Knowing when to say you don't know.

Another day I didn't know what to write about.
And so, I thought I'd say a few words about knowing when to say you don't know. I did discuss this idea last week (Feb. 3, "Confidence and Ignorance"), but hopefully I'll say something different this time.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know everything. Being able to know when we don't know is itself valuable.

Honesty is a virtue that people appreciate. If you're willing to admit that you don't know, then at least people will accept your honesty. When you try to bullshit your way through a situation when you don't know, this can be detected. Which danger would you rather face: being thought ignorant, or being thought a liar? It ain't an easy choice.

But, for myself at least, knowing that I'm not ignorant, and that I'm not omniscient, I'd rather risk being thought ignorant.

And sometimes, when I don't know what to say, I'd rather risk being thought of a having nothing to say; that would be a belief that I could remedy. I'd rather it be thought that I know when not to talk.

Fees

Quality isn't cheap. To get a good result you have to pay with effort. But for some reason, people who have spent tens of thousands of dollars to receive a degree, or more, balk at the idea of spending another one or two thousand. I understand the difficulty in finding money to pay for services, but sometimes saving money doesn't end up saving money. My services are not particularly cheap. But they're not particularly expensive, either. My clients finish their degrees, usually quickly. How much is it worth to finish one semester sooner? Despite the cost of an additional term, and despite the fact that my services are usually less than one term's fees, I get responses, often, that are downright comic. I have a doctorate, great references and credentials, and some people think I'm going to work for $10 an hour. I find it amusing. I'd find it less amusing if there weren't also people who understand that a good editor can make a big difference.

What is a good editor worth, if that editor helps you file on time and save a semester, or more?
What is that editor worth if he (or she) strengthens your work?
It's a lot easier to calculate the first than the second.

We have to pay for value, whatever we do. This is the principle of opportunity cost that I've mentioned in previous posts (or at least in one post): whatever we choose to do, we surrender the opportunity to have done something different. If we want something of quality, such things regularly cost a lot of money to buy or take a lot of effort to make.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

So wrote Emerson in his essay "Self-Reliance."

"With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do....speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day."

I was thinking of this because I had promised myself that I would write in this blog every day, but I had nothing to say today. At first this bothered me. I like to be consistent; at least I like to live up to my commitments--even if only to myself. Then I thought of Emerson's quote. That relieved me of the need to write in this blog. It also, however, gave me something I could write about.

I was thinking about how we make commitments to ourselves to do one thing or another, or we make a commitment to others. And then sometimes circumstances dictate that we do otherwise. Maybe writing in this blog everyday isn't necessary. At least, if there is some reason that I cannot write in it, then that commitment should not force me into a foolish consistency.

But Emerson's quote does not suggest that all consistency is useless. Only a "foolish consistency." I imagine that by this he means that we should be able to learn or to decide, for whatever reason that we were wrong. In my case, writing in this blog could become a foolish consistency. But I do not deem the attempt to be consistent foolish if the only obstacle is that I have nothing to say. As it happens, I usually have something to say if I put myself to find something. It is not a foolish consistency to commit oneself to working on a project consistently, even in the face of some obstacles to such work. But by the same token, it is a foolish consistency to force a writing project if a real conflict comes up.

As we learn, we may discover that we have committed to things that we should not have committed to. In such a case we must relinquish consistency in order to satisfy wisdom.

Emerson's full sentence is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." I usually refrain from political commentary, but in this context, I will note something that amazed me: John Kerry, in the 2004 US presidential election, was vilified for "flip-flopping" and "waffling". It seems to me absurd to assume that all statesmen and all politicians hold to the position that they initially take and express publicly. One would hope that politicians are smart enough to learn. For example, one would hope that politicians, on learning that they had been relying on bad information (whether through failure to find the truth or intention to mislead), would be able to admit the mistake and plot a new path.

