Thinking and Writing like a Philosopher

There was a time in my high school years when I wanted to be a philosopher. It was one of those cool professions where I imagined I would be reading books, thinking and talking to people. Maybe some sort of mystical fog was part of the picture too but I don’t remember very well so many years later. I did not end up becoming a philosopher or pursuing a philosophy degree. I did end up writing more and more though, sharing my thoughts on the Internet through Blogger and now on Medium, and now my own website.

I was taking a course on cyberliterature last term which introduced some concepts of reading, readership and understanding of the written word by Plato in Phaedrus (Fish, 1970) and that got me thinking about taking a philosophy course. I searched on edX and there it was: Philosophy and Critical Thinking, or META101x, a 4-module online course offered by University of Queensland, Australia.

www.edx.org

Though critical thinking skills are developed through all subjects in school, philosophy was not something I was taught as a course during my schooling. As far as I know, Australia is one of the countries teaching philosophy at school level. It is never too late to learn, hence, the following is my reflection on the course, what I learned from it and how it applies to writing.

Philosophy

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Philosophy is defined as the study of ideas about knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc.

Thus, it is not surprising that the first concept that META101x taught was the difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge is a demonstrable claim that we hold for a reason. For example, I have the knowledge that when I turn the stove on, it will grow hot. I can demonstrate this by turning it on. I can also reaffirm this knowledge by asking anyone who has been burned by mistake because they forgot the stove was on. Thus, there is factual support for the knowledge that I hold. This may be in the form of other people’s accounts or research or videos, to name a few supporting artifacts.

Belief, on the other hand, is subjective and might be held without any particular reason. Our biases and opinions are beliefs that we hold even if we do not have a concrete support for it. There is no need to demonstrate that others hold the same belief, because what matters is that I hold it. For example, I might choose to believe that if a cat crosses my path, something bad would happen. Someone might try to convince me otherwise but I can choose to hold on to the belief without any justification, no matter how convincing the other person’s argument might be, an argument being a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view (Merriam-Webster), in this case that cats do not signify bad luck.

How does this apply to good writing? Read on. 🙂

Norms for Good Thinking

META101x enlists three norms for good thinking, which translates to convincing writing:

• Reasonableness: if we show evidence and support for our ideas, we are more likely to be convincing because we are not the only ones who hold certain opinions. Credible sources could be scholarly works and interview with the target population you are thinking about.
  Let’s say I want to write an article about the effects of legalization of cannabis in Canada, and the possible discomfort that it would cause to those who oppose it. In this regards, I could use surveys to show how many people oppose the legalization as well as talk to at least some of these people to understand why they feel this way. Currently, the university I am studying at is conducting a survey amongst students and how they see the legalization affecting the university environment. I could also look into why such surveys are being conducted and what authorities suspect to gain out of them.
• Coherence: by appealing to logic in a consistent manner, we can be more convincing. Consider:
  Since it has been raining all day, I thought it would be a good time to write an article. 
  How convincing was that? 😉 This also brings up the point of context, that is the set of circumstances or events that I am talking about. If I had said that I find rainy days make me particularly reflective, my comment about today being a good time to write something would have appealed more to you.
• Clarity: this relates to writing in a concise manner and representing the strongest interpretation of an idea before countering it. By doing the latter, we bring even more strength to our thinking and subsequent expression of thoughts.
  Relating back to the cannabis example, since I am trying to show the views of those opposing the legalization, I would also need to present the strongest views from the other side to not look biased. If I just say “One of the reasons people take cannabis is to feel part of the group,” it is not the strongest reason why cannabis is being legalized, and one could potentially interpret that either I do not know much about it or I purposefully chose to be vague. To a reader who did not think as critically, they might get convinced that cannabis should not be legalized because there are so many people against it, according to my hypothetical article.

Inferences

An argument consists of premises and a conclusion. When the premises or propositions or opinions flow logically from one another to the conclusion, it is a valid argument. When the premises are true as well as exhibit flow to get to the conclusion, the argument is said to be sound. In both cases, we are inferring the conclusion from the premises.

