Seriously, I’d work on the writing style. I was nearly asleep after the introductory paragraphs defining sub-schools of sub-schools of philosophy, and ten paragraphs in its still unclear where you are going.
I think you have a tendency to dress up your ideas as much as possible in order to legitimate them. You even did it in the above essay. You could have said that advances in medical science have moved the frontier of what we consider “dead” before and could again, therefore we should hesitate before considering death permanent. You didn’t have to invoke Hume at all. But name dropping an author and tying your idea to a previous framework makes it sound more legitimate. Unfortunately it also buries your idea and tethers it to any complications in the invoked frameworks, such as my general allergy to Hume.
It’s fascinating seeing the responses to this from you all who obviously know a lot about philosophy. Coming at it from a layman’s perspective, and not really knowing who David Hume was, the science definitions bit was all I could really understand and I interpreted it the way that you say it could have been written. I’m now wondering if just placed my own preconceptions about the bits that I did understand onto the author without really considering the rest.
“You can’t just wave away the entire universe”
“Hold my beer.”
Seriously, I’d work on the writing style. I was nearly asleep after the introductory paragraphs defining sub-schools of sub-schools of philosophy, and ten paragraphs in its still unclear where you are going.
I think you have a tendency to dress up your ideas as much as possible in order to legitimate them. You even did it in the above essay. You could have said that advances in medical science have moved the frontier of what we consider “dead” before and could again, therefore we should hesitate before considering death permanent. You didn’t have to invoke Hume at all. But name dropping an author and tying your idea to a previous framework makes it sound more legitimate. Unfortunately it also buries your idea and tethers it to any complications in the invoked frameworks, such as my general allergy to Hume.
It’s fascinating seeing the responses to this from you all who obviously know a lot about philosophy. Coming at it from a layman’s perspective, and not really knowing who David Hume was, the science definitions bit was all I could really understand and I interpreted it the way that you say it could have been written. I’m now wondering if just placed my own preconceptions about the bits that I did understand onto the author without really considering the rest.