The problem that I described in my first paragraph is there regardless of how popular or academic a style you’re aiming for. The bold, attention-grabbing claims about extinction/utopia/the fate of the world are a turnoff, and they actually seem more out of place for academic writing than for popular writing.
If you don’t want to spend more time elaborating on your argument in order to make the bold claims sound plausible, you could just get rid of those bold claims. Maybe you could include one mention of the high stakes in your abstract, as part of the teaser of the argument to come, rather than vividly describing the high stakes before and after the abstract as a way to shout out “hey this is really important!”
Thanks for your comment, but I’m going with a different style. This kind of opening is actually quite common in Anglophone philosophy, as the quickest route to tenure is to make really bold claims and then come up with ingenius ways of defending them.
I know that Less Wrong can be somewhat averse to the style of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, but that will not dissuade me from using it. To drive home the point that my style here is common in Anglophone philosophy (I’m avoiding calling it analytic philosophy), here a few examples...
The opening paragraphs of David Lewis’ On the Plurality of Worlds, in which he defends a radical view known as modal realism, that all possible worlds actually exist:
This book defends modal realism: the thesis that the world we are part of is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that we who inhabit this world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds.
I begin the first chapter by reviewing the many ways in which systematic philosophy goes more easily if we may presuppose modal realism...
In the second chapter, I reply to numerous objections...
In the third chapter, I consider the prospect that a more credible ontology might yield the same benefits...
Opening paragraph (abstract) of Neil Sinhababu’s “Possible Girls” for the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:
I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a transworld relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.
The purpose of this paper is to ask you to consider an account of justification that has largely been ignored in epistemology. When it has been considered, it has usually been dismissed as so obviously wrong that arguments against it are not necessary. The view that I ask you to consider can be called “Infinitism.” Its central thesis is that the structure of justificatory reasons is infinite and non-repeating. My primary reason for recommending infinitism is that it can provide an acceptable account of rational beliefs, i.e., beliefs held on the basis of adequate reasons, while the two alternative views, foundationalism and coherentism, cannot provide such an account.
And, the opening paragraph of Steven Maitzen’s paper arguing that a classical theistic argument actually proves atheism:
Chapter 15 of Anselm’s Prosblogion contains the germ of an argument that confronts theology with a serious trilemma: atheism, utter mysticism, or radical anti-Anselmianism. The argument establishes a disjunction of claims that Anselmians in particular, but not only they, will find disturbing: (a) God does not exist, (b) no human being can have even the slightest conception of God, or (c) the Anselmian requirement of maximal greatness in God is wrong. Since, for reasons I give below, (b) and (c) are surely false, I regard the argument as establishing atheism.
And those are just the first four works that came to mind. This kind of abrupt opening is the style of Anglophone philosophy, and that’s the style I’m using. Anyone who keeps up with Anglophone philosophy lives and breathes this style of writing every week.
Anglophone philosophy is not written for people who are casually browsing for interesting things to read. It is written for academics who have hundreds and hundreds of papers and books we might need to read, and we need to know right away in the opening lines whether or not a particular book or paper addresses the problems we are researching.
The problem that I described in my first paragraph is there regardless of how popular or academic a style you’re aiming for. The bold, attention-grabbing claims about extinction/utopia/the fate of the world are a turnoff, and they actually seem more out of place for academic writing than for popular writing.
If you don’t want to spend more time elaborating on your argument in order to make the bold claims sound plausible, you could just get rid of those bold claims. Maybe you could include one mention of the high stakes in your abstract, as part of the teaser of the argument to come, rather than vividly describing the high stakes before and after the abstract as a way to shout out “hey this is really important!”
Thanks for your comment, but I’m going with a different style. This kind of opening is actually quite common in Anglophone philosophy, as the quickest route to tenure is to make really bold claims and then come up with ingenius ways of defending them.
I know that Less Wrong can be somewhat averse to the style of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, but that will not dissuade me from using it. To drive home the point that my style here is common in Anglophone philosophy (I’m avoiding calling it analytic philosophy), here a few examples...
The opening paragraphs of David Lewis’ On the Plurality of Worlds, in which he defends a radical view known as modal realism, that all possible worlds actually exist:
Opening paragraph (abstract) of Neil Sinhababu’s “Possible Girls” for the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:
Opening paragraph of Peter Klein’s “Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons” for Philosophical Perspectives:
And, the opening paragraph of Steven Maitzen’s paper arguing that a classical theistic argument actually proves atheism:
And those are just the first four works that came to mind. This kind of abrupt opening is the style of Anglophone philosophy, and that’s the style I’m using. Anyone who keeps up with Anglophone philosophy lives and breathes this style of writing every week.
Anglophone philosophy is not written for people who are casually browsing for interesting things to read. It is written for academics who have hundreds and hundreds of papers and books we might need to read, and we need to know right away in the opening lines whether or not a particular book or paper addresses the problems we are researching.