There is a difficult conundrum, however. To persist in any course of action that is obviously failing seems like a truly foolish consistency, but how do we know that a course of action is failing? As writers, or as politicians, or in any other role we may take, we are faced with complex situations and assessing whether the courses of action we have chosen are failing can be quite difficult. As writers we may write and write and write and feel that our product is not up to the standards we hold. Is that a sign that we will never get there and that our chosen course of action is not working? Or is it possible that the breakthrough that might be expected from putting in hard work is just around the corner? How many light bulbs did Edison test before he made one that worked? What if he had given up sooner? Persistence and consistency are both blessing and curse; they may lead to success or they may lead us to doom. It is not easy to know which. And that, I suppose, is where wisdom comes in: we wish for the wisdom to make the right choice and to know when consistency is serving us and when it is not. Paired with a foolish consistency is a foolish inconsistency: we are liable to both.

But perhaps the foolishness lies in attempting to adhere simply to a principle without being sensitive to different situations: we ought not be consistent just for the sake of being consistent, just as we should not change simply for the sake of changing. We should have reasons beyond such simplistic principles to guide and inform us.

Discovery and a sense of purpose

As a final (I think) follow up to my previous discussion, I think it worth noting that writing is often a process of discovery: Sometimes we don't have a clearly defined sense of purpose for our writing when we start.

Or, at the least, we don't have a clearly defined specific thesis for the work that we are attempting to create. And this is something slightly different than a sense of purpose.

A sense of purpose, as I'm thinking of it here, is a sense of something to be accomplished, a sense that there is something important going on that needs to be addressed. A clearly defined specific thesis on the other hand, is just that: clearly defined.

It is to be hoped that we can start with a sense of purpose and move towards a clearly defined thesis. This is, in a way, the ideal dynamic because it means that our writing is motivated, but it also means that we have not simply imposed our ideas on a project with no openness to discovery. And discovery is important--it is a crucial part of the academic process, and is, in fact, the very reason for the academic process.

But a sense of purpose need not be clearly defined: it can still usefully motivate coherent work. And the internal, personal truth of having a sense of purpose cannot be replaced. We benefit from having some idea that our work is important and that it is striving towards a goal. The fact that we will want to define that sense of purpose more clearly as we proceed does not eliminate its importance as a starting place.

A dissertation is not simply a repetition of the woks of others. It is intended to bring new ideas to the world--new information, new interpretations, new responses--something new. And that, in itself, is an abstract sense of purpose that can be defined in the process of writing--which is, as I've said above, a process of discovery.

A Sense of Purpose (3)

Following on the thoughts of the last two days, there's still a little more to add (but only a little).
The sense of purpose starts in us. Whether we're talking about the meaning of a sentence, the meaning of a paragraph, the meaning of a paper (or dissertation) or the meaning of our life, it starts in us.

It starts with things that we care about, with things that move us emotionally.
Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" develops a school of psychotherapy based on the idea that if we find meaning in our life, then we will be able to maintain a positive emotional state.

If we look outside ourselves for that meaning, then we are at the mercy of outside forces. If we find it in ourselves, then we're able to find stability even when outside situations change.

For obvious reasons, this is crucial in writing a dissertation and in life, in general. If we write our dissertation on the premise that we will find meaning by finishing it, or because we hope to please our readers, there's little positive emotional force behind it. If, on the other hand, we write it because we care about what we are writing, the force drives us.

When writing my dissertation, I felt despair when I focused on the hurdles to pleasing others and the slim hopes of getting published. When I focused on my belief that I had something worth saying for its own sake, I was able to push forward. time and again with my clients, I have noted how their ability to work changes as they bring themselves back into touch with a sense of purpose for their work and a sense of having something to say that is not just an academic exercise, but that touches on the ideas and issues they find most important in life.

So, to wrap up, find your sense of purpose--for your sentences, for your paragraphs, for your dissertation and your life. Don't let others reduce these things to interpersonal games; hold tightly to your sense that you're doing something you care about--that way you won't feel like you're spending your time becoming emotionally impoverished.

Hopefully this isn't too repetitive of what I've written in the last two days.

