Why do most philosophers seem to rely upon the official style in order to articulate their ideas? Adding complexity and nuanced terminology to a subject that is already rigorous seems counterintuitive, as it may lead to confusion. If philosophy truly aims to enlighten humanity and reach all audiences, why is it typically fashioned in a way that is inaccessible to most people? By analyzing the current landscape of philosophy of mind, it might be possible to understand the motives for using the official style today.
Nick Bostrom, a renowned philosophy scholar at Oxford, is widely regarded as one of the leading minds in analytical philosophy. He is most famous for his simulation argument which he wrote in the form of a logical, analytical paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” At the end of his proof, Bostrom concludes that there can only be three possibilities regarding simulations: (1) The fraction of human-level realities that can run simulations is close to zero; (2) It is extremely unlikely that humans in the future will wish to run simulations; (3) We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. The brilliance of the logic is that one of the three conclusions must be true. The paper was published in 2003 in Philosophical Quarterly, which is considered to be “one of the most highly regarded and established academic journals in philosophy.” According to their website, only four percent of the submissions they receive are published. What’s more, the publication is quite exclusive, as one is required to be a member of the Oxford institution to receive full access. If not, one must pay a hefty subscription fee. This exclusivity likely implies the target audience of the journal: esteemed intellectuals, philosophy scholars, and those who are willing to pay a large fee in order to be granted access. Because of this, it seems most likely that only those who are either professors or graduate students of philosophy would make up the key demographics of the journal’s readership. However, Bostrom’s work is unique because it transcends the typically sequestered and exclusive audience of philosophy journals such as this. His paper is freely available to the public through a variety of domains online. So, what is unique about the paper that allows it to transcend typical readership conventions and become more accessible to a larger audience?
The answer is quite complex, but I believe it can be approached successfully by understanding the author’s intentions. What is special about Bostrom’s position at Oxford is that he actually does not have any teaching obligations, which allows him more time to devote to his philosophical writing. This is significant because it implies something about his purpose for writing. On his personal website, he explained, “I am in a very fortunate position—having no teaching duties, being supported by a staff of brilliant research colleagues and assistants, and facing no restrictions on what I can work on. Must try hard to be worthy of such privilege!” It is clear that Bostrom does operate with some level of obligation because he is funded by his academic institution to do so. In that sense, it seems likely that Bostrom feels pressure to produce philosophical work that satisfies his employer and reaches a respectable audience in its publication. So, who reads his paper and makes use of his argument? Based on the majority of the paper’s circulation on the web, it seems that the majority of Bostrom’s audience includes: fellow philosophy scholars, mathematicians, and popular media articles interested in artificial intelligence and science fiction. He uses the official language to appeal to his scholarly, academic readership. More specifically, he frequently relies on nuanced words, verbosity, prepositional phrases, and jargon-ladled sentences which are unnecessarily long. This is evident in the style he uses throughout his simulation argument. However, while his paper is mostly comprised of the official style, there are some elements of plain language sprinkled in. He may have chosen to use multiple styles in his writing in order to open up the subject to more people and increase its readability. By employing a variety of styles to explain his proof, he manages to satisfy his base of philosophy scholars while also accommodating the common reader with a wealth of intriguing brain fodder.
In the beginning of the paper, Bostrom uses a plain, understandable writing style to outline his argument. He does this because he wants to attract a larger audience and expand his readership by making his writing accessible. Consider the following passage from the paper’s first paragraph:
“Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations.”As you can see, the style is pretty easy to digest because he is trying to sell his argument in an approachable way. In this sample, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was 10.0--not bad, considering this is a heavy subject with a lot of nuanced lingo involved. The sentence length he uses is not too long, and the vocabulary is mostly readable for someone who is unfamiliar with the subject. In fact, the accessibility of Bostrom’s writing style made it so popular that BBC, one of the largest news sources in the world, released an article about his paper. The author of the article, Philip Ball, starts off by asking his readers, “Are you real? What about me? These used to be questions that only philosophers worried about.” As the paper winds down, he explains how simulation theory is becoming an issue that everyone should be interested in. This is quite the feat for a Philosophy scholar like Bostrom, as most related papers will never reach such a wide audience. Unfortunately for the majority of readers, his writing style changes abruptly after the first few paragraphs. Once he has sold his argument, he immediately employs elements of the official style for the remainder of the paper.
