# Prose Composition Examples Examples drawn from Nick's published papers illustrating the four principles of philosophical prose. --- ## Ownership The author is present and takes positions. ### First Person for Claims > My aim here is to show how experience leads to the belief that time passes. The novelty of the account I propose lies in the type of experience which causes this belief. > — "Agents of Change" > In this paper I argue that empty space can be heard. This position contrasts with the generally held view that the only things that can be heard are sounds, their properties, echoes, and perhaps sound sources. > — "Hearing Spaces" ### Hedged Confidence > While I find this line of thought persuasive, I want to argue here that even if we grant that our experiences of moving or changing objects are augmented in the manner just outlined, perceiving ordinary change cannot be the experiential ingredient that tells us time is passing. > — "Agents of Change" > I want to be careful here and distinguish the suggestion I am making from a stronger one. > — "Agents of Change" ### Acknowledgment of Difficulty > However, this seems to require two commitments which we might be reluctant to endorse. > — "Agents of Change" > This is a marked dissimilarity with touch... However, this is not to say that auditory awareness of space is the same as that of vision, as we cannot tell from hearing the exact locations of spaces. > — "Hearing Spaces" ### Self-Reference to Paper's Moves > The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 outlines what I mean by the common sense belief that time passes... In Sect. 3 I argue that attempts to show how the belief in temporal passage is based on perceptual experiences of change face difficulties, giving us reason to consider the possibility that some other, non-perceptual, type of experience is responsible instead. > — "Agents of Change" > These phenomenological differences can be seen in two examples. In the opening two bars of Be My Baby by The Ronettes... > — "Hearing Spaces" --- ## Texture Prose has rhythmic variety and breathing room. ### Varied Sentence Length Short sentence for emphasis, followed by elaboration: > Both options are unsatisfying. While ascribing the artistic merit to the human user would overlook Midjourney's active contribution, ascribing the merit to Midjourney would downplay the creative activity of prompt-crafting. > — "Growing the Image" > This is an echo experience. When reflected sound waves reach the ear more quickly, and bounce off surfaces multiple times so as to blend and overlap with one another, this also has an impact on auditory experience: things sound different, but we do not have an impression of a second distinct sound. This is an experience of reverberation. > — "Hearing Spaces" ### Parentheticals and Asides > While standard passage realist views of time, such as the growing block (e.g. Correia & Rosenkranz 2018), the moving spotlight (e.g. Cameron 2015), and presentism (e.g. Ingram 2018), differ as to the metaphysical status ascribed to the past or future, each has some sort of marker between the past and the future (the edge of the block, the spotlight, the present moment itself), and this marker is perpetually in flux. > — "Agents of Change" > A prompter can never be sure what image they are going to get, but this is a feature, not a bug. > — "Growing the Image" ### Rhetorical Questions > Is there such a thing? If there is, what does it amount to? > — "Agents of Change" > If Midjourney's artistic role is that of an agent, then it could play a variety of different agentive roles. If Midjourney were sufficiently person-like, then it could be thought of as an artist. If it were only somewhat person-like it might still play a simpler agentive role, such as co-author or as some sort of assistant or helper. > — "Growing the Image" --- ## Dialectic Engage positions rather than report them. ### State Objections Strongly, Then Answer > One might object here that Midjourney's unpredictability is not especially unique. An old drum machine might be unpredictable in so much as its owner is never quite sure whether it will turn on when it is plugged in, and a watercolour painter, even an extremely skilled one, is not able to control exactly how the paper will absorb and distribute the paint that they apply. Yet, this is no reason to think that they are not tools. > > The comparison with the drum machine has a straightforward response. 'Unpredictable' should not be taken to mean 'unreliable'. > — "Growing the Image" ### Quote Interlocutors Directly > Not only does Anscomb refer to text-to-image systems as 'AI Agents' throughout her paper, she suggests here that even if they are not artists proper, they might still deserve some degree of 'credit' for the 'contribution' that they have made to an artwork's creation by working 'autonomously' and 'iteratively': > > Users of Midjourney lack direct control over exactly what sort of image is produced. In this sense, Midjourney is working autonomously so as to provide some of the formal features of the image. But we doubt that this is enough to think that Midjourney is 'creditworthy', or, to use a similarly agency-infused phrase, has made a 'contribution' to the artwork's features. > — "Growing the Image" ### No Announcement Phrases Instead of "It is worth noting that Nudds denies this", write: > In a dark room, we can be aware of a bell ringing on our left and someone speaking on our right but have no awareness of whether there are any objects standing, or silent events unfolding, in between them. Nudds argues that this makes audition more similar to touch than to vision. > — "Hearing Spaces" --- ## Concreteness Illustrate abstractions with specific cases. ### Work Through Examples in Detail The wine-pouring example (full development): > To see why autonomy is not sufficient for attribution of credit, consider the following example. As I pour wine into a glass, you take photos of the liquid splashing and rippling as the glass is filled. The wine is autonomous in the sense that neither I nor you have direct control over exactly how the liquid will splash into the glass (e.g. the size of the ripples, how many bubbles appear), but we would not think that the wine deserves any credit for the resulting photos in any interesting sense, nor would we say it has made any sort of contribution. > — "Growing the Image" ### Name Real Cases > In the opening two bars of Be My Baby by The Ronettes, the drums can be heard to reverberate conspicuously: the snare drum played on the fourth beat of bar in particular has a distinct 'splashing' sound. This can be compared to Mystery Train by Elvis Presley, in which the guitar is played through a 'Slapback Delay' effect that artificially produces brief but distinct echoes. > — "Hearing Spaces" ### Let Examples Do Argumentative Work The example *is* the argument, not decoration: > Material objects are the sort of things that we can perceive to change, and we perceive these things as changing through time: part of seeing a droplet move is to see it as occupying different locations at different moments. 'Now' is not an object we can perceive (nor a sound, odour, or anything else we would ordinarily think of as a perceptual object), and is itself a moment of time: an experience of time passing cannot be any ordinary sort of change perception. > — "Agents of Change" --- ## Anti-Patterns What to avoid (drawn from LLM tendencies, not Nick's writing). ### Flat Declarative Chains **Avoid:** > Midjourney is a generative AI system. It transforms text prompts into images. Users enter prompts and receive outputs. The outputs are unpredictable. This unpredictability distinguishes it from traditional tools. **Prefer:** The actual passage structure with varied rhythm, rhetorical setup, and engagement. ### Announcement Phrases **Avoid:** - "It is worth noting that..." - "It is important to emphasise that..." - "Crucially, ..." - "Significantly, ..." **Prefer:** Just make the point. ### Reporting Without Engaging **Avoid:** > Nudds argues that auditory experience does not represent empty places. Anscomb suggests that AI systems play an agentive role. Prosser claims that time passing cannot be perceived. **Prefer:** Quote directly, respond, take a position. ### Abstraction Without Grounding **Avoid:** > The relationship between user and system is characterised by incomplete control and dynamic recalcitrance. **Prefer:** Show this through a concrete case (the gardener, the wine, the drum machine).