Topic Summary:
Discuss the article, “How I Write a Lot,” here
Goal:
Learn more about writing
CF Relevance:
Writing is important to philosphy
Edit: Here’s the link to the article:
The following paragraph is from the section Write More First Drafts:
First sentence:
If you use writing as a way to think out loud, it’s like literally thinking. If you can think about things more to solve more problems or learn then you can do that more when you write.
When the quote says this:
To me writing to think gives you more reasons to write. You can wanna write more often cuz of that. I like being able to analyze stuff I read cuz I know I won’t understand everything a text says. If I break it down a bit then I can think about a text another way. Imagine how many ways there are to think about something and you utilize that in your writing? You’ll figure a lot of problems out
It usually helps you improve the quality of your thinking too. When you just keep your thinking in your head it’s easier to not notice things and skip over steps. When you have to put it out, either in spoken or written word you may notice you were lacking an argument. I find I more often think up criticism of my thinking after I’ve had it written down.
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Writing helps you improve the quality of your thinking. I wonder what “quality” means. That’s how good it is? Like, writing helps you think about things better, so when you think about things with or without writing you can have an easier time. Idk
I wonder how many steps I skipped. I think I notice tht sometimes. I also notice when I want to write something down so I don’t have to think so many things at once. I dont know if thats related to skipping steps
I don’t know if I noticed tht I was lacking an argument. I think when I do an essay I find out something I wrote down wasn’t as good as I thought.
Yeah, I think I find criticisms sometimes. I dont remember when. I think when I edit my stuff I find errors in my writing. Maybe there’s errors in thinking too? I think finding errors is maybe different from criticizing?
I think I find errors in my thinking when Im not sure about something I write. I use “I think” to show that im unsure about what im saying. I think thats a criticism cuz Im saying a sentence fails at the goal of being proper knowledge
Yes. Primarily by letting you find and fix errors in your thinking. It can also help generate new ideas, by for example making you think of a question and that gives you a new idea. After having written you can update your thinking and it’s now (maybe) better.
The next time you’ll use the ideas you improved by writing you’ll probably be able to use it to have an easier time, but the first time when you’re writing might be difficult because it’s pushing you to think harder.
So the result from the writing is that you might have an easier time in the future. But the process of writing it self might not be so easy.
Try to look out for when you have a conclusion you want to write about and you find out you don’t know how to connect to it from your premises. You might start writing “when X then Y happens because …” and you found out you don’t know about arguments to write after “because”. Yet initially you did think that Y follows when X is the case. So you might realize you have to question your idea.
While writing this I realized it seems a bit justificationist. Because it seems like I’m saying you need a positive argument after the “because” part. Actually, when you need an argument is when you need to address a criticism. But there is a certain category of ideas which seem implausible and you need to figure out what the criticisms of it are that you need to refute. I think a common one is just “well, how do we get from premise A to conclusion B, there is no clear path?”. In that situation you might just need a chain of explanations that makes the connection clear.
Don’t you ever find yourself writing something and then halfway through find out it’s wrong or that there is some extra thing you have to address in order to be able to say it? I do, and that usually means I stop writing and then sit there and think for a bit before I continue writing.
They are essentially the same. But you could distinguish them by saying an (actual) error is true while a criticism can be false. So an error would something that is actually wrong in reality about an idea, while a criticism would be an idea that purports to point out an error, however the criticism is only an idea which might have an error (it is actually and truly erroneous).
I’ve been reading Popper on the three worlds (physical, subjective and objective). Using his terminology I think the way I defined “error” and “criticism” would mean “error” belongs the objective world while “criticism” belongs to the subjective world. Though I’m quite unsure and find Popper a bit confusing on this topic and I think remember @Elliot saying he doesn’t agree with Popper about his three worlds. Yet Elliot does recommend the essay Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject, which is about the three worlds, so I assume Elliot thinks there is some truth to it.
Now it might or might not be useful to define this way. I think though in colloquial speech they are mostly synonymous. If @Elliot uses them this way, then I haven’t noticed it at least. I guess he doesn’t.
Imma respond to @ActiveMind by each sentence.
First sentence/question:
Yeah, usually halfway thru I found out i made a spelling mistake, said something pretty wrong or something im unsure of. Sometimes, I just write out the thought anyways cuz tht tells me I made an error tht maybe I can come back to later and fix. I could investigate it right then and there too. I for sure sometimes tho write stuff tht sounded wrong and I rewrite it.
I think I also write stuff that I think I need an extra thing to say. Like, with sentences, I think i don’t give enough context so I feel like I have to add an extra thing to say.
Sometimes I do stop writing too and I think to myself a bit about what im trying to get or do. Sometimes I write more cuz writing helps me think. I can probably figure stuff out if i write. I think it depends wat helps
In general, you should have a positive “because …” explanation. That’s not (or at least doesn’t have to be) justificationist. In general (but not always), lacking an explanation is a criticism of an idea. In most problem situations or contexts, most ideas should have some sort of explanation covering some basic issues like what problem the idea is trying to solve and how/why it solves it, how it works, etc. You (usually) need a positive account of what the idea is/does/etc before exposing it to most other types of criticism.
When you say
in the beginning, thats the main way to do something or the main source. Imma look tht up rq…In Merriam Webster, primarily meant ‘mainly’ like ‘for the most part.’
I think what you’re saying is if you use writing as a way to think out loud, it helps you improve the quality of your thinking. How?? @ActiveMind says primarily by:
For the most part, writing helps your thinking by letting you find and fix errors in your thinking. That makes sense that your errors get fix if you write more to think. That literally boosts the quality of your thinking. You’re doing more stuff correctly. It’s higher quality stuff.
