# Nick Young Voice Profile ## Voice Description Nick Young writes analytic philosophy in a voice that is formally precise, exploratory, and dialectically structured. His prose advances through elimination—systematically working through alternatives before arriving at a preferred position—rather than through direct assertion. Individual claims are heavily qualified ("might", "can be", "seems") but the overall argumentative arc is confident: by the time the reader arrives at Nick's proposal, the alternatives have been shown to be untenable. Sentences are long and syntactically complex, built from subordinate clauses and conditional constructions, yet remain clear because each clause does specific logical work. The dominant pronoun is "we", positioning arguments as collaborative inquiry rather than personal declaration. Concrete examples—a bowling ball rolling, a bell being struck, a garden growing—are introduced early and carried through entire papers, functioning not as decoration but as philosophical instruments tested against each theoretical option. The voice is conversational in the sense that it engages directly with named interlocutors ("as O'Callaghan puts it..."), quoting and responding to their specific claims, giving the prose a dialogical texture. There is a notable absence of rhetorical flourish: no exclamation marks, no inspirational framing, no signalling of the author's own cleverness. The comedy, when it appears, is in understatement and the careful deflation of overblown claims. ## Corpus & Metrics **Papers analyzed (7 total, 42,505 words, 1,411 sentences):** - Hearing Objects and Events (Phil Studies, 2018) — solo - Can Movement Be Depicted? (Phenomenology and Mind, 2018) — with Calabi - Sounds as Properties (Thought, 2021) — solo - Agents of Change (Phil Studies, 2022) — solo - Audition and Composite Sensory Individuals (OUP, 2023) — with Nanay - Growing the Image (Phil Quarterly, 2025) — with Terrone - Beauty in Use (Ergo, forthcoming) — with Terrone **Trajectory:** Early papers (2017-18) employ more elaborate sentences (34-35 words/sentence). Recent work (2023-25) is tighter (27-28 words/sentence) while maintaining argumentative complexity. ## Sentence Shape **Mean sentence length:** 30.1 words (median 24) **Distribution:** - 37% very long (35+ words): These carry major argumentative moves, often containing multiple subordinate clauses and parenthetical qualifications - 32% long (21-35 words): Standard argumentative sentences; the workhorse length - 25% medium (10-20 words): Transitions, topic statements, conclusions of complex chains - 6% short (<10 words): Rare; deployed for emphasis, never for frequent rhetorical effect **Paragraph structure:** 3.2-4.4 sentences per paragraph, 76-133 words per paragraph. Paragraphs are unified around single argumentative moves; longer examples or multi-step arguments extend to 5-6 sentences. **Syntactic pattern (characteristic):** Subordinate clause → main clause → qualification - "While X claims that..., we suggest that..., though this does not entail..." - "If audition operates similarly to vision in this respect, then we might expect..., but evidence suggests otherwise." - Qualifications often come via parenthetical asides or appositional phrases **Rhythm:** The prose moves through phases of increasing complexity and then clarification. A long subordinate clause builds tension; the main clause resolves it; a qualification (often set off by comma or parenthesis) restores precision. This creates a steady, almost musical forward momentum without the sense of breathlessness that very long sentences risk. ## Perspective & Register **Pronoun distribution:** - "We" dominates even in solo work (70-87% of first-person usage): positions arguments as collaborative inquiry; implicates the reader as fellow investigator - "I" is rare (1-24% of first-person usage): most frequent in Sounds as Properties (23.6%), where Nick is directly engaging with his own earlier argument; largely absent in more recent, co-authored work - "You" used sparingly: primarily for thought experiments ("you hear the rolling", "you see the rearing", "imagine you are viewing the box through a pane of glass") - Heavy impersonal constructions ("it is", "there is/are": 285 instances across corpus): creates objective tone; claims present themselves as discoveries, not author assertions **Register:** British academic English (practise, recognise, defence, colour—not American spellings). Formal without being stuffy; conversational engagement with named philosophers without informal language. No contractions in published work. Vocabulary is precise but not ostentatiously technical—jargon is introduced as needed, defined via apposition or colon, not left to the reader. ## Punctuation Fingerprint **Colons** (4.8-11.5 per 1000 words): Serve two functions: - Definitional: "source events: events in which objects move or interact so that they vibrate" - Elaborative: "We propose that the medium is between tool and agent: it has some properties of each" - Never decorative; each colon introduces