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INTO_THE_STRAW

                                              May 22, 2005

There's a tenet of
intellectual writing
that you're supposed
to anticipate possible
counter-arguments and
deal with them in advance.

  In practice, this produces
  some extremely tangled pieces
  of writing from people who at
  at least claim to be trying to
  be clear about something.


When you sit down to summarize an author's
arguments, it often gets hard to figure
out exactly what the point was they were
trying to make...

Sometimes it seems to me like a symptom of
cowardice: there was something simple they
wanted to say, but they were afraid of it
for some reason -- it sounds too extreme,
it would be too easy to argue against,
clarity is not conducive to tenure, etc


So instead, they complicate the thesis,
or worse, *pretend* to complicate the
thesis, acting like they've dealt with
a contrary position simply by mentioning
that it exists.


This suggests a strategy:

Address yourself to an                This would become a
imaginary position.                   "straw man" argument
                                      *only* if you pretend
Make up an abstract point             that the author is
of view that illustrates              identical with it.
the core features of the work
at hand, even though the author         Just make it clear
would deny being an adherent            that this isn't so:
of that point of view.
                                           "The pure Minimalist position
Listen to the work you're                   on this -- which is discussed
commenting on, but try and                  by the author, though not held
hear some other voices within               by him -- might be..."
the voice -- select the ones
singing a simpler, cleaner
song.                                       The point is that when
                                            you come right down to it
                                            there isn't a lot of reason
         Penrose does something             to care precisely about
         like this with his                 whether the author has
         "Shadows of the Mind",             screwed up on some point,
         laying out a series                the question is whether the
         of positions that he               viewpoints discussed are
         refers to as A, B, C               at all illuminating...
         and D (in cursive caps).

             (In passing he mentions
             that the actual authors
             writing in this field        NEOLOOGIES
             often adopt a position
             somewhere in between
             these four.)


And a similar strategy applies to writing
original works.  It might seem that the
right way to go about it is to make up
your mind about what you believe and then
write about it.  But that can lead into
endless hang-ups... as you think further
about a subject you might begin to get
nervous that you've backed the wrong
candidate, and worse you might start
rigging the contest to make sure you can
reach the conclusion that you set out
for...

   Much simpler than choosing a true
   position is to pick a plausible           THE_GREAT_DEBATE
   one, and then see how good a case
   can be made.

                   METHOD

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