• When the premises guarantee the conclusion, it is known as deductive inference.
• When the conclusion is likely from the premises but may be true even when the premises are not true, it is known as inductive inferences.

Which one is better for writing? Deductive! The hard part is that when we write, we might have numerous premises leading from one to the other. The most important of them lead to deductive inferences while the rest can easily be removed to minimize, if not completely remove, inductive inferences. A great article to understand inferences better is by Merriam-Webster. It offers a neat way to distinguish between inductive and deductive reasoning:

The prefix de- means “from,” and deduction derives from generally accepted statements or facts. The prefix in- means “to” or “toward,” and induction leads you to a generalization.

Thus, deductive inferences are based on universal facts while inductive inferences require one to consider the likelihood of something happening by observing a small group or sample of people and then generalizing to everyone.

Writing convincing arguments

Here are some points to keep in mind to create strong arguments:

• Get to know the similar experiences that others have had. This helps make the issue we are trying to address more relatable. Writing aside, it also opens us up to have conversations with people and learn from them. Who knows, our next article idea might come from this!
• Use research and facts to offer support to arguments. Numbers are easy to understand (and depending on the context or lack of it, easy to misinterpret) and that is why news uses them all the time. They provide support as to why this event around the world or in a city is of importance.
• Convince others. When we share drafts with our friends or other writers, we are trying to convince them that what we think and how we presented our thoughts was the logical way to do it. They might be able to find areas that need more explanation (more premises and support). Some of these reviewers might even provide further insight in the topic.

The three points above relate to reasonableness in norms of thinking. Moving on to clarity:

• Avoid unnecessary complexity.
  Did I mention before that it was raining and I love when it rains and it makes my fingers want to type away words on the keyboard without pressing the backspace button many times, but I always do?
  Please, avoid that. 🙂

Last, but not the least, for coherence:

• Be aware of biases. Biases. Prejudices. We write with passion and this is a hard one to avoid in writing. This also relates to clarity because in the heat of passion, we might forget the main point we were making. However, being aware and making sure that we do not intensionally hurt someone’s feeling is always a good writing practice, right?
• Address logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that we make. yourlogicalfallacyis.com is a great resource to learn about logical fallacies as well as biases.
• Check all analogies in use. We often think two things are related in our minds, but they might not be. Comparing apples to oranges is a great analogy to depict a bad analogy. Analogies are always between similar things. Again, it would depend on the context. For example, comparing a nursing and engineering program at a university would make sense because you could look at funding options, quality of education and so on. However, comparing nurses and engineers as professions would require more explanation in terms of similarities between them.

Conclusion

A resource that I found helpful along with the online course was the Crash Course channel on YouTube that has a couple of fun videos on philosophical concepts. Here is the first one that talks about what philosophy is.

I hope that my reflection from the philosophy course made you think about writing and how, by writing and conversing, we are engaging in philosophy. If you have further recommendations for courses I can take to work on my thinking skills, please let me know. If you would like to read more content by me, please follow me on Medium or subscribe to my website (the blog is all set up though many pages are under work).

I would like to leave you with an infographic for the information that I just presented to you above which you can download from here or check it out below in the embedded window.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAC2UDwpv70/view?utm_content=DAC2UDwpv70&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=embeds&utm_source=social

References and Further Readings:

Fish, S. (1970). Literature in the reader: Affective stylistics. New literary history, 2(1), 123–162.

Khare, K. (2018). Notes from META101x: Philosophy and critical thinking. Retrieved from https://www.edx.org/course/philosophy-and-critical-thinking

Merriam-Webster (n.d.). ‘Deduction’ vs. ‘Induction’ vs. ‘Abduction’. Learn the differences between these three types of reasoning. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/deduction-vs-induction-vs-abduction

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Also published at: https://writingcooperative.com/thinking-and-writing-like-a-philosopher-f8393c8fe72a