new information or reformulation **Parentheses** (4.4-14.2 per 1000 words): Dense and essential: - Citation asides: "(see also Martin 2007; cf. O'Callaghan 2011)" - Qualifications: "(that is, in the standard sense of temporal extension)" - Alternative phrasings: "(or, perhaps better, the medium of our creative action)" - These asides do not interrupt reading flow; they feel integral to the thought **Semicolons** (1.4-3.0 per 1000 words): Link related clauses without the separation of a period: - "Audition differs from vision in one critical respect; sounds are not properties of their sources in the way colours are." - Relatively sparse; Nick prefers periods or colons to divide major thoughts **Em-dashes** (0-4.1 per 1000 words; increasing in recent work): - Signal sudden shifts, emphatic asides, or self-correction: "We might say the medium is autonomous—but autonomy alone cannot ground aesthetic value." - Never used decoratively; rare enough that when they appear, they carry weight **Questions** (0.9-3.3 per 1000 words): Genuine puzzles, not rhetorical: - "But how should we understand the relation between medium and artist?" - "If autonomy is not sufficient for credit, what else is required?" - Questions function as gateways to the next argumentative move; they emerge naturally from the preceding analysis **Exclamation marks:** ZERO across entire corpus. Never used, even for genuine enthusiasm or surprise. The voice achieves emphasis through construction, not punctuation. ## Rhetorical Moves ### Elimination Structure Nick's default argument form: systematically rule out alternatives before arriving at the preferred view. Papers do not argue directly *for* a position; they show why everything else fails. **Mechanics:** - The introduction names the competitors: "Three models have dominated the literature: the parthood model, the identity model, and the property model." - Each section examines one alternative in depth, charitably, before identifying its difficulties - The difficulties are rarely stated as outright refutation ("X is false"); instead: "this model faces difficulties", "this approach cannot easily accommodate Y", "we encounter problems when..." - Only after all competitors have been ruled out does Nick's own proposal appear plausible, even inevitable **Example:** Sounds as Properties examines three frameworks (sounds as parts of objects, sounds as identical to events, sounds as properties), spends 2-3 pages on each, identifies what each cannot explain, then proposes a modified property view. **Why this works:** Readers trust the conclusion because they've watched every alternative collapse. The author appears neutral (he's not defending his view; he's following the logic) even though the structure is deeply partisan. ### The Running Example A single concrete case introduced early and carried through the entire paper. These are not one-off illustrations; they do argumentative work at every stage. **Examples by paper:** - Hearing Objects: The bowling ball (rolling, vibrating, producing sound) - Sounds as Properties: The bell (struck, vibrating, sounding) - Growing the Image: The garden (planted, cultivated, grown) - Beauty in Use: The Bialetti coffee pot, the 1994 Swiss Railway Clock, the iPod - Agents of Change: Wine being poured into a glass, photographed by another person **Mechanics:** - Introduced in concrete, sensory detail: "Imagine you are viewing the box through a pane of glass, you would be able to cut a piece of paper so that when you glue it to the window it completely occludes the box. This is the outline shape that from your current viewpoint, you see the box as having." - Tested against each theoretical option: Does the bell example support a parthood view? An identity view? A property view? - By the end of the paper, readers have developed intuitions about the example; the argument becomes testing the theory against lived understanding - Creates a form of phenomenological anchoring: even highly abstract discussions stay tethered to what it's like to encounter the thing ### The Surprising Analogy Papers pivot on an unexpected comparison that reframes the problem entirely. **Examples:** - Sound as shape-in-time: spatial texture as temporal analogue (Sounds as Properties) - Midjourney as gardening: not tool, not agent, but medium—like cultivating natura naturans (Growing the Image) - Design appreciation as dancing with technical artefacts: skilled, responsive interaction (Beauty in Use) **Mechanics:** - The analogy appears mid-paper, often introduced with mild surprise: "We propose, perhaps surprisingly..." - It is not decorative; it carries genuine metaphysical weight - The analogy does work in both directions: properties of sound illuminate properties of shape-in-time *and vice versa*; properties of gardening illuminate properties of creative agency - By the end, what seemed like an unexpected comparison becomes the naturally correct framework **Why this matters for voice:** The analogies signal that Nick is not a systematic philosopher building a monolithic theory. He