The Philosophy Writing Management Triangle
In philosophy we are taught a mnemonic to help ensure our writing will be as clear, concise, and unambiguous as possible: to write for an audience assumed to be “stupid, lazy, and mean”.
- “Stupid” in that they’re not just going to understand you right away, so you need to really explain yourself clearly.
- “Lazy” in that they’re not going to put in any effort to understand you, so you need to spoon-feed it to them very concisely.
- “Mean” in that if they understand you at all it will be in the least charitable way, so you need to unambiguously explain exactly what you do and don't mean so you can't be misinterpreted.
I propose that like the famous Project Management Triangle (“good, fast, cheap — pick any two”), in practice we can at best write for an audience that is any two of these things, but not all three at once.
You can write for a stupid and lazy audience, with clear, concise explanations, only if you can assume they’re charitable enough to look for your intended meaning without lengthy disclaimers and clarifications.
You can write for a stupid and mean audience, with detailed explanations and a fortress of disclaimers and clarifications, only if you can assume they’re patient enough to actually read all of that in full.
You can write for a lazy and mean audience, using very concise, precise, unambiguous technical language, only if you can assume that they’re smart enough to understand all that.
To get through to an audience, they must be at least one of those three things:
- Smart enough to understand precise technical language
- Patient enough to read through a fortress of clarifications, or
- Charitable enough to look your intended meaning.
Any audience that is none of those things will be unreachable no matter how much you try, and the more effort you put into fortifying against one kind of vice, the more you sacrifice toward your defense against at least one of the other two.
- “Stupid” in that they’re not just going to understand you right away, so you need to really explain yourself clearly.
- “Lazy” in that they’re not going to put in any effort to understand you, so you need to spoon-feed it to them very concisely.
- “Mean” in that if they understand you at all it will be in the least charitable way, so you need to unambiguously explain exactly what you do and don't mean so you can't be misinterpreted.
I propose that like the famous Project Management Triangle (“good, fast, cheap — pick any two”), in practice we can at best write for an audience that is any two of these things, but not all three at once.
You can write for a stupid and lazy audience, with clear, concise explanations, only if you can assume they’re charitable enough to look for your intended meaning without lengthy disclaimers and clarifications.
You can write for a stupid and mean audience, with detailed explanations and a fortress of disclaimers and clarifications, only if you can assume they’re patient enough to actually read all of that in full.
You can write for a lazy and mean audience, using very concise, precise, unambiguous technical language, only if you can assume that they’re smart enough to understand all that.
To get through to an audience, they must be at least one of those three things:
- Smart enough to understand precise technical language
- Patient enough to read through a fortress of clarifications, or
- Charitable enough to look your intended meaning.
Any audience that is none of those things will be unreachable no matter how much you try, and the more effort you put into fortifying against one kind of vice, the more you sacrifice toward your defense against at least one of the other two.
Comments (135)
Whoever taught you this is an idiot.
Essentially all of the philosophical cannon, however you want to define it, does not assume the audience is stupid, lazy and mean, nor any combination. Which of the philosophers implemented such maxims?
You are referring to advice intended for commercial writing, not philosophical writing.
Furthermore, it is only good advice for commercial writing because mainstream news works for advertisers and not readers, and advertisers do not want any critical analysis of their practices nor the corrupt status quo and so it's safest to simply not have anyone capable of critical analysis on the payroll. When writers and journalists are fired for saying something "controversial" (such as noting the propaganda model of how the mainstream media operates stands up to scrutiny) it is not the case that their readers lost interest in them.
It is more accurate to say "if you want to be hired by a mainstream and historically prestigious media institution -- with that prestige built up before the advertiser imperative and almost gone now -- then you should yourself be stupid, lazy and mean, as that's the basis of a 'proper' career in writing".
Quoting boethius
It was literally taught by many of my philosophy professors, and if you google “lazy stupid and mean” together with “philosophy” and “writing” you’ll find plenty if hand-outs from professors at various universities advising exactly that in those words.
I have zero qualms calling your philosophy professors idiots.
Let them come here to defend this adage themselves if you are certain of their authority on this subject.
If they do not, let them know it's a stupid, lazy and mean thing to leave you hanging like this, and indeed everyone else here that could benefit from their wisdom.
But if you think carefully, you may find that they are following the same commercial imperative I describe, both dreaming of success in the mainstream media as well as navigating similar commercial imperatives within the academic system (i.e. what commercial value is philosophy? to get a writing job! how do you do that? Being stupid, lazy and mean enough to shoo away people from the small cracks in the echo chamber you've been posted to guard).
I notice that I am a person wishing to communicate with other persons. So if I have regard for this mnemonic, I would have to assume that I too am lazy stupid and mean. think I would post a lot less...
But here at least, the lazy have no reason to post, the mean have no reason to share their thoughts, and the stupid are easy to ignore for the most part. So why not assume that we are all intelligent, generous, and diligent? We could call it 'The Principle of Charity.'
It that sense, for scientific writing up scientific experiments, it’s a pretty solid base to start from.
Also taught to reference quotes to give context.
From : 'Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper'.
3. Be concise, but explain yourself fully
http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/writing.html
:up:
I don't necessarily endorse the implied ad hominen here, but I do concur that this mnemonic falls more in the way of an heuristic than a principle. I used write in tortuously complex sentences that required you to be completely in sync with the ideas. I liked the way it read. Eventually I realized that readability was, in itself, a philosophical virtue. All I did was break things up, turn subordinate clauses into sentences.
Simple, concise, clear. I think think these are the underlying philosophical virtues to which writing should aspire. I think these are the underlying objectives of these heuristics.
It explains why social sciences are in such an appalling state. It is an inherently authoritarian dogmatic attitude to take that might be appropriate in the lower reaches of shut up and calculate physics to a very limited extent. I might ask why anyone wants to even try to teach these people that one has clearly nothing to learn from, except that would be to take the uncharitable position I am rejecting.
Communicate clearly, completely and with detail of course is another matter. Or should I charitably assume that this is what is really meant, and the universal insult is just 'banter'?
I think you're right. And in particular, fortifying your writing against mean readers can result in verbosity, with, as you say, "a fortress of disclaimers and clarifications". Scruton said that "philosophers have become so nervous of their nit-picking colleagues, that they dot every i and cross every t, lest they should be accused of slap-dash thinking".
I can see the point of the triangle, but writing for the mean, while it might encourage you to anticipate objections and so on, mostly just promotes ponderous prose. So my solution is: be clear (for the stupid) and concise (for the lazy), and forget about those who don't apply the principle of charity, the meanies. Like this:
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think that's a reasonable assumption, unless you and your readers are doing philosophy as some kind of battle of wits.
As we all discover on a forum like this, people will very often be mean, that is, they will pick on easy targets and argue against the weakest version of your argument. I've found those people not to be worth the time, and one's writing suffers from all the disclaimers and hedging.
Good thing you don't necessarily disagree, as it's not an ad hominen.
Ad hominen must be in the structure "This person is an idiot, therefore what this person says is wrong or can be dismissed". However, saying "this person is wrong and therefore an idiot", is perfectly valid if the idiocy is commensurate with the wrongness.
Quoting Pantagruel
Well, this is up for debate. What's one's purpose in writing? is that purpose justified? what method attains that purpose? are valid questions. Readability, be it one definition or another, may or may not be useful to one's project.
Why I am so confident that whoever is teaching this "stupid, lazy, mean" maxim in philosophy is an idiot, is because so much of the very normal philosophical cannon is clearly not written in this way, in any sense.
Even interpreted generously as "simple and concise", many of "the great philosophers" are not in such a category. Organon, Plutarch's Moralia, Proslogium, Spinoza's Ethics, The Meditations, Critique of Pure Reason, Being and Time, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, are all pretty standard and famous philosophical texts but few would say any are "simple and concise" and fewer still written based on the assumption the reader is "stupid, lazy and mean", and these difficult readings are fairly typical in philosophy, not the glaring exceptions.
"Writing advice", or a heuristic as you say, presupposes a lot of things; the history of philosophy does not show any consensus on such advice, other than at least someone able to understand and talk about you (which itself we could debate philosophically as a worthy goal; for instance, we could imagine ourselves debating with someone who holds the view that only concrete political actions are meaningful and inspiring communication and writing about philosophical theory serves no purpose at all and is counter productive).
Yeah, it was tongue in cheek.
Absolutely! But that is not necessarily a point in their favour. Just because something is great, doesn't mean it couldn't have been better.
Who is this 'we' and who is the 'audience' ?
The part of writing guidelines for a student paper you appear to have referenced is only that - small.
I am interested in this 'famous Project Management Triangle', first I've heard of it. Before likening it to writing for an audience, I need to understand it better. As things stand, I am not convinced.
Here are a few of my questions:
If a philosopher paper is a project, what are the aims, how is it managed ?
What are the characteristics or constraints ?
What are the criteria for success ?
I would suggest some constraints are time, scope and intelligence of a student.
The 'stupid, lazy and mean' in the 3rd guideline (see link) is only there to help envisage the worst case audience to convince.
This to encourage clear writing. To elaborate qualitatively.
The end product an 'A' in academia.
http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/writing.html
To imagine in general that an audience has such negative characteristics is to miss the point. It also shows a lack of respect.
In sum, I disagree with the proposal of the OP:
'The Philosophy Writing Management Triangle'.
My philosophy courses came a very long time ago (I'm 83)...but I was never taught that...and it does not sound like a philosophical position of much merit to me.
It sounds to me like the kind of thing Trump might say when lecturing Generals about how to run a war.
That said...it makes sense to be as clear, concise, and unambiguous as possible when writing anything...unless you are writing something like...
[i][b]’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.[/b][/i]
One of my favorite poems, by Lewis Carroll
Certainly few authors view their work as perfect, but it's up for debate what they would view as potential improvement.
