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Thought. Shouldnât philosophers have to go through a mandatory course of technical writing?
Not everything can be as lucid as the Principia
I suggest a rule of thumb: If it is not lucid, it is poorly thought out.
All hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
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Wrong principia.
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Tech writing is probably a bad course to go with, then. A good tech writer might do wonders compared to the unsorted pile of outdated minutiae, outright lies, and total lack of perspective provided by the dev team; but technical writing tends toward banal recitation of the obvious or vast tracts of interlocking jargon, or both.
In fact, more than a few philosophers (especially in metaphysics) are fairly similar. Lots, and lots, and lots of interlocking stuff that is either distinctly atypical reuse of existing words or novel coinages, each layer stacked on top of, and incorporating by reference, the previous one. The good ones are dense because their work is tightly packed. The less good ones are just ponderous.
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You realise that pot does still technically have a LD50 amount, right!?
What defines a ârealâ intellectual?
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I dunno⌠should technical writers have to go through a mandatory course on writing in the humanities?
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[quote=âanon61221983, post:29, topic:43071, full:trueâ]
What defines a ârealâ intellectual?[/quote]
Great question! In my part of the world, there is a strong anti-intellectual backlash. One of the frequent tactics is dismissing anything which sounds too involved or high-minded as âpseudo-intellectualâ. Kind of a blanket term which says: âOh yeah, well⌠You are not as smart as you obviously think you are!â. And almost always used by people who rigorously defer to common-sense and so refuse to stick their neck out by trying to articulate any ideas which may come across as controversial or alienating to their herd.
My approach to dealing with this is offer them benefit of doubt, and ask for clarification, rather than the âcorrectâ response of unthinkingly agreeing. âWow, you could very well be right about this. But how exactly do you discern between that which is pseudo-intellectual, and that which is actually intellectual?â This puts them on the spot and I have seen quite a few people rage pretty hard at this, which can be quite funny.
Iâd assume that there are probably multiple definitions of âpseudo-intellectualâ too. I tend to see it lobbed at people in the humanities more often (like the linked article is clearly someone who is attempting to explain theory to a broad audience, so probably a grad student of some kind!), but Iâve also seen it aimed at people spouting Ayn Randâs theories as well. for myself, if I donât agree with something, I try not to call it names, but describe why I disagree, often using my own lens of historical understanding.
And yes, there is a strong anti-intellectual bias around these parts too. America loves the âcommon manâ (which apparently means something along the Palins or whatever) and abhors those who get a doctorate, because those of us who do are getting âbrainwashedâ into being a radical Marxist. I tend to view it as learning a particular set of skills more than anything else.
[quote=âanon61221983, post:32, topic:43071â]
Iâd assume that there are probably multiple definitions of âpseudo-intellectualâ too.[/quote]
Certainly, my understanding of the word would be someone who uses someone elses arguments or authority to back up their own position, without truly knowing or understanding these. For instance, arguing that Rand, Marx, or others had crucial insights without having bothered to read them. Probably because it was more important for them to identify themselves with certain groups. I would also apply this to anybody who votes a certain ticket or supports any sort of party line, as people who are putting forth token ideological positions through membership.
Sounds like a fine methodology to me. Certainly more effective than stereotyping yourself!
I never really encountered any significant anti-intellectual bias in person until I was about 30 years and and moved to another city. Part of me was hoping that it was a phantom of broadcast media which actual people didnât subscribe to.
My experience is that despite professing to love the âcommon manâ, much of the US tends to be hostile to egalitarianism. This commonality seems to require careful populist rationalization. I suppose I could call it The Myth of the Accidental Elitist. The end effect seems to be that of cultivating credulity and stilted discourse.
My son was mostly raised by âother peopleâ for nine years, so I am having fun trying to teach him about media and critical thinking, which he had not been exposed to. Without blowing his mind too badly. It still surprises me how discouraging people can be, insisting that using oneâs head only achieves unhappiness and alienation, compared to inheriting pre-digested, pre-approved opinions and personalities from âtrusted sourcesâ.
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Cannot find that one in openly accessible sources. Do you have an ISO alternative?
The one whose arguments arenât imaginary? (I know, such ones make them appear more complexâŚ)
Here is a story from local faculty of math/physics, I donât know if it was apocryphal or not.
Some education big cheese wanted the faculty head to give mandatory humanities courses to his students. He agreed, if the humanities students get mandatory calculus. The proposal was quickly withdrawn.
âŚand, actually, any kind of writing that stresses concise and understandable form without much of added fluff will do a good job.
That would be the ISO 5318008:1992 Intellectual person specification - full and pseudo variants
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Well, isnât the problem with figuring that out is that not everything is⌠corporeal? When youâre making an argument about, ethics say, you can certainly point to acts that are ethical or non-ethical (and of course, thatâs in part going to be in the eye of the beholder), but the ideas and beliefs that creates someoneâs sense of ethics might not be something physical that you can point to⌠itâs an idea that we can talk about, but not a formula you can write down or something tangible. Does that make ethics imaginary? So, I guess Iâm asking what constitutes something imaginary? Is the labor performed by people who are in the humanities imaginary if they are talking about ideas, and not physical facts you can see? Is History less imaginary than philosophy?
Korzybskiâs approach was that all communications are instances of differential calculus.
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The most difficult trap in discourse I think is the dichotomies of objective versus subjective, fact versus opinion. Many people who like hard, empirical approaches to social issues apply a rather mechanistic, 19th-century type of rationality which posits humanity as outside of the natural universe, where pure observation seems possible. On this end, scientific thinking has drastically shifted towards the discontinuous and indeterminate. On the other end, people who use subjective models such as art and religion like to try âjustifyingâ their thinking by framing it in objective-sounding terms, which compounds the problem by convincing those who donât know better, while baiting those who do.
In short - people do not trust metaphysics. So we get âfactualâ arguments about things such as ethics and social norms. And those who are empirically-minded likewise might explain away religion as superstitious ritual, while not applying the same rigor to criticism of commerce, politics, and other social institutions which are based upon metaphysical notions while pretending to be âpracticalâ. This results in a lot of large-scale rationalization of why we do things. Between The Enlightenment and the advent of real-time mass media, most people were able to assume agreement and take these for granted.
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