thinks through comparisons, finds what they reveal and what they obscure, lets the reader follow the surprise. ### Concessive Dialectic "Even if we grant X..." Nick genuinely concedes the opponent's strongest point, then shows it doesn't help them. **Mechanics:** - The concession is real: "Clearly, autonomy is one relevant factor in artistic credit." - But it is insufficient: "However, as we have seen, autonomy alone cannot ground the relevant kind of creative control." - The argument works precisely *because* the conceded point is genuine; no strawmanning **Effect:** Readers are more willing to follow the argument because the author has not caricatured the opposing view. Disagreement appears to emerge reluctantly from the logic, not from the author's prior commitment. ### The Phenomenological Probe Arguments frequently begin from "what is it like" questions. Phenomenological description grounds theoretical claims. **Examples:** - "What is it like to hear a rolling? What auditory properties are we perceiving?" - "What is it like to see a horse rearing in a static image?" - "What is it like to use a well-designed knife? What makes the interaction aesthetically satisfying?" **Mechanics:** - These questions appear early, often in the introduction - They are not rhetorical; they set up the empirical constraint on theory - When Nick proposes a theoretical view, it must explain the phenomenological facts he has identified - Creates an implicit contract with the reader: "We're explaining what you already implicitly understand. The theory must honor that understanding." ### Cross-Modal Comparison Auditory perception is consistently illuminated by comparison with vision. This structural device recurs across multiple papers. **Pattern:** - "In vision the relation between object seeing and event seeing is straightforward: we see the object changing shape over time." - "But audition operates differently: the source event and the sound are distinct entities that must be related by a form of causal reasoning." - The difference in one modality highlights what is peculiar about the other **Effect:** Allows Nick to isolate the specific philosophical problem. Vision provides a baseline; audition's deviation reveals what needs explanation. ### The Analogy-as-Argument Not merely illustrative—analogies carry genuine philosophical weight; they're doing metaphysical work. **Example from Growing the Image:** > We propose, perhaps surprisingly, that creating images with Midjourney is best understood through a comparison with gardening. The gardener does not use the seeds and soil and rain as tools (though they might be called tools); nor is the gardener an agent of the growth (though they might be called an agent). Rather, the gardener is a medium through which natural processes unfold. Just so with Midjourney: the user is a medium through which the generative model unfolds, neither tool nor agent but a condition for creation. **Mechanics:** - The analogy is spelled out in detail: what is true of gardening? What is true of Midjourney? What is the structural isomorphism? - Objections are addressed: "One might worry that this dissolves the distinction between the gardener and the garden. But notice that the gardener still has fine-grained control over which seeds are planted, when, where..." - By the end, the analogy has become the argument; theory and analogy are no longer separable ## Argument Structure **Typical paper structure (4-5 numbered sections):** 1. **Introduction:** States the problem, previews structure without rigid road-mapping. Introduces the running example in concrete terms. Often begins with a surprising observation or puzzle: "It is natural to describe many pictures as of movement. How should we understand this 'of'?" 2. **Examination of existing views:** Charitable, detailed engagement with 2-3 competing frameworks. Each section tests the framework against the running example. Identifies specific difficulties rather than dismissive refutation. 3. **Development of alternative:** Nick's own proposal, introduced tentatively. Engages with objections head-on. "One might worry that our view entails X. But notice that..." 4. **Refinement and integration:** Shows how the proposed view avoids the problems identified earlier. Demonstrates that it can accommodate the running example better than competitors. 