For instance, Aristotle was elitist and viewed slaves as necessary to provide the leisure time for some to philosophize. So, if "simple and concise" is meant as "understandable by the commoner and slave" we can surmise Aristotle would not care. However, even considering that, the Organon seems to be lecture notes and so not meant to be self-explanatory without additional explanations. Indeed, even among non-elitists, some philosophical texts are written not to be assisted by their own commentary but assumes summary and commentary will be written by someone else and ideas will eventually get to the common person through the arts. Some philosophers write both theoretical texts for advanced students and theater and novels for common people. Some had only disdain for theory and so wrote only popular literature. Wittgenstein introduces his book with a "maybe", maybe one single person may understand him, which even that he doesn't really care about. Some philosophers were clear they write in a purposefully complicated and challenging, borderline incorrect, way to rouse the spirit of their reader. We can also easily view mysticism as a general school of philosophy, typified as being as far from simple and clear as one can possibly go while still being intelligible at all.
There is not a general convergence of writing style among the great philosophers.
Writing advice presupposes knowing what the goal is, as @I like sushi suggested @Pfhorrest try to decide, which, from what I understand, led to this post.
Yikes!! What does that say about peer review?
:lol:
Indeed. Knowing what the goal of any piece of writing is most helpful. The intention of the author is...what ?
From what you say, the OP seems to be following on from another conversation ?
I've been out of the loop for a while...
Hellllooo!, Please stay. :flower:
Yes, from I can tell, this post is in response to criticism from @I like sushi of @Pfhorrest's book; in particular deciding an audience (which I like sushi points out could be just oneself, but an adviser clearly needs to know, is all).
@jkg20 and @Baden also had good followup explanations of why this this basic point is critical.
This thread seems to be motivated out of frustration with this audience identification process; a sort of "fine! I'll dumb myself down to the stupid, lazy and mean level of the internet troll!".
Now, what the OP states is correct, for a certain kind of commercial writing where the job is essentially to bully around the populace into being a tad bit less deplorable from the kleptocratic point of view, but this isn't the only option. Many "heretics" of political analysis still manage to subsist somehow and get their stuff out. Granted, with a woefully inadequate supply of cocktails, if any at all, and so "real writers" can just spit on them from the top Manhattan boulevard, a small gift of blessed cocktail residue falling from the sky -- but, still, no matter how dry they may become in the vast desert of not having a Pulitzer and Times column, these heretical writers aren't dead; they may even sell books and some are pretty famous on the internet affecting the culture in big ways that are best to ignore.
Anyways, the advice I found pretty good, and topical to the subject here, so I'll re-post it.
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting jkg20
Quoting Baden
The Philosophy Writing Management Triage.
It certainly makes more sense in terms of the above. What I think many here, including myself, took it to mean was something quite different as to how it’s set out here.
When writing any technical paper the writer assumes that the reader understands the subject matter well enough so as not to have to literally teach them something like basic arithmetic. The ‘stupid’ as concise writing, the ‘lazy’ as impatient (get to the point) and the ‘mean’ as actively looking for flaws in your position (people read for their own benefit not the writers benefit).
Two of my go to ‘guides’ for all general writing are these:
http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html
Grice’s Maxims were made for ‘speech,’ but I’ve found them a sturdy enough guide - especially for evidence based writing. Orwell is simply a master.
Essays and thesis aimed at teachers are quite different beasts - they are being PAID to read your work.
They'll look for it if they think you have something they need, right?
If I speak or write (for real life stuff), I try to engage the audience by presenting them with a problem and asking how it could be solved.
I got that from a math teacher who would have most of his class super eager to hear what he had to say because they wanted the answer: how does the farmer buy just the right amount of seeds for an irregular field? How? How?
I understand that you're focusing on style, but content is where one really connects with an audience, right?
I generally disagree with this. The audience is not an audience. A person reads for themselves so the primary things to consider when writing is who will read it and of what use is it to them (if we’re talking about a technically minded reader). This means no flip-flopping (ie. ‘Maybe x or maybe why.?Let’s see.’). The reader wants to know the point from the get go, not to be corralled into a corner for the big reveal.
If the point is established then the reader knows why they should care. They want to know what is of value for them NOT what your ideas and thoughts are (that’s tangental).
Maybe it’s better to think as the reader as ‘selfish’. If there is nothing of apparent interest, nothing they care for, nor any visible value within the first few paragraphs, then they’ll move on - unless they’re paid to read (editors, researchers, scholars, teachers and professors).
Maybe it depends on the setting? A random academic article is here today and gone tomorrow. Great philosophical works live for millennia. Philosophers write however they like.
Plato's message is embedded in his style.
Kierkegaard suggested that most of his readers were not his intended audience.
Nietzsche wrote like the fool on the hill.
I address this:
Quoting boethius
I am aware of this interpretation of the words.
The OP uses these terms, so I don't see why I won't use the terms of the OP to refer to the same thing as the OP.
As you say, the saying is supposed to be provocative, so if people then use the saying to debate it's merits it seems natural that it will stay provocative.
I am arguing against "simple, clear and concise" as well. Many philosophers simply don't do this. We can debate if it served their purpose, we can also debate their purpose, but I don't think it's a controversial point that many philosophers were and are very much unclear and not simple and purposefully left many things up to the reader to contemplate.
"Quoting Pfhorrest
I have issue with. It's certainly good advice for writing papers in the classes of the professors making this statement, but it can't simply be generalized to "philosophy" in general. Many philosophers are famously the opposite of "clear, concise, and unambiguous".
OP has not stated what the goal is (get published? political revolution? enlighten the intrepid few?), and so defined his audience.
In the context of the other threads and comments, it seems to be that there is reticence to perform such a task and this thread is at the "negotiation" phase of the process. It is a positive step, but the "goal and the audience" is still required for the advice of the OP to be constructively debated.
As it is, the OP is just generally applied to all of philosophy, so I am arguing against such a position.
I make a second argument that for mainstream media propaganda purposes, this nominal advice really is taken literally to setup straw-men that must be relentlessly rooted out and flogged as well as really is the spirit of such writing. For instance, take the recent kerfuffle around Joe Biden allegations; the mainstream media first choice was to be stupid (just ignore the hypocrisy), lazy (not bother to interview anyone or ask any uncomfortable questions to Joe Biden or anyone else), and mean (viciously attack anyone bringing the subject up as supporting Trump).
However, I am not implying that @Pfhorrest wants to do this, only pointing out that academia puts people on such a path with the certainly harmless "mnemonics" of thinking of people as "stupid, lazy and mean" as a hapless luck-charm to remember to be "simple, concise and disambiguate" for the purposes of institutional writing. But this is only a thematic connection to the OP.
Thanks for enlightenment :sparkle:
Thanks for welcome back :smile:
You may be right, and I agree that aiming for clarity, concision, and logical comprehensiveness is not the recipe for a great work of philosophy. But it is at least good to write like that sometimes in philosophy, say in academia; or here on the forum, as you obviously attempt to do yourself; or when writing for non-specialists.
Although, like I said, I think it's counterproductive and a waste of time to write for "mean" readers.
Yes, definitely the advice makes sense for many purposes.
However, without the purpose the advice is putting the cart before the horse, especially if we're talking about a book, and even more if we don't even have the goal to write something that will become "philosophy".
For instance, a work of fiction is a popular place writers use to hash out their own ideas or introduce new ideas to a broad audience, precisely to avoid the context of heavy intellectual debate of exhaustive disambiguated pedantry.
No matter what if you start out with a title like “How to Play the Piano” and the introduction talks exclusively about the the average size of a coconut in Jamaica, which then leads into the first chapter that jumps from the history of piano construction to what is, in the author’s opinion, the perfect size for a piece of paper ... well, I’d probably read on tbh! Haha! That’s though :)
Grice’s maxims of Quality and Relation. Be honest with the reader about what they’re going to read and stay on topic. If the reader is set up for x and reads on looking for it but never finding it then they’ll give s poor review, whilst if they read the first few paragraphs and decide ‘this isn’t for me’ they may still recommend to someone whose interests it may suit.
Basically don’t waste the reader’s time or it could effectively stop what you’ve done reaching an audience that would value it.
Why doesn't it exemplify the care and clarity it recommends instead of this sensationalist macho hyperbolic tone? No, i think it betrays a real attitude that is as problematic as it is prevalent in academia.
:up:
Well, no it isn't always the case that it is counterproductive or a waste of time.
If 'mean' is defined as @Pfhorrest suggests:
“Mean” in that if they understand you at all it will be in the least charitable way, so you need to unambiguously explain exactly what you do and don't mean so you can't be misinterpreted.
'If they understand you at all' - is key.
It is one of the most difficult things to apply the principle of charity when you are reading something against or attacking your whole being. Like an omnivore reading Peter Singer's 'Animal Liberation'.
Some people don't want or care to understand. It would mean they might have to change their way of thinking or lifestyle.
If posters or authors give up writing a response or persuasive text because of potentially 'mean' readers, then ignorance and lack of understanding persists.
Know your audience but don't just play to those who clap...
This seems a valid observation.
A "persuasive text", one that could even persuade mean readers, might not be one that is written with them in mind. And maybe you don't persuade by pandering to nitpickers, but by showing them the way, strongly and confidently.
The original idea is not to actually assume bad things about your real audience, but to write with even the worst of audiences in mind, to make your writing better.
I am saying that perhaps it is just not possible to reach the absolute worst audience, and trying to do so requires sacrifices in aspects that would otherwise have helped to reach other segments of the audience.
The Project Management Triangle I am comparing it to is this:
The original idea (and my modification) are not opposite the principle of charity but complimentary to it: be charitable, but beware that others won’t be. (Also be patient but beware that others won’t be, etc).
I didn’t reference that Yablo paper because I didn’t get this directly from there but verbally from multiple old professors, and a Google search showed multiple written sources using that phrase, so I figured it was just common knowledge among philosophy professors these days.
This thread isn’t supposed to be about my book or the arguments surrounding it, though it was inspired by those conversations, but not in the way that’s been implied. I was already trying to write for a “stupid, lazy, and mean” audience from the beginning, so this isn’t an insult to anybody who has commented there. But as I have gotten conflicting advice from multiple different sources, it struck me to remember that you can’t please everyone, which inspired this idea. I think my writing is currently weak against the lazy (because they’re uninterested in the topic and don’t care to look for what’s going to be of interest to them later). But looking for ways to fix that kept exposing vulnerabilities against the stupid or the mean (saying things early on to pique interest, but consequently without the setup necessary for someone to understand them correctly). That made me think of the Project Management Triangle, how trying to increase speed can lower quality or raise costs, etc... hence this thread.