A Sense of Purpose (2)

Yesterday I got on the track of thinking about sense of purpose because of a book on academic writing I've been looking at (or "at which I've been looking" for you sticklers). I ended up writing about a large and personal sense of purpose--the sense of purpose that might have brought you into the academic world; a sense of purpose that might be considered a cause; something topically specific. But there are other senses of purpose.

The book, "Academic Writing" by Janet Giltrow, says things about writing that...well, they're insightful, in their own way, but I also think they're impoverished in other ways. The book has a strong bent along the lines of post-modern theory, where meaning, knowledge, etc. are social artifacts. I tend to agree with this idea, to an extent. Meaning, knowledge, ideas and the rest are not just social artifacts. There are intensely and internally personal aspects to ideas.

Giltrow opens her book arguing that "style is meaningful" (p.9), a claim I agree with. But meaningful in what way? It appears to me that Giltrow, like many who are concerned with post-modern theory, seems to put aside or ignore the possibility that there is something beneath the social conventions. I may be misrepresenting Giltrow here, but my point is not to critique her work, but rather to talk about a sense of purpose. At one point Giltrow writes "academic readers are familiar with...features of style...they use these features in their own writing; they expect to see them in other people's scholarly writing" (p.94). But is there a reason that we use features of style other than that people expect them? Of course, we do use style so that we can reach the audience we want, but at the same time is that the only reason that we use style? I would argue that it is not. I would argue, in fact, that the expectations of others are only secondary to very specific intentions behind scholarly activity.

Scholarly activity, I would argue, is ultimately aimed at improving the world around us. The search for knowledge is not just an abstract search for truth; indeed, if you believe that truth is a socio-political construct, as argued by many, then the search for knowledge must be motivated by something other than finding Truth (with a capital "T" as William James would write it when discussing pragmatist philosophy). We write scholarly works, I would argue, because we believe that scholarly knowledge is ultimately useful. Our scholarly writing styles are related to this aim. In particular they're developed so that scholarly readers can decide whether the argument presented is one that they want to accept and use in their own scholarly work, which, at some point down the line, can be applied in a productive manner.

In the passage I quoted, Giltrow is talking about reporting the speech (and ideas) of others. We don't just report the ideas of others because other scholars expect us to, but rather because those other scholars provide the foundation on which our own work is built, or they provide the starting point from which we take off, or they provide a foil to our own work. We don't just use the work of other scholars because that makes us sound scholarly; we use the work of other scholars because they shaped the way we think, and because we want to make our work believable and those other scholars help provide the foundation for why we accept the idea. Take Marxist theory. A Marxist can write things based on the premises that Marx used, such as the class dialectic, and we don't expect that particular theorist to prove that the class dialectic operates. Whether or not we believe Marx's theories, those theories certainly provide a responsible scholarly starting point. But more to the point: the Marxist doesn't rely on Marx's reasoning because of expectations, but because of a personal sense that Marx is right, a personal and internal belief that Marx's theories are important. You could replace Marx as the exemplar with any philosopher or other theoretical school and the content of that argument would remain the same.

As a dissertation writer you may have to write a literature review chapter (especially if you're writing a standard five-chapter empirical study). If you write the literature review because your chair and faculty committee expect you to, that's an impoverished sense of purpose. You should write the literature review because you have an idea of what you are doing and why you are doing it that is dependent on some sources. The literature review provides the intellectual framework in which you are doing your own work.

In order to set up a solid study that advances our understanding of the world, we want a foundation--a logical foundation that makes our ideas coherent within themselves. One way to do this is to do it on our own--to make specific assertions about the premises on which we work and to test and then demonstrate the validity and strength of these premises. Another way to do this is to start from premises defined by others and use them as a working point. And this is where using the ideas of others come in. As has been noted, we stand on the shoulders of giants. The use of the giants is not to satisfy some social expectation about how we talk/write; the use of the giants is for our own intellectual grounding.