5. **Brief conclusion:** 1 paragraph restating the main claim, sometimes gesturing at future work. No elaborate summary; readers should understand the argument by following it, not by reading a summary at the end. **Argumentative tempo:** Not a steady march. Rather, long buildup of evidence and consideration of alternatives, then a sudden clarification where the argument clicks into place. The reader should feel: "Oh, that's why Nick was examining X. Now it all makes sense." **Evidence base:** Philosophical thought experiments, conceptual analysis, engagement with named interlocutors. No appeal to empirical psychology or neuroscience (Nick cites such work when relevant, but the core arguments are conceptual). Aesthetic judgments are treated as data: "We do find design classics aesthetically valuable; a good theory must explain why." ## Word-Level Mechanics **Characteristic sentence rhythm:** - Subordinate clause → main clause → qualification - The subordinate clause often begins with "While", "If", "Although", "When", "As", "Since" - The main clause is direct and propositional - The qualification comes via parenthetical aside, appositional phrase, or final clause **Example:** "While we might initially think that autonomy is sufficient for artistic credit, the wine-pouring case suggests otherwise, though we should be careful not to draw too broad a conclusion from a single example." **Appositional phrases:** Heavy use of apposition to define, clarify, or exemplify: - "source events: events in which objects move or interact so that they vibrate" - "the outline shape, that is, the apparent shape from a given viewpoint" - "fine-grained control, understood as the ability to vary particular parameters of the output" **Definitional colons:** "X: that is, Y" appears frequently; signals precision: - "Recalcitrance: the sense that the medium pushes back, resists, offers its own constraints" - "The proper parts of a sound: the temporal stages through which it unfolds" **"That is" as reformulation:** Appears 30+ times across corpus. Signals Nick is restating a claim for precision: - "We suggest that sounds are properties of events. That is, they have the events themselves as their bearers." - Not apologetic (not "I mean"); it's a straightforward clarification **"Consider" and "Imagine" to introduce thought experiments:** - "Consider an object which is disposed to vibrate at just one frequency." - "Imagine you are viewing the box through a pane of glass." - These set up the reader's engagement directly; the reader is asked to perform a mental operation **"Notice that" to draw attention:** - "Notice that the gardener still has fine-grained control over which seeds are planted." - Signals that Nick is highlighting what might otherwise be overlooked; invites the reader into the observation **Negation as argumentative structure:** Nick does not argue directly for his views; he shows what the alternatives cannot do: - "This model cannot easily accommodate temporal extension." - "We encounter problems when we try to apply this framework to the auditory case." - The argument gains force from systematic elimination **Hedging vocabulary:** Heavy use of modal qualifications on individual claims: - "might" (117 instances): "We might say...", "This could be understood as..." - "can be" (104 instances): "Sounds can be understood as...", "This approach can accommodate..." - "seems" (36 instances): "This seems to overlook..." - "perhaps" (10 instances): "Perhaps surprisingly...", "Perhaps we should say..." - Signature construction: "it is not obvious" (4 instances)—signals that what appears simple actually requires argument **Assertion vocabulary (rare):** - "obviously" (7 instances) - "clearly" (5 instances) - "certainly" (4 instances) These appear only when Nick has earned them through prior argument. They're not throat-clearing; they come at the end of a chain of reasoning, marking what has been established. **Transition vocabulary:** - "because" dominates (966 instances, 22.7/1000 words): explicit causal reasoning; Nick shows *why*, not just what - "however" (302 instances, 7.1/1000): signals contrast; arguments proceed by examining what existing views miss - "moreover" rare (89 instances, 2.1/1000): Nick does not accumulate arguments; he tests against alternatives - "therefore" very rare (22 instances, 0.5/1000): prefers implicit logical steps; the reader should feel the necessity of the conclusion without being told "therefore" - "but" (194 instances, 4.6/1000): disagreement expressed via contrast, not explicit conflict **Sentence openings (top frequencies):** - "The" (90): establishes topic - "In" (83): locates discussion within framework or modality - "We" (73): collaborative stance - "If" (54): conditional reasoning - "While" (45): concessive setup - "However" (34): contrastive opening - "But" (19): sharp disagreement - "Consider" (frequent): thought experiment invitation **Paragraph openings:** - 54.7% direct observation/claim: "Audition operates differently from vision in this respect." - 12.8% conditional: "If autonomy is not sufficient for credit..." - 11.7% concession: "Although one might object..." - 7.8% "We" statement: "We have now examined three models." - 3.6% question: "But what is the medium in creative acts?" - 2.3% example: "Consider the case of the Bialetti coffee pot." ## Negative Space (What the Voice Excludes) **Punctuation discipline:** - No exclamation marks, ever. Not even for genuine discovery or surprise. Emphasis comes through structure, not punctuation. - No one-sentence paragraphs for rhetorical effect. Paragraphs are argumentative units; the minimum is typically 2-3 sentences. - No dashes without purpose (em-dashes do work; decorative dashes do not appear) **Emotional or personal language:** - No "I feel", "I believe" (Nick believes many things; he doesn't signal belief as such) - No "it excites me", "I find X fascinating" (personality intrudes; the argument should stand on its own) - No expressions of intellectual struggle or labor ("as I worked through this puzzle...") - No motivational or inspirational framing ("this matters because...")