That's an excellent principle, but I would add "...and don't assume that people who don't clap are lazy stupid or mean." In particular, there is the role of advocatus diaboli, which does not apply only to @Hanover, but is a quite general principle of considering the opposing view in all seriousness. One's most sympathetic friends ought to be one's sternest critics.
Indeed. Considering the opposite view is essential.
From the referenced Guidelines article:
Or you can handle it the way it is handled in a vast majority of debate/discussions on the Internet. Simply declare that you have established some point or another.; that you have "won" the intellectual battle that has been taking place; and declare that anyone who cannot see that you have is just missing the point...almost certainly because he/she is too stupid to understand things.
I created a website some years ago that contained original, albeit amateur, historical research on topics that had not been subject to investigations. Then, some time later, I wrote several print-on-demand books based on my site. I did this primarily to insure some records of my efforts survive after I pass away and the site vanishes. I check periodically and find that several of these books are bought each year, but, more importantly, copies reside in a library devoted to these pursuits. I make no money, and consider these books my contributions to these specific areas of activity. I suspect they are rarely checked out and read, but that's OK. The mere fact they exist provides satisfaction.
I have several old friends who are writing what I consider end-of-life projects. I doubt their books will be finished and published, but it gives them a purpose, a reason to persist and grow, even in old age. I suggest to them they have other projects waiting in the wings should they actually finish these books.
What motivates you to write this book? I'm sure you have explained this primary aspect of your project, but I would like to know.
Specifically, while there’s tons of great research in specialized areas of professional philosophy, I haven’t found very much connecting all of that together into a unified whole, or bridging between that professional research and lay people. Most of my attempted contributions are in making those connections.
I’m trying to get people here to read it basically to sanity-check that it is readable and successfully communicates the things I’m trying to communicate. It’s hard to tell if you’re making any sense if the only person you can bounce things off is yourself.
I am not sure why the Project Management Triangle has
1. 'Done quickly' as opposed to Done slowly, or carefully.
2. 'Low cost' as opposed to High or Medium cost.
Arguably a 3. 'High Quality', or even a good piece of philosophical writing requires sufficient time, careful reading and reflection.
Perhaps you could explain further ?
Also why the need to choose 2 out of the 3 ?
As in your :
" I propose that like the famous Project Management Triangle (“good, fast, cheap — pick any two”), in practice we can at best write for an audience that is any two of these things, but not all three at once".
Whose advice is being quoted here, this ? :
Quoting Pfhorrest
There is no need for lengthy disclaimers to be able to write clearly and concisely so as to avoid misinterpretation.
Quoting Amity
If the few words you use to write clearly and concisely could admit of multiple possible interpretations, you will need to spell out in more depth what interpretations you do or don’t mean to avoid misinterpretation, which sacrifices brevity; or else you could regain brevity by instead explaining things less step-by-step, instead sacrificing accessibility.
Thanks for the explanation. I do the same thing with mathematics, writing short notes on whatever topic interests me and posting on researchgate. Once upon a time I wrote and published, but I lost interest in the formalities and the topics I was writing about when I retired twenty years ago. It's a lot more fun now! :cool:
Thanks for further explanation. I guess I disagree with the sacrificial aspect. I think it possible to meet all criteria.
Indeed, writing in depth or fully is necessary once you have concisely addressed the specific problem.
Perhaps it is just the I'm sure unintended pejorative tone, to which earlier referred? Maybe "least receptive"?
You spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on style. The old saying that it's not what you say but how you say it is ultimately wrong. It's what you say. There is no good way, for example, to serve a shit sandwich, dress it up as you may.
Wittgenstein and Kant, for example, didn't win their adherents from their mastery of form and clarify. If you have something of brilliance to say, it's brilliance will be deciphered from the chunks if your only way of speaking is to vomit it out.
If you've found the cure to cancer, please don't withhold it from us until you've figured out the poetry to say it.
And so please do note: you submitted a tome for our digestion in another thread and no one engaged you in any of its substance, but they quibbled over your use of conjunction and split infinitive.
If you want to get meaningful feedback, I'd suggest you point to whatever section of your book that you think made some headway, and then pay attention only to those criticisms that address its merits. You can figure out how to add polish later, but, especially for philosophy, substance matters over form.
I’m only looking at form because that’s all anyone has given me feedback on.
And I did break it down one piece at a time. That’s why I started a new thread for each chapter, and waited for each to die before posting another.
Most of what I asked for feedback on was which parts were genuinely novel to people vs what was old hat, so I could later focus on what actually warranted in depth discussion of the substance when it came to that stage.
The few things that did garner preemptive argument about the substance were, disappointingly, the most old-hat parts of it, the boring groundwork. When I finally got to the interesting details, nobody was paying attention anymore.
Sushi et al seem to be suggesting that that’s for stylistic reasons that make nobody want to pay attention through the setup to the payoff, hence this diversion into style.
This thread is about style generally through, not about my book in particular.
Have you thought of any OTHER things like that to apply, like the pyramid of needs for example?
I’m not just directly applying that same triangle though, but making an analogous one.
I’ve got that, but it’s attached to the subject obviously - but certainly not greatly important to aspects of writing.
I terms of ‘style’ there are, as Frank pointed out, no hard rules (and as Orwell states in his last point - ‘break any or all these rules rather than write something barbarous’). Something I proposed once on another forum was writing the same section in several different styles alongside each other. The initial idea was more of an exercise in writing, but then I started to consider that it may actually serve as use to reader in that it would allow them to compare and contrast how the same thing can be said in many different ways and assess, in their own mind, what combinations work for them and could work for others - in a sense it wasn’t about ‘expressing’ my ideas, but more about the reader having an active interest in seeing how an idea can be expressed in different ways.
In terms of the OP if you have someone who is either very knowledgeable about the subject matter (anti-stupid), extremely studious and persistent (anti-lazy), or extremely charitable and open to interpret your words in various ways (anti-mean). None of these things matter a great deal if there is no interest - the exception being with ‘anti-stupid’ because greater knowledge of a subject would require a degree of active interest.
I would never suggest that there are certain set rules, but there are certainly things to be avoided. I believe the biggest hurdle for any writer is getting past the idea that they are trying to be understood by the reader (I would even say this is the case in philosophical writing too, although for obvious reasons a more subtle problem). I imagine we can all agree that any philosophical work that we’ve read has never been met with our full agreement - this is the KEY point in regards to ‘being understood’. As long as we find use/value in part of what is being expressed THROUGH the authors words that is all that matters to us (of course this isn’t to say we ignore the intent of the author because our interest in what is written is partially driven by the authors declarations of intent - and they have to fulfill them enough to satisfy the readers interpretation of said ‘intent’).
An example of ‘quality’ (in terms of Grice) I like to refer to Kant’s words from The Critique of Pure Reason. Other than his text being a kind of go-to read for people interested in philosophy, there is something brutally honest (‘quality’) he states early on. First the subject matter is clear - he posed a question to the reader (not literally a ‘?’ though).
In the preface to the first edition:
The main point here I personally have to drill into my head, over and over, is “... many a book would have been clearer if it had not tried to be so very clear.” I’m a whore for tangental thought and often go off-road without realising it (I have a feeling I could be doing it in this very post? Haha!)
My emphasis in a final draft would always be focused on what is compelling to the reader, what is of interest for the reader, and whether or not I’ve managed to express this without stating it explicitly - no one likes to be told what to think and how to think it. People come armed to the project with their own ideas and speculative thoughts ready and willing to bounce them off what they find.
The adeptness of the reader shouldn’t be a concern for the author. The adeptness of the author should be the concern of the author. The hardest thing is understanding who would find use/value in what you’ve written and whether or not you reach them quickly enough before they lose interest (the later is a great problem when the subject of concern is highly technical and requires copious background knowledge beforehand). So-called ‘philosophical works’ that I’ve found easier to digest are usually quite dated (Rousseau and such) and usually they’re focused more on what would now be categorised as ‘Social Sciences’ and/or ‘Psychology’, but there are more modern works that do a very tasty job of creating a fuller, yet less detailed, picture (Russell’s ‘A History of Western Philosophy,’ and more recently something I read the other year that makes use of combining History with Philosophy, Herman’s ‘The Cave and The Light’ which has a stronger narrative form than Russell’s work).
I wouldn’t say people read philosophy for ‘fun,’ but it is an act of self-cultivation that can certainly be uplifting. Because philosophy doesn’t have an ‘end goal,’ per se, it is a difficult subject to frame for the layman so buttressing it up against something else (be this history, motorbikes or keep fit) helps to spread the net wider. The whole scope of philosophy is, in my mind, completely at odds with day-to-day living, but certain magnification of ‘parts’ of philosophy do readily slot into day-to-day living. A project hoping to reach the general public the is infused with a complete overview of the philosophical endeavor is likely doomed to failure unless it can wrap itself around more obvious aspects of human life that connect with human activity in a visceral manner.
Anyway, sorry if I’m being a tangent monster - it’s not my intention! I guess what I believe is that what my ideas are and what I want to say are not necessarily of any particular interest to the reader. My focus, once I have my ideas and what I want to say lain out, then my focus should shift to the reader’s perspective - what they may or may not find fruitful and how turning up or down the contrast here or there would balance the work enough to be an engaging read that the reader can work with rather than the reader being a passive receptacle for what I believe is important and interesting.
I like writing :)
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Hanover
Do you think the substance of the OP and proposal is a 'shit sandwich' ?
Does the analogy work ?
I would say both should be considered.
Quoting I like sushi
For an exploratory process such as this this thread seems to be, it is necessary to engage the reader from get go.
We don't yet know what might be fruitful.
The audience is a mix of talents and qualities. Various stages of 'at readiness'.
I have found it an enjoyable read. It is a writing project managed not just by one main writer but by everyone who cares to join in.
‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ doesn’t hold up against ‘Many hands make light work’. The ‘ulitmate’ truth is context dependent. As a rhetorical means to emphasis a point/position they serve some purpose.
Simplicity, let's face it we all want things done as easy as possible. That covers 'stupid' and 'lazy'.
And yes logic should have a 'point' so to speak. Clear, concise, useful, and of blatant utility. The 'mean' either benefit from it or do not.
I'd say it's more of having to reach the following three: the simple, the stubborn, and the uninformed.
