Suggestion: A book on conceptual analysis
Hello,
This isn’t really a question, but more of a comment, a suggestion, or a thought that occurred to me recently regarding your books and your thinking.
I am a devout reader of your writings and often listen to your lessons, and in my opinion one of your virtues and contributions is your ability to carefully base your preliminary conceptual analysis on a careful, detailed map of the tools and possible directions. After this stage, you manage to present your method well (and, by the way, to those who disagree with you), and convincingly.
In my opinion, beyond the final outcome of your perception in various debates, this is what sets you apart from many other thinkers. The analytical ability to clarify positions, to clarify concepts, and to dispel the fog in discourse. This is a rare thing in our circles. And thank you for that.
If I may – I suggest, if you have the time and desire – that you write a systematic book on ‘conceptual analysis’. How concepts are clarified, what toolboxes should be used, etc., etc. I am aware that you have dedicated a series of lectures to this, but in my opinion, systematic writing on the aforementioned subject as a book (or a booklet like the notebooks) would be a tremendous aid for advancing thought, the ability to discuss, and so on.
I would love to hear your opinion on this.
Thanks for everything!
Chen Chen. I also think this is a problematic issue and it is important to improve the matter. But my impression is that nowadays books are already an ineffective matter. Few people read them, and the trouble in publishing them is very great. I try to promote the matter on the site here and in various articles that I write, and of course also in series.
Okay, I understand what you're saying. It's possible that the effort is really immeasurably greater, and the benefit has also decreased from past times. Quite likely.
And yet – A post, and a series of posts, is not like a systematic book. It's hard to shape a worldview from the ground up through posts. That's not the platform. Posts are read from time to time as a refreshing point of thought. A book, on the other hand, is approached to shape a fundamental worldview.
It's hard for me to see someone changing fundamental perceptions through a post, of course in a post there are references to read a particular post and there read an anonymous article, and there's no neat order and a broad picture. In a book, on the other hand, everything is laid out as a whole, one thing after another.
Maybe more people read posts in terms of quantity, but it's clear to me that books have precedence in terms of quality. And you, who deal with the quality of things, are more in line with the world of books. That's how I also understand the repeated requests from readers to shorten the posts. And you repeatedly respond and claim that your method is systematic from the ground up, and for that there is no escape from length. You are actually trying to insert into the posts (which are intended to be relatively short and require minimal mental effort) the content of the books. But that is a bit impossible. The blanket is short one way or another.
Nevertheless, I am talking about myself, and maybe I am wrong.
I have now posted a column about this: 637.
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