Below is a sample of a later body paragraph. One can easily notice the difference in style after reading the first sentence:
“Readers familiar with the Doomsday argument may worry that the bland principle of indifference invoked here is the same assumption that is responsible for getting the Doomsday argument off the ground, and that the counterintuitiveness of some of the implications of the latter incriminates or casts doubt on the validity of the former. This is not so. The Doomsday argument rests on a much stronger and more controversial premise, namely that one should reason as if one were a random sample from the set of all people who will ever have lived (past, present, and future) even though we know that we are living in the early twenty-first century rather than at some point in the distant past or the future.”Wow, that is a lot to digest. You would probably have to be a student or professor of philosophy in order to fully grasp the content behind Bostrom’s language here. There is a wealth of nuanced philosophy of mind lingo inside of the paragraph. To make things even more difficult, if you remove the short four-word sentence in the middle, the entire paragraph is only two sentences long. It is because of these elements of the official style that the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level shot all the way up to 18.4, which is quite a bit more rigorous than the earlier section. And yet, while he is certainly appealing to the more academic philosophy audience, he does make an attempt to be more inclusive. In fact, he says “we” quite often in order to pull the reader into his paper:
“Further, one can consider a sequence of possible situations in which an increasing fraction of all people live in simulations: 98%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.9999%, and so on. As one approaches the limiting case in which everybody is in a simulation (from which one can deductively infer that one is in a simulation oneself), it is plausible to require that the credence one assigns to being in a simulation gradually approach the limiting case of complete certainty in a matching manner.”Here, Bostrom once again uses his confusing verbosity, prepositions, and extra long sentences to appeal to his academic readers and provide authority. It is almost sad to think of how much more easily that could have been written. If I wanted to explain what Bostrom just said to someone who was not familiar with philosophy of mind, I might just say something like this: “If we can run simulations in the future, it will be almost certain that we exist in a simulated world as well.” Of course, Bostrom does need to explain his argument more thoroughly than I did, but he could have done it a way that was much more accessible.
Now, one important thing to consider about Bostrom’s strategy is that it might actually be less tactical than it seems; he might have simply meant to follow the conventions of writing in the philosophy discipline. Bearing this in mind, it is typical for philosophy writing to begin with understandable language and transition to a more professional and verbose style later on. However, considering the popularity of the paper (cited by over 500 academic publications), I would contend that Bostrom meant to make his writing as readable as he could, while also maintaining a high level of integrity. This begs an interesting questions for many academics: Is Bostrom’s hybrid method of mixing professional writing with accessible prose the key to expanding a paper’s audience? And, if so, is this truly the best way to write about serious existential issues such as this? Regardless, Bostrom seems to have opened up a subject to many more people who typically do not read about related issues.
Philosophy does not have to be as exclusive as it has been in the past. The entire purpose of the subject is to enlighten people and share worthwhile knowledge with other people. So, was Bostrom successful in sharing his knowledge with the world? I would say yes--or, at least, more successful than most published academics. While most of the attention the paper received was from fellow philosophy scholars, it did manage to attract attention from various popular news outlets such as: The Guardian, The New Yorker, and BBC. He was able to transcend a typically narrow audience and foster thought among many crowds who normally lack access to such a nuanced subject. This is good news for Philosophy and perhaps all of academia. Bostrom’s success could suggest a widening in new academic papers’ circulation by making philosophical issues interesting and relevant for more readers. By supplementing his official style and professional lingo with some more accessible language strategies, Bostrom successfully widened the range of his audience and accomplished the most important goal of any genuine philosopher: sharing new knowledge with others.
Lucas Wyrembeck
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