Well, yeah! I was trying to emphasis the flaw in being overly concerned with the quality of the audience rather than the quality of the writing in this case - wasn’t crystal clear because I got a touch carried away with that post :)
I’m much ‘happier’ to focus on myself as being the ‘lazy,’ ‘mean,’ and ‘stupid’ writer because I can at least attempt to do something about that directly.
This definitely warrants discussion too, but my main point is that many philosophers have been pretty clear that their goal isn't to be "concise and simple", some wrote for themselves, some a select few, others embraced different degrees of obscurantism, mysticism and "make you think" provocation.
Then there is all the fictional forms as well, that can certainly be argued is a more effective means to "reach the people" even if there is no "novel philosophy" in it; a la Voltaire, Hesse, et al.
Transposing philosophical ideas into a fictional work is a pretty standard writing method, precisely to free oneself from the burden of "disambiguating" everything so as to make something more readable.
Regardless of the genre ("philosophy", philology or fiction), several counter considerations can be made to "simple and concise".
If we interpret "simple and concise" as a sort of analytic "aloof and emotionless" then the argument can easily be made that it's not only a counter productive style to reach a wide audience, as the work is boring, but the philosophical argument can also be made that the human experience as well as human capacity to reason is simply not analytic in an abstract sense but very emotional and intuitive; therefore, trying to remove emotion and intuition is simply off the mark.
If we interpret "simple and concise" to mean "not challenging", then we may not only fail to rouse the curiosity of the reader but also fail to convey the argument. If an argument is not completely clear (due to complicated sentences, qualifications and diction), it requires serious thinking to "get it", and that experience is richer and more memorable than a "pre-chewed" version of the same thing.
Yes, that is clear. It depends on context.
Getting the balance right is tricky.
I am not sure that the triangle diagram is included for rhetorical purposes, is it ?
It seems like a model too neat so as to slot an already prepared 3 point idea in place.
What ? All three at once ?! :wink:
I enjoyed your mean post - love the lazy passion and getting stupidly carried away.
This is where I think it’s so difficult to make the transition from technical writing to mainstream publishable content. I think you’ve outlined the issue perfectly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading books on physics by Carlo Rovelli, having little background in physics myself, because of the direct human experiences that he describes in relation to the concepts. Philosophical paradigm shifts are similarly difficult, in that you need to start where people are at in their lives, and then take them on a journey of discovery, without bogging them down in the technical nature of the process. You need to keep bringing your audience back to connect with real human experience, mainly because they’re unlikely to read the whole lot in one sitting - so they need to feel not too far from the everyday (or at least from humanity), even as you take them ‘deep into the woods’.
I’m reminded of Joseph Campbell’s descriptions of the Hero’s Journey.
Quoting Possibility
How can you know where readers are at in their lives before you start the philosophical narrative ?
Do you mean in a general sense - what is happening in our society - the challenges involved ? Eternal problems ?
How does it remind you of the Hero's Journey?
I haven't read it, so what would make me want to delve in ?
Is everyone a Hero ?
Quoting I like sushi
Yes. I think it unfortunate that the description 'stupid, lazy and mean' as used in a particular Guidelines article ( or 'verbally from multiple old professors' ), has taken root and influenced someone's mental state or attitude so much. It seems obsessive...
I am pretty sure I read that 'How to Write a Philosophical Paper' years ago. I didn't take this advice so very seriously. Indeed, it made me smile. Great idea - like imagining the audience naked if you are a bit nervous at public speaking.
It served its purpose at the time and in those circumstances.
However, to continue to think in those 3 terms I would find negative, narrow and generally not helpful.
Why would anyone want to 'reach the absolute worst audience' or even those with 2 out of 3 of the qualities ?
It’s more that I would like to reach anybody who has any of those three vices. I want to spell things out as slowly, simply, and easily as possible for people who find the subject difficult. I want to be clear, to people who feel defensive, that I am not meaning the horrible thing they jump to the conclusion that I mean, but something much more agreeable. And I want to get through all that as quickly as possible so it doesn’t drag on longer than necessary and bore people away before they can get through it all.
But both of those first two things take words to do, which thus sacrifices the third thing. So you could get back the third thing by instead sacrificing one of the first two things... or the other. But one way or another it seems like you can’t do all three of those at once.
First off:
Why do you use the word 'vice' ?
That may be so, but I don't see the relevance of bringing up the fact that some philosophers did not write well as an objection to an admonition for philosophers to write well. Also, the advice is, obviously, not to be simple at the expense of depth or concise at the expense of scope. Rather, it is "as simple as possible, but no simpler," etc.
Quoting boethius
Yeah, no, I have zero respect for this snobbery.
You're not getting my point. Writing well according to whom?
It seems pretty obvious to me that the general goal in writing and the audience must be specified to start to give advice as what is writing well and what's not.
All you're doing is deciding you know what good philosophy is and good writing.
I am simply pointing out there is a large variation in how people self-evaluate as well as what "philosophy as such" has decided to label important philosophy.
Quoting SophistiCat
Again, all you're saying is you don't like obscurantist or mystical leaning philosophy and styles.
I'm simply pointing out those styles exist and presumably the writers of those styles thought it was a good idea, and presumably, for them, "writing better" would have been writing even more obscuristly and mystically.
If the OP said "all I like and respect is dry analysis, how should I write in the analytical tradition" then I think "simple, concise and disambiguated" is good advice. The OP does not say so, just talking about philosophy in general, and so some goals and audience need to be specified. The OP doesn't even specify "proper, philosophical prose" and so philology, biography, poetry, theater, screen play, journalism and genres of fiction are all forms and varying styles to consider if the intent is to reach an audience.
If no goal and audience is specified, then I'll simply sit here and point out the rich diversity of styles in philosophy: from the way of the old master to not even writing anything but having inspired dialogues to long complicated tomes to novels.
I do think that Lewis Carroll is under appreciated as a philosopher. Perhaps this is because his writings are more a satire of philosophy than a philosophy of satire. (Though I daresay that the Mad Hatter or one of his friends would say that they were the same thing.)
For example. his: 'What I say three times is true' ; 'you are nothing but a pack of cards' and his grin which can exist independent of a face are deeply meaningful and philosophically significant.
In a way, it refers to the general assumptions we make about how the world works - the language and concepts humans are most comfortable using to describe our interactions with reality. It also refers to the problems we commonly recognise in our day to day lives, which remind us that how we conceptualise reality isn’t quite as accurate as we need it to be: how our uncertainty about morality, free will, consciousness, the origin of life and the universe relate to ordinary experiences such as eating breakfast, driving to work, arguing with a colleague, etc.
Quoting Amity
Joseph Campbell’s book “Hero With a Thousand Faces” is quite a heavy-going book suggesting underlying threads tying all human mythology together, such as Jung’s archetypes. One such thread is that of the Hero’s Journey, where someone goes on a quest (to solve a problem) and finds themselves in a strange and unfamiliar land. They struggle to acclimatise to this strangeness, but soon recognise that it’s better or more accurate or more ‘real’ than where they came from in particular ways, and begin to feel more ‘at home’ there. But they remember their quest, and realise for whatever reason that staying there doesn’t help those they left behind. So eventually they return home, but they bring back with them not only new skills or secrets or solutions they needed to complete their quest, but also a ‘way’ to reach this better, more accurate or more ‘real’ world. But back home, they realise that we’re not ready to make this journey collectively. We need more heroes willing to embark on the journey and bring back more secrets and solutions that we’re still not quite ready to integrate, except to solve a specific problem that threatens us right now.
I want to make some observations here that I think you might be missing. There is a difference between writing for an audience who feels obligated to read your communication, and writing for one that doesn’t. You’ll notice that most of us who gave you reasons why we didn’t continue to wade through your writing cited things that correspond to the three ‘vices’ you describe. It seems natural to me that they would feel offended by a derogatory description of their attitude, even though it wasn’t your intention to label anyone here in this way.
These three ‘vices’ as you call them are a description not of those reading, but of the attitude an author needs to assume when they revise or edit their own work. It’s a tool to ensure clarity and conciseness, and particularly to ensure that those who need to read it all the way through aren’t steaming under the collar while they do so.
Unlike your lecturers and the parents/staff I write for, however, those of us on this forum feel no obligation to read what anyone has written. So when they get bogged down in the technical terms, get offended, impatient or confused (which we all do at some stage unless it’s our own writing that we’re reading), they have no satisfactory answer to the question “Why should I continue?” So they waver, and eventually they stop.
You gave them a reason to start reading by your discussions on this forum, but you need to continually refer in your writing to reasons why they should persist when it gets difficult. It helps to also acknowledge when it’s about to get technical or unclear, and offer a quick ‘layman’s’ version so those who either already get what you’re saying, or don’t have time to get into the details and are prepared to take your word for it at this time, can skip to something more intriguing. Likewise, making an attempt to understand and sympathise with a dissenting position, rather than give all the reasons why you’re against it, will go a long way towards engaging readers who aren’t already on your side of the debate.
One of the main things I was hoping to get was feedback on exactly where people got stuck like this, so I could know where I need to change it, take slower smaller steps, give more examples, clarify what I do or don’t mean, etc.
Quoting Possibility
That is exactly why I reordered the opening essays. Instead of starting off attacking the biggest opponents first and then their usual opponents in turn, before explaining where I stand between them, now I start with an overview of my whole general philosophy and the ways it agrees with other general philosophies. Then the places I think those other philosophies take those shared premises and each reach different wrong conclusions from them, and how I think it’s possible to reconcile the premises of all those different philosophies without reaching any of their mutually contrary wrong conclusions. Only then do I start going in to all the different possibilities of wrongness thereby avoided.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The problem is that the focus of your writing is on argument and debate. So you’re either preaching to the choir, or you’re trying to engage ‘stupid, lazy and mean’ readers. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re failing to obtain constructive criticism on anything other than style. I’ll be honest with you, there aren’t many people on this forum who have sufficient humility to point out where they didn’t understand, didn’t follow or didn’t have the patience to persist with specific parts of a formal argument.
As a reader, you’re only giving me two possible responses: agree or disagree. Where’s the journey? You’re not taking me anywhere except where I either have already been or have no interest in going. When you title an essay ‘Against Fideism’, for instance, what sort of readers are you expecting to attract, and how long do you expect them to persist?