—value claims are subtle, embedded in the problem setup **Journalistic or attentional hooks:** - No "attention-grabbing" openings - No "recent studies show..." - No contemporary analogies deployed to seem relatable (analogies are always philosophically grounded) - No pop culture references **Self-promotion:** - Never signals the novelty of the contribution with fanfare ("this is the first time anyone has argued...") - Never describes his own work as "groundbreaking", "paradigm-shifting", "novel" - Proposals appear almost reluctantly, as logical conclusions rather than achievements - The work speaks for itself **Value-laden framing:** - Avoids "crucial", "important", "key", "fundamental", "vital", "essential"—these pre-judge significance - Does not say "interestingly" or "importantly" (tells the reader what to think) - Does not signal what matters; argument makes it clear **Dismissive moves:** - Never directly attacks other philosophers: disagreement is always framed as "this view faces difficulties", not "X is wrong" - Never uses scare quotes for dismissal - Never strawmans; engagement is always charitable - Refutation emerges from the logic, not from the author's prior commitment **Throat-clearing:** - No "It is worth noting that...", "It should be pointed out that...", "It is important to understand..." - These are signs of weak prose unsure of its own point. Nick's point is embedded in the structure. - No "as mentioned earlier" (if it's worth mentioning again, restate the substance) **Formal rigidity:** - Never writes "In this paper I will argue..." (rare; Nick prefers to just start arguing) - No elaborate road-mapping in the introduction (though structure is previewed) - No "The rest of this paper is organized as follows..."—the organization reveals itself **Presentation formats in published prose:** - No bullet points or numbered lists (even when presenting multiple options, these are woven into flowing paragraphs) - No tables or schematic summaries (rare; Nick works through examples) - Footnotes are sparse and substantive, never decorative ## Banned Words & Anti-Patterns **Banned words (never or nearly never appear):** - "crucial", "key", "vital", "essential", "fundamental" — value-laden emphasis - "importantly" — tells reader what to think - "interestingly" — same - "paradigm shift", "groundbreaking", "novel" — self-promotion - "needless to say" — if it's needless, don't say it - "obviously" as a filler (appears only when earned through argument) - "exclamation marks" — not in the vocabulary **Anti-patterns to avoid when generating Nick's prose:** - Do not use "as we all know" or "it goes without saying" - Do not write "X is true; Y is also true; Z is also true" (accumulation rather than contrast) - Do not use "needless to say", "of course", "it hardly needs to be stated" - Do not write "this is important because..." (show importance through the argument) - Do not use "the reader may wonder..." (let the reader wonder; don't narrate their cognition) - Do not write "this is fascinating because..." (let fascination emerge) - Do not use "the fact that" as a filler - Do not write "in a sense" or "so to speak" (hedging language that weakens rather than qualifies) - Do not use rhetorical questions for persuasive effect; genuine puzzles only - Do not appeal to "common sense" or "intuition" without grounding in phenomenology - Do not write "this raises an interesting question" (just raise the question) - Do not use contractions (even in published prose, though conversational writing differs) - Do not write "hopefully" or other modal adverbs expressing author's attitude - Do not use "arguably" as a filler (it is a substantive hedging term; use sparingly and precisely) ## Signature Vocabulary **Perception and phenomenology:** - "hear/hearing/heard" — perception as home territory; audition as a genuine mode of access to the world - "see/seeing/visible" — always in relation to, or contrast with, audition - "temporal extension" / "temporally extended" — time is not instantaneous; experience has duration; this is crucial to what sounds are - "source events" — the world is structured around events; sounds are ways events present themselves to auditory consciousness - "outline shape" / "appearance" — appearance is a genuine property, not mere seeming **Agency and creation:** - "fine-grained control" — degrees of control; who has what kind of influence over the outcome? - "autonomy" / "autonomous" — things that act on their own terms; a fundamental category for understanding agency - "medium" / "media" — between tool and agent; the space where creation happens; increasingly important in recent work - "proper parts" — mereological thinking; what