I Can't Express Myself Properly—I Can't Articulate My Ideas

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Meow

A single worded representation of absolute succinct communication   

Hahaha! 

[Leo Gura]

[zurew]

Aside from what already was mentioned, try to learn the basics of analytic philosophy.

Especially learn about inferences and how not to jump big in your logic.

You need to practice how to walk people through your ideas(train your mind how to handle objections - once you map out the premises you can ask at each premise: what would i say if the person wouldnt buy into this given premise?) and see multiple pathways how to get to your conclusion with more granularity.

But yeah just writing down your thoughtprocess and then reflecting on it and checking how easy it is to follow and how easy it is to track what your inference is will train you more than enough.

 

 

A more advanced move is to try to create an archetype or multiple archetypes in your mind about the type of person you want to write your response to and then try to think about what kind of objections that kind of archetype would bring up and try to get clear about at what level the disagreement will be  and  think about how to navigate those types of disagreements.

Edited 4 hours ago by zurew

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@zurew I'm stealing some of this advice 🙏 

I don't approach argument/ thought this way. It can leave me open to objections that I fail to push back on. Cheers!

[eTorro]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't focus on how to speak. Focus on understanding.

Damn! You bombed here.

Deeper understanding is the key.

Thanks.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

@zurew I'm stealing some of this advice 🙏 

I don't approach argument/ thought this way. It can leave me open to objections that I fail to push back on. Cheers!

There is a lot more more other stuff that I find useful (this is basically my main conceptual toolbox). Some of these are very time-consuming depending on how granular you want to get with your arguments and how many objections you want to handle/prepare against. But this is also not just about arguments, but also about improving one's thinking and actually trying to be less biased in one's position and be more intellectually honest.

 

You can do the archetype stuff that I mentioned , and combine that with other techniques - like with the technique that I will label as collect-explain-snythesize:

You can think of it as a scientific project, but in this  case this is almost purely conceptual. You start with trying to collect all the avalaible data and facts that is relevant to the case or argument you try to build or that is relevant to the thing or phenomena you want to explain.  After that, you can combine that with the archetypes and try to generate at least one explanation/case from the perspective of each archetype - less wordy way to say it , is to say try to steelman each archetype. After that, you can try to build some kind of overarching perspective that takes into account all those steelmaned perspectives (and can maintain some of the positive features of each perspective, and or can also dodge or have a response to the negatives of each perspective)

Of course the meaning of 'positive' and 'negative' will be dependent on the goal of the project and what kind of function(s) a given perspective need to play or account for.

 

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There is also something that I label as Neighbor Position Stress Test : This is somewhat similar to the archetypes, but different in some relevant ways. 

The tactic is that when you hold a position, try to generate an indefinite number of other positions that are extremely similar to yours (just a slightly bit different, like imagine a guy who buys into all the premises that you hold, except one or a few) and check how you would argue against them or think about how they would argue with each other. The reason why this is different and important is because this shows you how many independent lines of justification you have for your exact position.

For instance, christians do this, where they will argue for a tri-omni God with an atheist, they will appeal to a bunch of things there , because they disagree on so many things (he can appeal to the content of the Bible, he can appeal to general arguments for God, he can appeal to arguments against materialism etc). But if two christians agree on literally everything (lets say except on the resurrection, or except on God being all powerful) - in that case, they will have an extremely hard time to argue for their specific position ,because there its not enough just to establish that God exists or that Jesus did some other miracles or that Christianity is overall true,  but you have to argue for one very specific premise without appealing to anything more abstract.

 

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There is also the affirm/deny/agnostic frame that you can apply on each premise. You can ask what would I tell to a person who believes in the negation of  this premise,  and what would I tell to a person who is agnostic on this premise? Arguing with the agnostic is much harder, because there you need to make a case why witholding judgement with respect to that particular premise given all the avalaible info  is irrational or absurd.

 

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There is also a more abstract tool that I call "Go one level of abstraction higher": After you map out some of the possible disagreements,  sometimes you find that you have a hard time arguing and using this tool is one way to find out how those types of disagreements are navigated using other contexts.  So the tactic is to find inspiration from other contexts where the exact same type of disagreement is present and then try to grab that and apply that to the context where your disagreement is / will be.

So for instance, when it comes to analytic philosophy a bunch of disagreements can be categorized under the realist vs constructivist frame (these two categories dont necessarily exhaust the possibility space and there is sometimes room for other alternative frames ,but we will go with this for now). So if you have a hard time arguing why you are a realist about lets say math, you can  take a step back, check how realist arguments are navigated and done  when it comes to lets say art or beauty and try to grab a line of argumentation from there and check if it works in your context.

A more intuitive example could be researching how you can generally persuade an agnostic person on any given premise and then try to use some of that that to persuade an agnostic when it comes to your specific premise.

 

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The other research related tool is just simply checking what possible perspectives and positions can even be taken on the thing that you guys disagree on. This is related to how you can construct your archetypes,  because sometimes its unclear how could a given archetype even respond or what position they could even take, if you go deep enough with the disagreements.

 

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And the last for now will be related to language stuff.

Its often the case, that a given term can be used in multiple ways and its easy to make the mistake of equivocation when you construct your arguments. So you can combine this with the collect-explain-snythesize technique, where you dont just collect all the avalaible facts relevant to the argument or case you want to make, but you also collect all or most senses of a given essential term that you  use in your arguments and construct an argument using each different sense of the same term (if it is necessary).

Edited 1 hour ago by zurew