As a challenge, have you ever tried arguing convincingly in support of Fideism? It’s an exercise in imagining perspective. In fiction, the most convincing and entertaining villains are those whose defence of their actions would be based on sound and valid reasoning, rather than simply being ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’. This is not something we’re often comfortable doing once we’ve settled on a position. Being able to say ‘I can see how that makes sense from your perspective’ without following it with ‘but you’re wrong’ allows us to encourage a dissenting reader to join us in looking at the bigger picture without engaging them strictly as an opponent.
And that means both the reader AND their regular opponents who they probably jump to the conclusion I am. I expect a fideist to jump to the conclusion that I am a nihilist, but they hey look I’m also against nihilism, and vice versa. Hoping that if I can make clear that I neither agree with their usual opponents nor with them, I can intrigue them as to what other possibility I think there is.
In the reorganized Commensurablism, before any of the Against essays, I also lay out how I expect both of those sides get to where they are from the places we agree. Using my technical definitions of these terms for short here:
I expect the fideist reasons:
Not nihilism (and I agree)
Not nihilism = Objectivism (and I agree)
Objectivism = Transcendentalism (here I disagree)
Transcendentalism => Fideism (and I agree)
also
Not nihilism => Not cynicism (and I agree)
Cynicism = Criticism (here I disagree)
Not criticism = Fideism (and I agree)
Therefore fideism (here I disagree)
And I expect the nihilist reasons:
Not fideism (and I agree)
Not fideism = Criticism (and I agree)
Criticism = Cynicism (here I disagree)
Cynicism => Nihilism (and I agree)
also
Not fideism => Not transcendentalism (and I agree)
Transcendentalism = Objectivism (here I disagree)
Not objectivism = Nihilism (and I agree)
Therefore nihilism (here I disagree)
I then proceed in the various Against essays to distinguish those things I think they equate with each other, and why I am against one side of that equation but not the other.
There is basically nothing uncontroversial in philosophy. If you're purpose is to do serious philosophy then you need to seek out the opposing point of view. provides stylistic reasons for doing so, but there is also the philosophical reason for actually knowing who you're criticizing.
This is the main problem with your book, in my opinion. You make brief sketches of "isms" and reject one and accept another, without demonstrating you really know the content of those systems, schools and authors.
For instance, my first critique on your question of "what's new here" was to point out core ideas that went back to ancient Greece. You responded to my criticism by first arguing with it (which you have done with everyone offering you advice, which is just tiresome), then eventually you accepted it and integrated it by mentioning "oh, some Greeks thought about these things"; but that's simply not serious: which Greeks? what did they say? what did they get right, wrong, miss entirely?.
If you want to carry out your "this ism vs that ism" program, you need to demonstrate real expertise with all the authors involved and their critics (assuming your goal is to be taken seriously by "philosophers").
You need to seek out the best representation of every opposing view and point to where exactly you differ. This takes citing authors. Citing is the only way to make your approach serious, as it not only demonstrates you've read the key authors who represent these opposing views best, but also shows you've found the critical difference in their own words. In short, that you've done a serious amount of work that I can now benefit from. As it is, you're book simply asks the reader to go find out for themselves that your representation of different isms checks out.
Your entire approach on this forum betrays that you don't have this expertise. It should not be us that tells you what ideas you have that are totally novel, it should be you the author that has more knowledge of your subject than we the reader, and so can just tell us what's new and explain why it's new (why previous thinkers got so far but no further).
Why you're in this position, if I had to guess, is that you've gotten "the gist" of a lot of philosophies and you've elaborated your own series of opinions on these world views and parsing all this is quite impressive to the people you know; so, you have extended this experience to the expectation that we here on the forum will likewise be impressed. However, the small group of people you know that are impressed or then are opponents you feel "like, I have no problem arguing with", is not representative of the entire history of philosophy. To contend with "philosophers" is to address the greatest thinkers that have ever lived of all humanity of all history that we have a record of. It's not comparable to people you feel clever discussing with.
If you think university is a "smart place" and that therefore if you can hold your ground among students then you can hold your ground among philosophers, quickly calculate how many university students have existed and compare that to the list of people humanity has decided are "philosophers", or then at least contenders for such a title. In writing a "philosophy book" it is this small list of people you are replying to and addressing; it is unlikely you have encountered anyone remotely close in thinking and arguing capacity, and building up the understanding to be able to image how these philosophers would criticize you if they were in the room is not a trivial task easily dispensed with lines like " I start off with the most boring uncontroversial common sense that almost everybody probably already agrees with".
Underestimating your opponents isn't how serious philosophical arguments are elaborated, but rather much closer to how dating profiles are written of explaining what you're into, in hopes those that already agree want to get even closer to you and like you, even love you.
To be serious, you need to "get into those opposing world views" and really appreciate their subtle brilliance, agility and cunning, give them the respect they are due, understand why reasonable and learned people adopt these views, then study their history and stock their every move—perhaps even flatter them as Possibility suggests to draw them closer—only to lunge, suddenly, and deal the precise and fatal blow from which there is no recovery. But do not think for a second that there will be no reposte, equally quick, equally sharp, equally daring, and it may be you that is mortally stabbed in the critical moment, left wondering what went wrong as you lay on the floor clenching your heart while your spirit fades from you; or, sadly more often, too frightened to carry out the deed when the danger gets close, and so slink off into a corner to nurse your play things, certain that had you made the engagement you would have certainly prevailed.
But if you persist, then after, usually a long series of defeats, these philosophical bodies may start to pile up around you and you can cry into the desert: "Is there no one else!", and then maybe, maybe you could condescend to write a book about your adventure.
If you aren't interested in such a commitment, then just call your book "diaries of a freshman" and call it a day.
We are talking about an imagined audience here, right ? One that you keep in mind as you write. It is a strategy which helps you to write better if you think of them as 'sad, lazy or mean'.
When it comes to real life, reaching out and getting through to an audience, people need first of all to be attracted or seduced by an author or book. Reasons to read.
I, for one, am unlikely to be persuaded or trust someone who thinks in terms of 'vice' with all its moral connotations. Even if that is not what you intend, that is what comes over.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I have numbered the points to help relate to the 3 'vices':
1. The 'stupid' - a derogatory term for those who lack knowledge, experience and who find the subject difficult.
So, the target audience here is who ? Not academic peers but those new to philosophical ideas. There will be different qualities, a broader range to consider: age, comprehension levels.
Why would they be attracted ? What is your goal ?
To explain your new ideas, to share your personal journey, to survey the wonder of the whole field of philosophy?
I would suggest that instead of imagining your audience as 'stupid', you think in terms of an individual. You don't need just to spell things out in terms of difficult concepts, you need to set them on fire. Make philosophy an adventure. Your ideas prompting a desire to know more...
2. To be continued...
I'd like to hear your thoughts on 1. first. Thanks.
Indeed!
Here are a few quotes from Carroll that further show your point:
"I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then."
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
"'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'"
"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle."
"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there."
Thanks for this. Common problems are a useful place to start.
The attempt to find solutions or comfort in challenging times is one we can all relate to.
The accuracy of what we know or think we know is so relevant right now. Just as it has been historically. Others have taken similar journeys. Why do some find it difficult to follow paths proven to be successful in terms of improving wellbeing?
Quoting Possibility
Well. Probably not for me right now. I have taken to light and quirky reading to ease my mental discomfort.
Quoting Possibility
Interesting parallels to how people have had to adapt to a new reality in this corona virus crisis. Instead of escaping to work, holidays or visiting friends and family, we are physically at home out of necessity. However, the constraints can bring a new awareness of how being at home with ourselves involves a different way of thinking, being and doing. It can be freeing...
True, but every argument starts with premises the reader is expected to likely agree with, otherwise it can’t get off the ground at all. A good philosophical argument starts with something trivially agreeable and derives something controversially substantial from it. That it is what I mean to do.
Quoting boethius
This attitude of “don’t talk back just do what I say” is tiresome. I’m not just going to blindly attempt to guess at what someone wants me to do without first talking to them and making sure I understand what they’re saying and that it is well-justified. In your case, all you mentioned was that the ideas trace back to non-specific ancient Greeks, and I didn’t see the value in just mentioning that in passing in the text; it didn’t seem to provide anything that would be of value to the reader, to be more of just a “by the way” aside along the path to the point being made.
Quoting boethius
I am here asking people I expect to be my peers to help point me at details like that, that would be useful to include and that I have missed. You neither demonstrated what would be useful about mentioning them nor provided any particular details to include.
I am not posting about my book here to “show off my genius” or something like you seem to think. Quite the contrary, I am posting about it hoping that both those less educated than me will tell me what’s difficult to follow so I can try to write better there, and those MORE educated than me will tell me what I’ve missed. You basically told me THAT I missed something, but didn’t say anything actionably specific about what it was.
In contrast, another commenter pointed out that my “logic of moods” has prior work by an author I’d never heard of, who is now on my reading list to be looked into when I can.
Which ancient Greeks do you think I have not read yet? (I probably have). Which details of their work do you think need mention in the place you were critiquing? I can’t very well just start writing everything I know about ancient Greek philosophy there in the hopes of satisfying your critique, and I obviously already wrote every detail I thought was relevant to that passage before, so if you think some other details need mentioning that I didn’t think warranted inclusion, I need you to say which.
Instead, you seem to just assume I am completely unfamiliar with the entire broad area you mention, like if I just go study that (again) I will see what it is that I need to include. But I already studied plenty in that area, and included what I thought was relevant, so I need you to tell me: what in particular did I miss and why is it relevant to mention there?
Quoting boethius
In the book, I say when I think I am making a novel addition and where I am aware of previous thinkers having had the same ideas before. What I am asking from the forum is both whether any of the ideas I thought were new actually have previous work I’m not familiar with (from readers more educated than me), and whether the previous work I am mentioning is new to the reader (from readers less educated than me).
