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"I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that's a tree,' pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy'" (On Certainty, sec. 467).

I have two opposite tendencies: a synthetic tendency to look for enlightening connections between ideas, and to describe my experience--in particular my thought processes--in as much detail as possible; and an analytic tendency to treat with suspicion any inference that is not clearly evident, or that makes an illegitimate leap. This blog is the place for the first tendency, which I must exercise somewhere to prevent a mental backlog of things that need describing.

I truly believe that by describing my thought processes in the most excruciating detail possible I will be able to figure anything out; or at least to figure out why I can't figure it out. I believe that if everyone could do this there would be fewer conflicts and misunderstandings. I don't usually think of this as "honesty"; that sounds too prudish; it also sounds wrong. When figuring out what one is thinking or feeling, one rarely comes to grips with a fact of the matter. It's always a little amorphous. Philosophers and introspective psychologists have this in common--that they navigate around a mental space where the facts about what they believe are not at all clear. The kind of philosopher someone is has to do with the tools she uses to navigate around this space, and the status she gives to its contents and conclusions.

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