This feels more like a style guide than a “vision of how to do philosophy”.
I agree, though it might be redeemed by (1) an argument why this style is the best for doing philosophy successfully, and (2) an explanation of how success at doing philosophy ought to be measured and why anyone should seek this kind of success.
The question that Prase asks, nearby, seems to be related.
I’d phrase the complaint this way: the “vision” part said much about how to communicate philosophical results once you’ve obtained them, but little about how to obtain those results in the first place. Out of the 11 items, only two (6 and 8) are about the latter instead of the former.
Of course how to obtain philosophical results is a much harder problem, so you can’t really be blamed for not having a huge amount to say on that. It’s really just an expectation management issue. If you declare a “vision of how to do philosophy”, people will naturally expect more than writing tips.
Yes, I understand, but the subject of how to do philosophy is, like, half of Less Wrong. That’s why I kept talking about dissolving semantic problems, reductionism, thinking like a cognitive scientist and an AI programmer. Those are all part of my vision of how to do philosophy, and I talked about them in the post and linked to articles on those subjects, but of course I can’t repeat all of that content in this little blog post.
Don’t be fooled by the count of items on the list devoted to style vs. content. Item #6 is really, really important, and covered in detail throughout the archives of Less Wrong.
In that case, the problem is ironically one of style. Given that #6 is really, really important, you didn’t indicate its importance in any way stylistically. It’s listed smack in a middle of a bunch of writing tips. It’s not bolded or italicized. It doesn’t link or cite any other articles.
This feels more like a style guide than a “vision of how to do philosophy”.
I agree, though it might be redeemed by (1) an argument why this style is the best for doing philosophy successfully, and (2) an explanation of how success at doing philosophy ought to be measured and why anyone should seek this kind of success.
The question that Prase asks, nearby, seems to be related.
All throughout the ‘style guide’, I gave reasons for why these suggestions matter. Then in penultimate paragraph, I repeated these reasons.
I’d phrase the complaint this way: the “vision” part said much about how to communicate philosophical results once you’ve obtained them, but little about how to obtain those results in the first place. Out of the 11 items, only two (6 and 8) are about the latter instead of the former.
Of course how to obtain philosophical results is a much harder problem, so you can’t really be blamed for not having a huge amount to say on that. It’s really just an expectation management issue. If you declare a “vision of how to do philosophy”, people will naturally expect more than writing tips.
Yes, I understand, but the subject of how to do philosophy is, like, half of Less Wrong. That’s why I kept talking about dissolving semantic problems, reductionism, thinking like a cognitive scientist and an AI programmer. Those are all part of my vision of how to do philosophy, and I talked about them in the post and linked to articles on those subjects, but of course I can’t repeat all of that content in this little blog post.
Don’t be fooled by the count of items on the list devoted to style vs. content. Item #6 is really, really important, and covered in detail throughout the archives of Less Wrong.
In that case, the problem is ironically one of style. Given that #6 is really, really important, you didn’t indicate its importance in any way stylistically. It’s listed smack in a middle of a bunch of writing tips. It’s not bolded or italicized. It doesn’t link or cite any other articles.
Sheesh you guys are picky. :)
Seriously though, I’ve improved the original post in response. Thanks.