The rest of your post reads like a shallow attempt to “take me down a peg” from some hubris you supposed I have, and isn’t worth responding to. (Honestly, a lot of the harshest criticism seems to be from people who seem to think I think I’m smarter than I should think I am, when I’m here specifically hoping that other people at least as smart as me will help me to be better than I am. In the book itself I’m trying to be as humble and self-debasing as I can, not making bold proclamations of indisputable truth but just saying what seems like a strong argument in this or that direction and why it seems strong to me, trying to show sympathy to every position and then gently explain where and why I diverge. Yet apparently that is also a fault, so I need to both be bolder and more assertive and also better realize how dumb I really am and go git gud before I open my mouth?)
Quoting Pfhorrest
In my response so far, I am trying to 'get' how this analogy works.
First by going through the 3 points and your 'wants' to see the fit, if there is a fit.
Currently, my thoughts are that this is too narrow an outlook. Boxing the writing process in to a one dimensional triangle ?
Triangles are necessarily two-dimensional.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
Boxed in to a 2 dimensional triangle.
More to come on this Triangle.
Yes, I would agree arguments start at premises (though it's possible some will disagree even here).
My point is that isms are not premises. If you don't want to cite people who represent either the ism you have issue with or the ism you are agreeing with, then you need to build the arguments, positive or negative, from scratch. This is a laborious process.
Referencing previous thinkers is a shortcut, but requires the work of citation for it be readable; otherwise, I am not sure you understand or interpret the thinker or the ism in question the same way I do; and, even if I did assume that, I can't tell exactly where you're agreeing or disagreeing with that thinker or school.
For instance, in our previous discussion, you mentioned the word pragmatism; I asked if you were talking about pragmatism the philosophical tradition or just "being pragmatic" in a colloquial sense, to which you replied the philosophical school, to which I inquired which thinker you were closest, to which you said it didn't matter, to which I replied it did, to which you replied you liked Pierce but found Lock redundant. This is interesting to know and I can't possibly tell your position on pragmatism by just seeing the word. It would be even more interesting to see a citation of Locke and a citation of Pierce that you feel is representative of this redundancy. I would be then far more informed of what you're talking about.
More interesting still if you found a citation that represented the error or incompleteness of these thinkers you intend to extend or correct.
If a reader has not read Locke and Pierce, now they've gotten the value of a choice citation and interpretation and at least have something concrete to represent those thinkers and "pragmatism" in their minds.
This is a lot of work, you have to read all the pragmatists to be confident you are doing a good job.
You can forego citation by building the arguments you want to take form pragmatism from scratch. However, likely you will want to read all the pragmatists to be sure you are making the best representation.
Either way, you can then move onto the next step of reading all of the, at least recommended, direct criticism of these arguments you are reformulating or citing.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You are misunderstanding the nature of advice.
Nor I, nor any of your other advisers here, want you to "do what we say". We don't care what you do. You ask advice, we provide our advice, you use it or you don't. There's simply no point in trying to "prove our advice is wrong"; if it's wrong, don't use it. Now, it's constructive to try to understand the advice better (so to better to decide to use it or not), but it's not constructive to argue with advice of this kind; you're just tiring your advisers and making them lose interest, which only harms yourself.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm not writing your book for you.
It also wouldn't help you if I provided you those details, as a few details about some thinkers is not a substitute to understanding those thinkers. My advice is not to quickly search for some citations so that you can cosmetically sprinkle them into your book and give the illusion you have grappled with all the nuance and life force those thinkers bring to bear; my advice is to actually do that grappling.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You simply underestimate the task you have set yourself.
Implying you've written novel philosophy without also claiming you are "more educated than us" is exactly the claim that you can show off your genius by your mastery of philosophical concepts without a need for training, education and work: just raw natural talent.
I brought up names of authors that I recommend you cite. Reading books and citing critical passages relevant to your arguments is entirely actionable.
If you are going to write a book with the intention that it's taken serious, you must be more educated about it's subject matter than us, otherwise it's effectively we that is writing the book for you.
Yes, experienced authors ask for feedback on their writing, but it's not to make content and intellectual changes, but simply to cut and clarify, which is very minor compared with the major restructuring you are now engaged in.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You should read my words more carefully.
I simply explain the difficulty of the task in front of you.
Setting the goal of writing novel philosophy on important subjects is the most extreme intellectual task that you can possibly set for yourself, short of something completely impossible such as factoring thousand digit numbers in your head. Your choice is either to accept that difficulty and commit to the time, discomfort and effort it will require to (maybe) attain, or to deny that and be an amateur not taken seriously, or to abandon your goal.
Your method of not doing the required work and believing somehow we on the forum will do the work for you, is not a good method as you have been able to verify.
It is not impossible!! I just factored 10**1000 as 10**500 x 10**500 in my head.
I say numbers, and you give me one number. At least put in the effort and provide numbers.
This is what I’m doing. I never expect the reader to always be familiar with some prior philosophy already. I always try to build up all of the arguments from scratch. I only mention other philosophers to show that I am aware when an idea is not original. Half the time, the ideas I’m putting forward were original to me, and I later became aware that others had already written on the same topic.
In the case of Pragmatism, I had my own version of something like the Pragmatic Maxim, and was later told by someone I shared that thought with about Pragmatism, and read up about it, and found Peirce closest to my own thoughts. I’m not trying to defend exactly Peirce or anyone else though, so going into depth about them would just be pointless showing off that doesn’t advance the purpose of my writing.
Sushi was previously accusing me precisely of “showing off”, so just going into unnecessary depth on everything that I know about every philosopher I mention would just be more of that. I mention the details I think are necessary to mention to make the point I’m making, and no more. If you think there’s an important detail I’m omitting that’s relevant to a given point I’m making, TELL ME what it is. Don’t just tell me I’m missing something and leave me guessing as to what.
Quoting boethius
You seem too quick to impute argument where there is none. If I ask for more detail on a critique, that’s not arguing. If I say I don’t think a particular critique is worth acting on and why, that’s not arguing. It sound like the only response you want is “ok I’ll do that” or else silence, and you take anything else as “argument”. That’s exactly where the “don’t talk back just do what I say” attitude comes across.
Quoting boethius
See, here you are assuming that because I have not mentioned something I am not aware of it. I have studied a lot of philosophy. Not the most that can possibly be studies, I don’t think I know more about it than absolutely everybody else about every facet of it, but enough to have what seem to be novel thoughts about it that take into account lots of priority work. I‘m not looking for cosmetic citations to sprinkle in, that is exactly the kind of useless advice I don’t want. I want any substantive omissions I might have made to be pointed out to me by people whose education may cover bits and pieces mine didn’t. Instead, you at least just point me in the broad direction of some more studying you think I need to do, without explanation of what it is in that reading will be relevant to my writing. Like I shouldn’t ever write a single word down until I have memorized absolutely every book ever written. Nobody does that.
If I thought this was something good enough for academic publishing, I wouldn’t be here. I’m trying to do the best I can in the circumstances I find myself in. Saying it’s just not good enough and to go study more is no help at all. Saying where specifically and why so I can focus on improving in.
You’re saying, essentially, be absolutely perfect or give up. And you won’t even name a specific flaw that makes it short of perfect. I’m sure they are there, but how will I get rid of them if you won’t say where they are?
You just don't get it, do you!
I’m pretty sure you’re confusing someone else’s words with mine there. I did comment that people don’t want to be told what you know, that was where the ‘high school’ remark came in - different audience type.
My very first comment was directed at the lack of depth. I said something along the lines of focus in on one particular area.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Novel thoughts addressed to laymen probably won’t work because they won’t recognise it as novel. The old ‘show don’t tell’ rule of thumb might be worth considering. A great deal of what you’ve learnt may seem too trivial to mention - for the laymen this is needed, but a very difficult thing to get across because we often neglect to mention the very things the reader needs to understand (a Glossary can help, but the terms would still need to be divulged within the main body of text in a memorable manner).
I have not seen arguments written from scratch.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The reason to seek out where these "original to me" ideas have been discussed before is to scrutinize their formulation (maybe someone not only thought of the idea but had made it better and more precise) and, more importantly, with a writer or textual reference you can then much better search for who has criticized that argument.
This is the critical process to do serious philosophy.
Quoting Pfhorrest
On this point, you did not provide your formulation from scratch of your pragmatic maxim, nor cited Pierce. It's these gaps that need to be filled one way or another, otherwise it's no longer possible to follow your argument as there is critical information missing. If you look carefully at your writing there is lot's of these gaps that need either an argument from scratch, a citation or then simply stating a new assumption.
Quoting Pfhorrest
From what I followed, @I like sushi was simply stating that demonstrating familiarity with some philosophical concepts is not interesting reading. It should be clear where you are going with your arguments. I did not see Sushi "accuse you of showing off", but please cite it if I missed it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I say that: if you don't cite authors you mention, myself and other readers simply cannot get much insight to your relation to those authors. It is simply adding confusion.
If your mentioning of an author or ism is only to "give credit" and it adds nothing but confusion to the reading of the book, then it's best to simply provide that credit outside the book in an introduction.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Key word "what seems like novel thoughts". The reason to put in a lot of work to find and then really get into where those thoughts are not novel, is that you will benefit from those existing arguments and debates about it. You can then either simply reference those formulations if you see no need to improve them or then reformulate them.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This is where you need to engage with what Sushi has been saying. We still do not know exactly your goal with the book or audience.
As it stands, your goal is to write "novel philosophy"; this is a serious project. If you're goal was less ambitious, the task will be less hard.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This is not what I am saying. I'm saying if you persevere you can attain your goal; I have only added to that, it's a difficult goal to attain and will require a lot of time, effort and work.
I think you have not read much of it then. I’ve seen very little indication that you’ve read anything at all of it.
Quoting boethius
I have done that.
Quoting boethius
Where in the text I say “pragmatism”, I say what argument I am calling that.
Also, I do have a reference to Peirce in the current version anyway.
Quoting boethius
It would help if someone would point out where it looks like that, because that would be some kind of oversight or just careless writing. I am intended to spell everything out from scratch.
Quoting boethius
You were complaining that I DIDN’T mention someone nonspecific in a nonspecific part of one essay. You talk like if I had studied that vague general area I would necessarily have included mention of whoever you’re thinking of wherever you’re thinking. But I have studied, and I’m not psychic, so unless you say what writing of whom is relevant to what part of my writing, I don’t know if you’re talking about someone I just didn’t think was relevant to mention or maybe something I actually haven’t studied.