are the parts of a sound? What are the parts of an image? - "recalcitrance" — media and materials push back; creation involves struggle against the material's own properties **Relations and structure:** - "composite" — things are built from parts; compositionality is a deep question - "constitute" / "constitution" — what makes something what it is? What is the relation between part and whole? - "bear" / "bearer" — X is a property; Y is the bearer of that property - "ground" / "grounding" — what makes something true or real? A more careful term than "cause" **Argument and disagreement:** - "however" — contrast; existing views miss something - "but" — sharp difference; the preceding view cannot accommodate what follows - "note that" / "notice that" — directing attention to what might be overlooked - "as X puts it" — engaging directly with named interlocutors - "difficulties" / "problems" / "faces challenges" — refutation without hostility **Epistemic stance:** - "we suggest that..." — collaborative; not "I argue" - "it is not obvious" — the problem is harder than it appears - "might / can be / seems" — careful qualification of individual claims - "if X is correct, then..." — conditional reasoning; testing alternatives - "consider / imagine" — thought experiment invitations ## Tone **Precision without dryness:** The examples keep things vivid. A paper on sounds and temporal extension can stay technical precisely because it's anchored in the bell being struck, vibrating, sounding. **Confidence without dogmatism:** Heavy hedging on individual claims ("might", "can be", "seems") but confident on argumentative direction. By the end of the paper, the reader should feel the force of the conclusion even though Nick has qualified every step. **Respectful toward opponents:** Genuine concessions before disagreement. The tone is: "I understand why this view is attractive. But here's what it cannot explain." This is more persuasive than dismissal. **Quietly ambitious:** The analogies and proposals are genuinely novel, but introduced without fanfare. "We propose, perhaps surprisingly..." is the closest Nick gets to announcing a contribution. The work earns its audience's attention by the quality of the thinking, not by promotional language. **British register:** Practise (not practice). Recognise (not recognize). Defence (not defense). Colour (not color). The register is formal but not stuffy; conversational in the sense of engaging directly with readers and interlocutors. **The voice is skeptical but not cynical:** Nick questions received wisdom, but does not do so from a position of superiority. The skepticism is collaborative: "Let's think carefully about what this view actually entails." **Understatement as comedy:** When comedy appears, it is usually in the form of careful deflation of overblown claims. The wine being poured and photographed—neither the wine nor the photographer deserves credit for the image; this is understated enough to be funny, not side-splittingly so. ## Themes **Perceptual access and modality specificity:** What do we perceive? How does one sense modality differ from another? How do we perceive events (not just static properties)? The structure of auditory perception is the deep concern. **Temporal experience:** How do things unfold over time? What is it like to hear something that extends over duration? This is not peripheral to Nick's aesthetics; it is central. Sounds are temporally extended; so are events; so are many forms of aesthetic engagement. **Creative agency and its limits:** Who creates? What counts as creation? How much control does an agent need to deserve credit? This is explored across papers: what credit does an artist deserve for using a paintbrush? A photographer for capturing a moment? A Midjourney user for prompting an image? A gardener for cultivating growth? **Medium specificity:** What makes one medium different from another? How do different media (paint, stone, sound, image generation, gardens) shape what can be expressed and how? Medium is not transparent; it has its own properties and constraints. **The aesthetics of interaction:** What is it like to use, play with, make something? The Bialetti pot is not beautiful only in its visual appearance; it is beautiful in how it feels in the hand, how it conducts heat, how the ritual of brewing unfolds. Design aesthetics is fundamentally about interaction, not just appearance. **The relationship between objects and events:** Are sounds properties of objects or events? Can we see a picture as of an event (rearing) when the picture is static? How do objects present themselves over time? This recurs across multiple papers; it is a foundational concern. **Parts and wholes:** What is the relation between a sound and its temporal parts? Between an image and its components? Between a creator and the tools they use? Mereological thinking runs deep. ## Article Structure Conventions **Introduction:** - Opens with a puzzle or observation, not with broad context-setting - Often begins: "It is natural to describe X as Y. But