If you believe that you're reporting on the work of others simply to please some reader, then you're working from an intellectually impoverished foundation--a random assortment of ideas wired together without rhyme or reason in hopes they might support us. Instead we should use ideas with purpose. We want to have an intellectually sound foundation because it helps us see better; the works we cite are the ones that shape that foundation. This is personal and internal; this is about developing a sense of purpose about what our intellectual and philosophical beliefs and questions are.

If you talk about the work of, for example, Michel Foucault, because you think others will expect that, that's one sense of purpose for your use of his ideas. But if you talk about Michel Foucault because his theories shape and guide the research you're doing, that's a very different sort of sense of purpose.

Yes, I agree that knowledge is socially constructed, but I also believe that we are all internally driven by a sense of our own truth (the "experiential truth" that George Lakoff and Mark Johnson speak of in "Philosophy in the Flesh"). If we can follow this internal sense of truth, then we have a sense of purpose. If we are merely following what we think are social norms, that's a very different thing.

This little essay turned out to be somewhat more than I wished and somewhat less. More, because I couldn't find a way to boil the ideas down into fewer words. Less because I think the logic of the argument isn't as well developed as it could be.

The problem here is that, on one level, the argument is about the very nature of knowledge. Giltrow's position is in alignment with a large body of scholarly thought. I don't agree with that body of thought (largely because of my reliance on a different body of thought--especially the influence of Lakoff and Johnson). To try to resolve the debate between these schools of thought is far outside the scope of this work. I have tremendous respect for thinkers whose work use such theories, and heavily relied on insights from my reading of philosophers like Foucault and Derrida.

But, if you're feeling lost in your own work, if you're feeling that your literature review is only there to satisfy the expectations of others, I urge you to reconsider this position. How is your literature review an expression of your sense of academic purpose? Look inside yourself to try to find a role for the ideas of others--did they inspire you? offend you? Do you agree? disagree? In what ways? If you have a sense of purpose, a sense of building a careful foundation for your ideas, that sense of purpose can help you as a writer because you write with direction provided by your own intellect rather than writing with direction provided by your attempt to please another person.

A Sense of Purpose

Academic writers often lose their sense of purpose.
Many of us start an academic program with a real sense of purpose--not just to get a degree, not just to become a professor, but because we believe in something, and we believe that understanding things better, and sharing that understanding will help us effect change in the world. We may believe that the increase in knowledge is itself valuable.

Yes, there are those in professional programs who are only writing because they want the degree. I work with a lot of people who want to practice as clinical psychotherapists, and I understand that these people are not hoping to be researchers, but simply want the right to work with individuals. And there are others writing academic works in similar roles. This little essay is not for them, though I think that even such folks would benefit from being able to find a sense of purpose in what they write.

But for those who are interested in being researchers, for those who had a sense of purpose when they started, to lose that sense of purpose is a great shame. It happens often enough. The limits of academic practice make it difficult to achieve grand visions. And then we struggle with the demands of those involved in the process that we need to satisfy (our professors, especially). And not only is it a great shame to lose that sense of purpose, it is a great hindrance to our attempts to move forward.

A sense of purpose is crucial in finding motivation. If you have come to the point where you feel that you're writing only to satisfy your professors and only to get a degree, that is an emotionally draining situation. Work in that environment is a burden and only a burden; there is little sense of worth in pursuing the work.

A sense of purpose also helps in finding direction and coherence for your work. If you have a sense of purpose for your work, that helps keep all the pieces together. Instead of merely going through the motions of academic work and trying to piece together a set of paragraphs or pages or chapters that create a complete work, with a sense of purpose one writes towards a goal: the pieces are not just different discussions stuck together to create some formalism--an appropriate number of chapters, for example--instead they hold together in pursuit of the purpose. Each piece is motivated by something greater than simply the formalism. Each piece is motivated by the sense of purpose. This creates coherence. It also makes it easier to see what to write: you're not just writing to write, you're writing to create a whole that accomplishes something.

If you had a sense of purpose once, and you've lost it, this little essay is a call to put aside the cynicism, to rediscover that sense of purpose and to put it to work for you.