Quoting boethius
If I have a thought that, after a pretty extensive study of philosophy, seems novel to me in light of everything I’m aware of having gone before, how can I know that it is not novel without someone telling me, or somehow being certain that I have read absolutely everything that there is to read?
The latter is impossible, and impractical to ever try to approximate, especially since this isn’t my paid full-time job, so I can only rely on someone letting me know if the thoughts I think are novel actually aren’t. By refusing to even comment on those particulars, you’re effectively saying “come back when you’ve read absolutely everything there is to read”.
Quoting boethius
I have clarified that already. Primarily people like I was 20 years ago. People interested in philosophy, including those not yet very familiar with it, who I expect will not find what they are looking for in the existing corpus of it, because after a decade of study I still hadn’t.
We had a whole conversation about the Greek and pragmatism thing. I'm using this existing conversation as examples of problems.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Then why are you asking us about what's novel or not?
Just tell us the authors made arguments to about yay high and explain how you've gone higher.
Quoting Pfhorrest
That's what prompted our conversation about pragmatism, your use of the word pragmatism. Go back to that conversation if want to see where it appeared in your text and if you're interested in doing work to improve your understanding.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So you added a reference to Peirce based on our discussion, but are maintaining that I didn't read any of your book and that you had never used the word pragmatism that prompted me to ask how you were using that term?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Then, as I've already suggested, spell everything out from scratch and don't use any references at all. Just make a introduction or "further reading" epilogue. If the references are not needed for the arguments to work, then they just add confusion.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I am not complaining. Your book does not matter to me and I have no personal motivation that you make it better along my criteria.
You're the one asking for advice, so I am simply providing that advice. You can leave your book the way it is for people to appreciate it or not.
But if you ask advice, presumably to improve it, I am giving the advice that if you reference an ism or an author, and that reference is critical content then you should provide a citation so that we the reader have clearer idea of what you're referencing. If it's not critical content, then it's just adding confusion as the reader now doesn't know what you mean by the reference and if it's important going forward.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You're on the "build everything from scratch" approach now. Which is fine, but then build everything from scratch, verify that no ism or reference is needed to understand. Or are you now saying the pragmatism reference was the only confusion of that kind, it's fixed now and I won't find anything else of that kind?
Quoting Pfhorrest
I gave you the example of the ancient Greeks, or pragmatism.
It's us the reader that aren't psychic and know what you know. So, if references then citations representing those references is what I recommend. But you've already said citations aren't critical, and everything is built from scratch, so then these sorts of confusions shouldn't appear.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Then post a thread about what you think the novel parts are, if you've studied extensively it should be easy to identify and explain: "that based on these assumptions developed by these authors, I make this argument that goes further".
Quoting Pfhorrest
Why introduce the strawman of "everything"; no where do I say read everything there is to be read.
I say seek out the authors formulating or critiquing arguments you are using. If you want to improve your book, then (whether you include reference or buildup from scratch) it's a time-saving device to find the best existing formulation of an argument as well as it's best criticism (so that you are certain you are using as good or better formulation that adequately addresses the best criticism).
If you don't want to improve your book, then stop asking advice.
If you want to improve your book, then what I would expect is that it will take you much longer to forego this mention research and to think of all the ways your arguments can be undermined and to then fill all those gaps (you claim don't exist?). By all means though, if you disagree prove me wrong.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No where did I say "follow this advice and tomorrow your book will be better". You obviously have time to discuss on the forum, so you could put some of that time putting in research work to improve your book. If it takes ten years, it takes ten years.
Or are you asking "how do I improve my book considering I won't be spending much time doing so".
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thanks for clarifying, I did not catch the original clarification.
Yes, why not just make a thread and state what the missing part is that you didn't find and have addressed in your book?
If you want your book to clearly add novel ideas to philosophy and be completely accessible to someone unfamiliar with philosophy, this is an even more enormous task, than just the novel objective which I have been addressing. Again, doable, but will take time and effort to achieve. Your criticism of my criticism seems to be "I don't have that kind of time! what do you expect from me!". No problem with not having time, but I don't see why I would reformulate my advice to be doable without the required time.
So, rather than continue with the Triangle topic, I decided to take a look at the Summary.
http://www.geekofalltrades.org/codex/summary.php
Looks like a lot of time and effort has gone into a wide scope of philosophy. But as to its quality and if it meets the goal of the author, that would seem to be an open question.
The thread title is about a tool which focuses on 3 constraints with regard to a quality product.
Philosophy Writing Management where there are apparent trade offs in 1.Time 2. Cost and 3.Scope.
This is likened to the problems of reaching an audience who are imagined to be 1. Stupid 2. Lazy or 3. Mean.
From what I have read so far, there has been a significant amount of time spent on this writing project of enormous scope.
This can be seen as a cost to the individual/s concerned.
Is it worth it ? Is the book likely to achieve its aims ?
Will you find something 'new' here that is not already in the existing corpus ? Does that matter ?
What matters is the work in progress. It is a learning process.
I applaud the effort and energy required.
If it doesn't reach certain standards of quality, as in citing the sources of study and research, that can and should be remedied.
I think I will leave it there.
It's a bit like Groundhog Day. Fascinating but time consuming.
I hope the end product benefits from all contributions.
Best wishes.
If your 'pretty extensive study of philosophy' included a literature review this should have helped identify any gaps.
https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/
Your goal as stated: to reach an audience of
Quoting Pfhorrest
What is it that you think beginners are looking for ?
A general overview in an introduction to philosophy.
A particular author or entry point which grabs their attention, specific interest or concerns.
New to them but not usually to the field of philosophy.
Already plenty on the market. But always room for more.
I think there is a tension between your various aims.
Perhaps this is where the aspect of sacrifice might have to enter the picture. For example, re-evaluate the Scope.
A talk to beginners is not likely to succeed if overwhelmed by a heavy weight corpus - A Codex Quaerentis.
But I see that similar suggestions have been offered before by I like sushi, boethius, jkg20 et al.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7547/the-codex-quaerentis/p2
Why don't you take on board the specific advice:
'Pick your audience rather than trying to cater to all (it won’t work).'
Excellent.
Here's something about creating a good quality product.
Considering:
Quoting Ingrid Robeyns
There follows discussion of 6 criteria:
1. Trust
2. Accessibility
3. Arguments
4. Not for profit
5. Plagiarism
6. Noblesse oblige
https://crookedtimber.org/2013/07/15/what-makes-a-popular-philosophy-book-a-good-book/
Your thoughts ?
Though I agree with these points, the list and explanations seem more motivated as an admonition to professors to not do "bad public philosophy" because it's profitable (tell groups what they want to hear and not take known criticism seriously) than they are as practical.
The article would be better title "moral considerations for popular philosophy writing".
However, the blame on "bad professors" is I think misplaced. Chomsky follows this list, but he is not welcome on mass media. Ok, he's still widely read and has a large base, but he was already famous from a time when he could speak on mass-media. A new author of philosophy doesn't have that benefit, and the choice is to conform to a roll on a stage (left, right or centrist; we know what lines the mass-media wants to hear) or then be an "internet heretic".
Fortunately, as the elite pursue this strategy through mass media consolidation and control, media institutions that built up prestige and reputation over literally centuries throw it frivolously away to support the war du jour without critical analysis and so rapidly lose legitimacy; we're now in a phase that being an internet heretic is no longer primary career ending and a living can be made in heretical writing in itself. There's large heretical ecosystems both on the right and the left.
Of course, the collapse of trusted information sources (because they have de-earned that trust) means for society at large zero scrutiny of incompetent and corrupt management, loss of faith in all institutions generally, precipitating a chaotic destabilization phase of American Empire, election of Trump to neatly consolidate these trends for us so that they are trivial to see and analyse ... and an easily avoidable global pandemic, certainly in its severity if not the outbreak itself, which represents the transition from an incompetent and corrupt elite entrenching and enriching themselves without any unifying vision and strategy for the future -- but things seeming to continue as normal due to sheer momentum of hundreds of years of managerial traditions -- to this new phase of rapid collapse where those institutions are simply no longer fit for purpose and all managerial accountability measures have been removed from the system meaning nothing will be rectified and problems will start to merge into and amplify each other until a radical change (of one form or another).
So, public discourse shifting to a non-institutional internet based discussion where people believe what they want to believe and no person or institution is viewed as widely legitimate by actual people (it is only the elite who continue to believe the old institutions mean a tenth of what they used to mean) has massive consequences.
However, regardless of view of who's to blame and where things are going, from the point of view of the individual author today, it's simply a fact that this internet DIY "influencer" path is available. Indeed, it's starting to merge anyways with traditional publishing in that authors are more and more expected to do all those influencer things such as blogging, youtubing, tweeting, engage in controversy and being edgy, and so on. It's not one and the same yet, so authors can lean heavily one way or another; in the case of non-political writing it is simply a style, commercial or just personal question, but in the case of political writing it's a self-censorship vs institutional support question, which has serious implications on what and how one writes depending on one's political ideas. When there's accomplished authors that crazily are admitted (even by the mainstream media) to being among great intellectuals of our time (such as Noam Chomsky mentioned above) or then writers that are fired from the Times (Chris Hedges), and simply completely ignored henceforth by those "Journals of Record", a new author has zero chance other than by completely conforming.
All this to say, we are back to a pamphleteer time and pamphleteering is a different thing than conventional book publishing, in terms of form, style, resources to work with, promotional activity, as well as level of engagement available.
Yes. For sure, there has been a shift away from institutions to a more open conversation with consequences relating to trust, one of the first things discussed:
Quoting Robeyns
I tend to trust any writer who has clearly done the research and cites sources, or further reading, professor or not.
I am glad that philosophy has become more accessible, even with any accompanying problems. People will nearly always believe what they want to believe in any case.
Quoting boethius
Where is the evidence for this pamphleteering philosophy?
What do you mean by evidence?
By pamphleteering, I'm simply referring to the end of Monarchy days where everything was censored so authors had to get there stuff out subversively which created a non-official chaotic parallel universe of discourse that disrupted the system; with the printing press playing the roll of the internet today.
As for the practical consideration, there's simply different options and limitations going DIY on the internet, which would result in different advice. "Getting a book published" is a different goal than reaching an audience on the internet, even if the content was the same. Whether due to self-censorship reasons above or simply not wanting to go through the hassle publishing a book, the same content could be developed over 200 blogs and 50 podcasts and 10 000 tweets, which would imply different stylistic choices even if one's arguments are the same.