There’s a next time where you might use the ideas you wrote about. You improved on those ideas. I kinda know what “use” means but I wonder what it actually means. Like, you use the ideas to solve a problem or ask a question.
The next time you do use the ideas @ActiveMind says youll be able to use the ideas to have an easier time. I think easier time could be with solving problems or learning something new.
I see there’s “but” indicating a contrast i think. It’s between the easier time you’ll have when you improve and the hard time youre going to have when youre writing. Youre writing to think about the ideas i think
I’m going to reply to @ActiveMind’s replies so it can help me understand the topic of writing more:
As a first impression the paragraph reminds me of Intuition and Rational Debate cuz there’s explicit arguments you can make that your intuition doesnt agree with. That was the jist of what I got from the article. It was talking a lot about arguments and I thought it was related to something @ActiveMind said.
First sentence:
I think when the quote says “Try to look out” that sounds like a warning…Honestly, I think it’s saying tht it’d be good to watch out for something. I think if I do look out for the thing I might spot an error I can fix. Also, the fact that it’s saying to look out means it might be a mistake that happened to someone else. It’s not the first time it’s happened.
In the quote there’s two conditions to look out for. It’s when both happen. One is when you have a conclusion you want to write about. The other is when you find out you don’t know how to connect it to your premises. Both sound kind of complicated for me to understand.
The first thing to look out for is like having an argument in mind. You probably got to the argument after hours of study or from a friend. The arguement is a conclusion cuz you have reasons for why you think something is the way it is.
I think we have a lot of conclusions cuz we have ideas to act on them. An example is that cereal is food. It’s food cuz it’s made of carbs and can be served with milk to eat. I think based on tht conclusion you could decide to eat cereal for breakfast.
Now there’s the matter when you want to write about a conclusion. Instead of just thinking it, you express it through a written format. This might happen for many reasons. Some may include when you’re making an essay or writing on a forum. Maybe you’re writing on a reflection journal.
I meant it more like searching and noticing when that thing happens.
yeah, that’s it, notice and search for when this happens and you’re likely to find an error in your thinking.
Sure, that can be. But I’m not saying that specifically if you thought that because I said to look out. I’m not putting emphasis on searching externally from yourself, like searching the web, looking up books, talking with people, ect., as opposed to just thinking it through yourself.
Yes. It could also come from your culture, a personal experience, your feelings, etc. The method you got it by could be rational or irrational. It could be that you had a long chain of rational arguments but now you forgot that chain of arguments, or you could have derived it from irrational means, like for example you just really wanted it be true otherwise the opposite conclusion would cause damage to your self-esteem, or you just accepted the conclusion in order to avoid a contradiction with another cherished belief you have. An example of the last could be that you uncritically accept the Trinity to keep your belief in the Christian God. Either way you now hold a conclusion which you don’t currently know the arguments for.
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I’m interested in when a positive explanation is required. Because if it was literally always required then that would lead to an infinite regress, right? So what is the criterion for when you need positive explanations? What are the categories and cases of when you need them? I proposed:
It doesn’t have to a criticism someone concretely brought up, it could be something you thought up yourself. Anyways, if no one can think up a criticism of the conclusion then there’s no need for a positive explanation?
“I don’t see how that conclusion follows” is a criticism, but now I’m wondering what separates the cases from when you have this criticism and when that criticism doesn’t seem necessary? There is the easy case of deductions, where you have a demonstration that it follows, although that could be seen of as a positive explanation. But I think there are cases which are not deductions, but for some reason they just seem like they make sense to us and we feel like we don’t need anymore explanation. Why is that? Is there actually “secretly” deductions in there using premises we accept as true?
There are also more concrete cases for when you need a positive explanation. Like for when you’re writing an essay, whether you need to write a positive explanation of something depends upon the assumed knowledge of your target audience. Or if you need to know details to use in practice, like about how gravity works because you’re building satellite.
What regress do you have in mind? Example?
If it was always required then the positive explanations would require positive explanations themselves.
Example:
Capitalism is better than socialism because of the economic calculation problem → Socialism has the ECP because it lacks a price system → a capitalist price system doesn’t have the ECP because it gives people a way to signal how much they value various products compared to each other → which is necessary because there is no intrinsic value, rather only “subjective” value exists → … → humans act → … → existence exists.
I had something like this in mind. But this gives the sense that the chain is really long, and the problem is that it would be cumbersome, which wasn’t my idea. The idea was more that between each arrow you could always make a closer connection. But now that I’m looking at it, it seems like you can’t always go closer. Like in:
Capitalism is better than socialism because of the economic calculation problem → Socialism has the ECP because it lacks a price system → a capitalist price system doesn’t have the ECP because it gives people a way to signal how much they value various products compared to each other
I see how in an explanation you could cut out the second sentence here. But I can’t think of something which would be necessarily closer than 1 → 2, well maybe other than explaining what the ECP is, and then what calculation is, and what a problem is, and so on. But that isn’t necessarily infinite, you could make long chains but you only have to go through explaining each of the concepts in the claims. And even though that expands into really wide and deep trees, the trees would eventually start tightening and reducing towards “existence exists”.
And that is fine because “existence exists” does actually serve well as an explanatory foundation, i.e., the concept you would always reach if you went on explaining every explanation. That is different than serving as a justificationist foundation because your idea of “existence exists” could be misunderstood. But I think you can reach a foundational explanation, which is not the same as explaining everything as in making you understand everything, but rather that it is implicit in everything.