules.

I will not speak for the others contributing to this thread, but I have written more philosophy papers than I care to count and have read even more. Some of them were better than others, but none of them were better because the first person pronoun had been scattered around the pages like confetti. When I taught undergraduate philosophy, I certainly advised people to try to put things into their own words, find their own examples to replace the ones contained in the set texts, come up with questions that express what it is that they did not understand about some philosopher's remarks, and so on. To some extent, that is adopting a first person approach to writing philosophy, but does not require excessive use of "I" in its execution. I also advised on many occasions that where one sentence will do in place of five, opt for brevity. Many, if not all, of my colleagues were in the habit of dealing out very similar counsel.

On a different note, unless you are doing so with express intent, avoid splitting infintives. Some people, of course, intend to split their infinitives and on rare occasions doing so enhances a sentence. However, if you are doing it without that intent, then just bear in mind that sometimes the careless splitting of an infinitive can lead to unwelcome ambiguity and not simply to stylistic discomfort. Also, beginning sentences with conjunctions is mostly to be avoided: conjunctions have the grammatical purpose of conjoining two or more phrases in a single sentence. Finally, in the absence of its serving some essential end or its being unavoidable, eschew using the same word more than once in a sentence. Such repitition smacks of laziness, engenders boredom and can indicate to the reader that you lack vocabularly. You could also extend that last rule of thumb to cover a whole paragraph. Here is one sentence of yours where you go against all of the foregoing advice:

Pfhorrest:But I am not saying to automatically reject all claims made by all authorities.

Perhaps this is the one and only time you break those guidelines of grammar and style in so few words. However, on the off chance that the aforementioned quotation is indicative of your writing generally, you might want to look up those three pieces of advice on the internet and see if anyone else agrees with them or not.

Quoting Pfhorrest

... philosophy is written from the first person

How about 'first person impersonal' (e.g. Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Peirce, Russell ... Nussbaum, Meillassoux, et al)? Less 'systemic' memoir, more autopsy ... of reflection / reasoning. :chin:

Quoting jkg20

... a bunch of insomniancs with nothing better to do than try to prove other people are interpreting Wittgenstein incorrectly.

:up: "Drinks for all my friends!" ~Henry Chinaski, Barfly

:death: :flower:

Reply to 180 Proof :ok:

Less 'systemic' memoir, more autopsy ... of reflection / reasoning.

Well expressed.

"Drinks for all my friends!" ~Henry Chinaski, Barfly

Cheers. Next round's on me as well.

Reply to 180 Proof I don’t understand the distinction you are making.

Can you give me an example passage from the codex that is too “personal” and rephrase it in the tone you think it should be? When I look through for ways to make things less personal, all I see are opportunities to falsely claim my own views as indisputable facts, which seems like it would be much worse.

Reply to Pfhorrest Allow me, let us take the following paragraph of yours:

But I am not saying to automatically reject all claims made by all authorities. I am not saying that everything every religion claims is wrong, be they claims about reality or ones about morality; nor that everything teachers teach in schools is wrong, or that you should disregard all laws put forth by all governments. I am actually very much in favor of defering to expert opinion on matters about which you have little information with which to form your own opinion. By rejecting appeals to authority, I am only saying to hold all such opinions merely tentatively, remaining open to question and doubt. If you are unsure of the answer to a question yourself, and some particular individual or institution claims to have looked into it extensively and become very confident in the truth of some answer, I think it's fine to tentatively accept their opinion as probably the right one, for lack of any better reason to think one way or another.

Here is a first draft depersonalised version:

The recommendation is not, though, to reject out of hand every claim made by any authority. In cases where we lack information, or even the resources to obtain it, we may have good reasons to defer to the testimony of an expert, the legislation of a government or the edict of a pope. However, deference should neither become, nor be confused with reverence. Everyone, no matter their expertise or power, remains fallible.

Reply to Pfhorrest And if you can't resist personalising it a bit, perhaps amend the final sentence to:
Everyone, no matter their expertise or power, remains fallible, even me.
Edit: strictly speaking, grammar requires that "even me" be "even I", but that seems inelegant. Anyway, as I say, this is just a first draft which you should feel free to flush away like a used sheet of toilet paper.

Reply to Pfhorrest jkg20 beat me to it ...

Reply to jkg20 Bingo! :up:

Reply to jkg20 Thanks for that. I hope to have time to work on this a bit later tomorrow, so I'll save this for then.

Also got the girlfriend finally reading/proofreading it; she's not interested in philosophy and so hadn't read it until I pressed her to read the first part of the intro a few days ago, but I asked her if I can try to teacher her philosophy while she teaches me to be a better writer by collaborating on this, and she's tentatively agreed and given me partial notes on the intro already.

Reply to Pfhorrest You're welcome. I wish you well. Maybe you can find some better midground between the harsh austereness of my paragraph, and the somewhat apologetic softness of yours.

When I look through for ways to make things less personal, all I see are opportunities to falsely claim my own views as indisputable facts

There is always a danger in philosophy of presenting a statement as truth when in fact it is false, or at least dubitable. With the possible exception of Socrates, who asked questions rather than made statements, I can think of no philosopher who avoided doing so. However, if the statement concerned is preceded by good arguments or reasoning for believing it to be true, it would be a very sensitive person indeed who would be affronted in any way by your audacity in passing it off as a truth. They might take it on as a challenge to prove you wrong, but is not that precisely one thing that we should be inviting as writers of philosophy? In any case, if you want to hedge a statement, whilst occassionally an "in my opinion" or "as far as I can see" might be just what you need, there are usually always impersonal alternatives to try out for size.