Support for your claim.
Which claim? As I mention above: that our time is similar to the post-printing-press pamphlateering Era, or about how it would affect writing choices?
This:
Quoting boethius
I don't understand this conclusion. Perhaps I am tired or just stupid...
Ah, it seems you have edited the explanation. It makes more sense now. Thanks.
It's a historical parallel that is of course not exact. I didn't come up with it, I heard it from a historian.
There is a basic historical hypothesis that the internet is a similar disrupting technology as the printing press and culture is going through a similar transformation.
In the manuscripts era it was extremely difficult to trade in contraband literature. If you were a monk and wanted to write and copy heretical texts, you'd need to somehow organize having the supplies and time to do so. The Catholic church was constantly investigating such terrorist cells and burning books and people to keep the subversive fire well under control. To publish "officially" one needed to pass censorship, to pass censorship meant conforming to support of the institutions of church and government.
The printing press changed this dynamic, turning subversive literature from a cat and mouse game into a unstoppable tsunami. Protestant Reformation was probably impossible without a technology to actually print bibles for people to read in their own language, as well as the contraband pamphlets justifying doing so.
So, there was a first phase where subversive literature could overcome institutional oppression in a way infeasible before. In this first phase subversive literature is not "too far out there" and usually still produced by intellectuals in the system (Luther was a priest who wanted to reform Catholicism, not make a radical break with it, and certainly not an atheist).
However, as aristocratic institutions then lost legitimacy as well as their own motivation to censor effectively, there is a second phase where the dominant cultural conversation moves to this parallel pamphleteer world. There is a still a nominal "official world" of bureaucrats, courtiers, and papal bulls, but normal people don't care too much about it anymore. As more authors write and circulate pamphlets, authority is undermined further. Voltaire is probably the best example here:
Quoting wikipedia - Voltaire
After the collapse of the old aristocratic and church institutions, new institutions emerged that were credible within this environment of "free speech" (governing institutions that respected free speech and no longer engaged in counter-productive censorship, as well as media institutions that built up credibility by caring about their reputation and withstanding criticism).
However, broadcast radio and television created a partial technological return to the monastic manuscript days in that access of the technology was controllable, resulting in an era of de facto censorship in that without radio and, especially, television, one was not a relevant part of the cultural conversation. The election of Ronald Reagan epitomizes this new institutional power of television.
However, Reagan only demonstrated the power of television in real power terms, and it would be unfair to say the media "elected him". Journalists standards carried over from print. It can of course be debated how stable this new institutional television based censorship system really was, but the internet rapidly destabilized it after credibility was sacrificed to support the Iraq war. The entire Iraq war and endless war on terrorism didn't pass critical scrutiny at any step, but critical questions could just be ignored; people don't stop being interested in those question, however, and the conversation moved to the internet: be it to keep following Chris Hedges, who was fired from the Times for opposing the war, or hear Chomsky's analysis or then take a few steps towards cannibalism, apparently, with Alex Jones; a completely new parallel world of discourse emerged.
The election of Trump represents the transition between the first era of institutional disruption where the world of "official" talk is at war with the subversives and still seem mostly in control, to the second era where the old official talk institutions aren't even relevant anymore. The transition can happen rapidly, as the Soviet Union best demonstrated. Time and time again the main-stream media tried to bury Trump, in every which way, and then be mystified by him polling the same or even higher. It simply didn't matter what they said anymore, the real conversation was happening in a parallel universe on the internet with various levels of Trump apologetics for every possible Trump criticism from every possible direction, to interpreting everything as some sort of 5-D chess move, to full on meme magick magicians saturating the internet with "gliffs", a hieroglyphic based magical symbol of cultural focus, to counteract the very same satanic gliff practices of the Clinton's and elite -- a frog being the key ingredient. Main stream media needing to address "Pepe" represented their surrender to internet discourse, and since then the merger of the discourse universes has started.
And that's all I have to say about that.
(jk, I'll say way more if asked to do so.)
Who heard it from...
Oooh, I heard it through the grapevine :cool:
Quoting boethius
I bet you have lots more where that came from.
I now want to read Voltaire, badly and bigly.
Wasn't he the one who said:
'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'
He would have loved Trump...and his Tweets.
Quoting boethius
Is there a theme tune for that ?
It doesn't seem to me a controversial topic among historians, the whole printing press and internet parallel. It's been something that has been talked about since normal people could post to the internet, indeed even before that just speculating on computer technology.
Quoting Amity
Fortunately, there has been lot's of historical analysis of these pamphleteers; it's really interesting stuff, with the same anonymity based outrage, flamewars and feuds and so on as happens today on the internet.
Quoting Amity
The theme song is "The Joe Rogan Experience".
I'd like to read examples. So far I've only got this:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-pamphleteers/
As for Joe Rogan, another first for me.
You live and learn...
I’m glad the conversation has since moved on past my book and I don’t want to bring it back to that. But I want to clarify on the actual topic of this thread that the OP is not just applying the Project Management Triangle to philosophy—the three constraints aren’t time, cost, and scope—but rather supposing that the three difficult audiences we are advised to reach in philosophy, the “stupid, lazy, and mean”, are mutually limiting like the three constraints of the project management triangle. That you can only pick two out of three. Not that they are the same three.
Not in your version perhaps. However, you seem to have changed the original ( no source citation given ) to align with your own 3 'wants' related to the 'stupid, lazy and mean'.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
The original model with explanation here :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle
That is your interpretation of a particular guidance advice given to students, already discussed and dismissed.
I wrote the OP. I am clarifying for you what it was about. It was not about just applying the project management triangle to philosophy writing. It was about making an analogy between that original project management triangle, and some thoughts I had about that writing advice about “stupid, lazy, and mean”. That, like you can only achieve two out of “good, fast, cheap”, you can likewise only reach two out of “stupid, lazy, and mean”.
In either case, the tradeoff in management is due to deadlines, materials and skills. For writing a philosophy book you can take as long as you like and only be finished when you personally are satisfied with the quality.
As for the audience, assuming you are targeting a specific audience then there will be pros and cons to different stylistic considerations. However, you can always just write the contents of one book in two books for different audiences; a scholarly work and a popular work, or then just move all the scholarly stuff to footnotes and appendix.
You seem to be setting up a false dichotomy that something has to be sacrificed. This simply isn't a theme in philosophy, nearly all philosophers wrote how they thought good writing was; some wrote short and concise cause they thought "get to the point" is what's good, other's wrote thousand page tomes that took decades, and a rich mix of theater and fiction as well as oral debate. There's simply no tradition of philosophers lamenting having to choose between quality considerations.
You do have to choose an audience, even if it's just yourself, as @I like sushi and @Amity and others have mentioned, but this is rarely achieved by sacrificing quality, rather it's the creative challenge of writing to get your audience interested and keep them interested in what you want to share, as you want to share it.
I understood your OP.
I discussed your OP.
I disagreed with your OP.
That is all from me.
Exactly this.
Biased criteria written by someone trying to maintain the pseudo elitism of professional philosophy.
Interesting take. What makes you think that is the aim of the author ? There is an awareness of the possibility of bias at the end of article.
A light is being shone on that category of philosophy professor who is aiming for a broader audience.
So, the list and explanations centre round the differences in requirements between popular v scholar.
It is pointed out that any professor should be careful and cause no harm by damaging public trust. With a perceived high social and intellectual status it is important to do as they preach. With power comes responsibility and duties.
Questions are posed at the end:
Quoting Robeyns
There follows 58 substantial, thoughtful comments and replies.
:cool:
But why pick on them ?
[s]lazy[/s] "those who don't really care what we're trying to say"
[s]mean[/s] "those who don't really like what we're trying to say"
Quoting Lori Deschene
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/the-best-thing-to-say-to-someone-who-wont-understand-you/
I don’t see any reason why all three of these cannot be addressed, in parallel, whilst writing.
The first just means to be as clear and concise as you can.
The second means to be interesting rather than giving a dry scholarly block of info.
The third means to address possible dislikes regarding the style, content and views expressed.
As I said initially, it is about ‘interest’ and ‘value’. It is certainly harder to catch the interest of someone who isn’t well versed in the subject matter, previously saw it as unimportant, and generally has a strong dislike for the subject matter. Assuming they’ve at least picked up the book and started to read, even though there is nothing to indicate they would, it is then a matter of presenting as quickly and clearly as possible why they should read further or not (express the value of the topic and build intrigue and interest).
All three, as stated, can be addressed at once. Nothing leads me to believe that only TWO at most can be addressed at a time.
Maybe you meant something else? I’m sure authors focus more or less on each of these three depending on the subject matter and the scope of people they are hoping to reach. If you just meant ‘we can’t please everyone,’ I agree. We can certainly widen our net though and catch the attention of more people if we wish to.
Oh for goodness sake, commonsense * would tell you people can be all that and more at any given time.
Depending.
I think I read somewhere* that this commonsense is what grounds Forrest's thinking ? So why no application of it here ? Why this continual grrriiiind...
* I've been lazily skimming and not taking notes.
If my understanding is wrong, I am sure that I will be corrected.
I’m presenting to commonsense interpretation because I assume there may be more to what Phf meant beyond this.
Note: Everything is a grind ;) sometimes there is a happy reward at the end ... but usually not!
Yes. There is plenty beyond and behind this triangle.
In addition to the 3 'wants' already outlined * there could be hidden interpersonal psychological aspects at play.
Do I hear groans ?
I wonder if the article I linked to above on 'understanding' is useful in any way ?
Just another perspective...
Quoting I like sushi
A grind is a grind is a grind.
The needle can get stuck in the groove...
* Edit to add Forrest's 3 'wants':
"It’s more that I would like to reach anybody who has any of those three vices.
1. I want to spell things out as slowly, simply, and easily as possible for people who find the subject difficult.
2. I want to be clear, to people who feel defensive, that I am not meaning the horrible thing they jump to the conclusion that I mean, but something much more agreeable. And
3. I want to get through all that as quickly as possible so it doesn’t drag on longer than necessary and bore people away before they can get through it all.— Pfhorrest