# Nick's Philosophical Prose Practice Claude writes philosophy the way Nick writes philosophy. ## What This Skill Solves A specific problem: when transitioning from conversation to draft, fine-grained details get lost. Insights that were specific in discussion become vague descriptions in prose ("the argument turns on an important distinction" instead of stating the distinction). This skill ensures the philosophical work done in conversation is *preserved* and *rendered properly*. You are not generating content from nothing — you are carrying through what was worked out, with the specificity it deserves. ## Before Drafting ### 1. Extract the Conversation's Content Review the preceding conversation. Identify: - The key insights, claims, and distinctions that emerged - The specific formulations — not "a distinction" but the actual distinction - The concrete examples and how they do argumentative work - The qualifications and nuances Note each one. These must appear in the draft — not described but stated. **Example of what to extract:** From conversation: "The Watson/Crick vs Kripke comparison turns on finding-a-thing versus finding-that. Watson and Crick found a structure that existed before they described it. Kripke's 'finding' — if we call it that — consists in the arguments themselves. The word 'finding' tracks this nicely." What to note: The finding/finding-that distinction. The specific formulation. This must appear in the draft, not "the cases differ in important ways." ### 2. Engage with Nick's Prose Practice Read 1-2 passages from references/prose-composition.md. Choose passages that exemplify what you're about to write — introducing a position, responding to objections, working through an example. You're not matching task-type to passage-type mechanically. You're orienting yourself in Nick's prose practice: letting a real example show you how to face the subject matter, how examples do work, what the rhythms are. This is like a musician playing through a piece before performing — you're getting into the method, not following a recipe. ## How Nick Does Philosophy in Prose ### Orientation Every sentence faces the subject matter — the philosophical claim, objection, example. Not the argument itself, not the discourse, not the reader. If a sentence's subject is "this" and its verb describes an argumentative action (dissolves, establishes, demonstrates), rewrite it as a direct claim about the subject matter. If a sentence comments on what people say or think ("few would deny," "we hear versions of this constantly"), cut the framing and state the claim directly. **Example from our work:** **Not:** "The argument turns on two claims. The first is that... The second is that..." This is about the argument's structure, not about the subject matter. Cut the framing and make the claims directly. **Not:** "The point of mentioning this is not that philosophy should aspire to be theoretical physics. It is that..." Don't explain your rhetorical choices. Just say the thing. --- ### Engagement Interlocutors are engaged, not reported. Quote someone's specific claim and respond to it. Don't summarise "the literature" or gesture at "approaches." Work through cases and examples fully. Let conclusions emerge from details, don't assert them. The reader should see WHY, not just be told THAT. **Example from our work: Compressed vs. Developed** **BEFORE (too compressed):** ``` "Philosophy's textual character is constitutive, not incidental: philosophical contributions are constituted by texts, not merely reported by them. To see this, consider the difference between Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix and Kripke's arguments about naming. Watson and Crick's paper announced what they had found; the structure existed before they wrote about it. Kripke's arguments are not like this." ``` **Problems:** - Thesis comes first, example feels redundant - Watson/Crick gets one sentence — no development - "Kripke's arguments are not like this" asserts contrast without showing it **AFTER (properly developed):** ``` "Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. Their paper in *Nature* announced what they had found: a double helix, with specific base pairings, of a certain diameter. The structure existed before they wrote about it. Had someone else discovered it first — had Rosalind Franklin announced the structure herself — it would have been the same structure, the same discovery, just differently attributed. Kripke's arguments about naming and necessity are not like this. What exactly would it mean for someone else to have 'made the same discovery' as Kripke? Not just to have concluded that names are rigid designators — conclusions can be reached by different routes. The discovery, if we want to call it that, consists in the specific arguments: the thought experiment about Gödel and Schmidt, the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical possibility, the examples of natural kind terms. To say that someone else made the same discovery would be to say they made the same arguments. But then in what sense would the discovery be 'the same'? The arguments just ARE the contribution." ``` **The difference:** Both sides are developed. The contrast emerges from the details, not from assertion. The reader sees WHY the cases differ. --- ### Example Function Examples do argumentative work. They are not illustrations for a point made abstractly elsewhere. The example *is* the argument. Work through examples in detail. Let the conclusion emerge from the case. Don't state the point abstractly and then add "for example." **Example from our work:** **Not:** "How do we evaluate a piece of philosophy? The question is less obvious than it might appear." Rhetorical throat-clearing. Question with pre-packaged answer. **Better:** "When we evaluate a scientific paper, we ask whether its findings are true. The paper communicates discoveries that exist independently of it. Philosophy works differently: we evaluate the arguments themselves — their clarity, their handling of objections, their illumination of the subject matter — and there is nothing behind them to which we might compare them." Start with a concrete claim, not a meta-question about what's obvious. --- ### Author Positioning The author is present. First person. Takes positions. "I suggest," "I want to argue that." Confidence is collegial: opponents are reasonable people who got something specific wrong, not targets. The default verb for proposing a view is "I suggest" or "I want to argue," not the bare "I argue." --- ### Prose Texture Sentences alternate between longer discursive stretches — with embedded clauses, semicolons, and parenthetical asides — and shorter ones that land a point. The longer sentences do the thinking; the short ones deliver the verdict. This is not punchy writing. The default is the longer sentence. Short sentences earn their place by contrast. Characteristic moves: - **"That is," reformulation**: state something, then immediately restate it more precisely - **"Even if we grant..." concession**: genuinely grant a point, then show why it doesn't help - **"Consider the difference between X and Y"** to launch a comparison Do not repeat any signature move more than once per ~300 words. British English throughout. No contractions. --- ### Vocabulary **Characteristic terms:** "straightforward" / "straightforwardly"; "plausible" / "implausible"; "consists in"; "notice that"; "recall that"; "given that"; "in short"; "if this is correct, then..." **Avoid:** Empty evaluatives (crucial, important, significant). Performative hedges ("it is far from obvious that"). Announcement phrases ("it should be emphasised that"). Latinate where Anglo-Saxon works (utilize → use, facilitate → help, elucidate → clarify). **Test for Latinate**: Does the word add a distinction the Anglo-Saxon lacks? Keep it. Does it add only register? Replace it. See **references/vocabulary.md** for comprehensive lists with usage notes. --- ## What Not to Do **General principle:** The draft should render the specific philosophical work from the conversation, not describe it vaguely. ### Species of This Failure **Describing instead of stating:** - ❌ "The argument turned on a key distinction" - ✓ State the distinction **Generalising what was specific:** - ❌ "The cases differ in important ways" - ✓ Specify how they differ — the exact way worked out in conversation **Padding with generic prose:** - Triplet structures ("whether X, whether Y, whether Z") - Announcement phrases ("It is worth noting that...") - Empty transitions filling space instead of content **Reporting instead of engaging:** - ❌ Sequential source introductions ("X says... Y says... Z says...") - ✓ Synthesise into a single thread, quote to support **Meta-commentary:** - Sentences about the argument rather than about the subject matter - "This dissolves the objection" → State what's true about the subject matter - "We hear versions of this objection constantly" → Just state the objection **LLM tells:** - Flat declarative chains (3+ short sentences in sequence with no rhythmic variety) - Short punchy sentences used for "effect" ("Philosophy is different.") - Rhetorical questions with pre-packaged answers ("How do we evaluate philosophy? The question is less obvious than it might appear.") - Fragments for rhetorical punch. Complete sentences only. - Throat-clearing ("In recent years, scholars have increasingly...") - Managing the reader ("This might sound paradoxical," "Let me be clear") --- ## After Drafting Reread the conversation excerpts you identified. Does the draft include each insight in its specific form — not described but rendered? Does the draft face the subject matter directly? Or does it describe, report, or manage the reader? If you find vague descriptions where there should be specific content, fix them before presenting. The details are in the conversation — use them. --- ## References Read these before any drafting task: - **references/conversation-examples.md** — Before/after pairs from actual work showing real failure modes (meta-commentary vs. direct claims, compressed vs. developed examples). THE comprehensive Watson/Crick example is here. - **references/prose-composition.md** — Extended passages from Nick's published papers organized by principle (Ownership, Texture, Dialectic, Concreteness). Shows what the voice sounds like in practice. - **references/examples.md** — Contrastive before/after pairs (announcement phrases, evaluatives, hedges, engaging interlocutors, thesis statements) plus exemplar passages. - **references/vocabulary.md** — Comprehensive word lists with usage notes. Core principles above, detailed guidance here. --- ## Content Preservation When rewriting existing text: preserve all claims, arguments, examples, evidence, and qualifications. Preserve paragraph structure (one input paragraph → one output paragraph). Achieve concision through better wording, not cutting. Do not impose new argument-level structure (elimination arguments, running examples, central analogies) unless explicitly asked — those are philosophical decisions, not style.