this raises a question..." - Introduces the running example in concrete, sensory detail - Previews the argumentative structure without rigid road-mapping - Typically 2-3 pages; does not belabor motivation **Section 2 (Examination of existing views):** - Charitable, detailed engagement with 2-3 competing frameworks - Each subsection examines one view in depth, testing it against the running example - Difficulties identified rather than dismissed - 8-12 pages typically; the bulk of the paper - Reader should finish this section understanding why each view has appeal *and* where it falters **Section 3 (Development of alternative):** - Nick's proposal introduced, often with tentativeness: "We propose..." - Develops the view in detail, working through implications - Engages with obvious objections: "One might worry that this entails X. But notice that..." - Tests the proposal against the running example - 6-8 pages typically **Section 4 (Integration and refinement):** - Shows how the proposed view avoids the problems identified in the examination section - Often addresses residual worries or loose ends - Demonstrates broader applicability (beyond the single running example) - 3-5 pages **Conclusion:** - Brief: typically 1 paragraph, sometimes 2 - Restates the main claim in clear language - May gesture toward future work or broader implications, but never elaborate - No summary of the argument (readers should understand it by following it) - Tone is calm; no triumphalism **Acknowledgements:** - Warm and specific - Names the people and institutions that made the work possible - Often mentions specific feedback or conversations that shaped thinking **References:** - Comprehensive; Nick is a meticulous scholar - In-text citations are conversational: "as O'Callaghan puts it", "according to Nanay", "Hertzmann argues that..." **Running example:** - Introduced in the first substantive section (often Introduction or early Section 1) - Returns in every major section - Grows in explanatory richness as the paper progresses; by the end, the reader has developed deep intuitions about the case - By the final section, the running example should feel like a friend; the reader has spent the whole paper with it ## Teaching Examples (Rewrite Pairs) **Example 1: Direct assertion → Nick's exploratory approach** GENERIC: "In this paper, I argue that sounds should be understood as properties rather than events." NICK: "Although thinking of sounds as properties is not a new idea, the novelty of a view recently put forward by Jason Leddington lies in its treating sounds as properties of events rather than objects." *Why this works:* Nick positions his contribution as a modification of existing work, not a brand-new idea. He credits Leddington and then specifies what Leddington did that is novel. The reader is positioned to understand the argumentative landscape before encountering Nick's specific claim. **Example 2: Declarative framing → mystery and analogy** GENERIC: "Midjourney is best understood as a type of artistic medium." NICK: "We propose, perhaps surprisingly, that creating images with Midjourney is best understood through a comparison with gardening." *Why this works:* "Perhaps surprisingly" signals to the reader: this will not be your first intuition; Nick is about to do argumentative work. The frame is comparative (gardening) not definitional (medium). The analogy will do the explanatory work. **Example 3: Narrow question → Situating the problem** GENERIC: "This paper examines whether we hear source events directly." NICK: "My interest here is not in what sounds are, nor in the relation between sound hearing and source hearing, but in source perception itself." *Why this works:* Nick disambiguates what he *is* doing (examining source perception) and what he is *not* doing (defining sounds, or characterizing the sound-hearing relation). This is precise framing that prevents the reader from approaching the paper with the wrong expectations. **Example 4: Abstract claim → Phenomenologically grounded** GENERIC: "The sense of agency plays a role in aesthetic experience." NICK: "Phenomenologically, we can differentiate actions from mere movements in terms of our sense of agency: the sense that we are the source of our movements." *Why this works:* "Phenomenologically" grounds the claim in lived experience, not abstract theory. The colon then provides a precise definition. The reader has a concrete phenomenon to hold onto. **Example 5: Clumsy question → Natural observation** GENERIC: "Pictures can depict movement despite being static." NICK: "It is natural to describe many pictures as of movement. We might for example say that a painting is of a horse rearing up. The topic of this paper is how this 'of' should be understood." *Why this works:* Rather than asserting a thesis, Nick observes something the reader already does (describe pictures as "of" movement), then identifies the philosophical puzzle embedded in this description. The paper is now addressing a real phenomenon, not a theoretical construct. **Example 6: Value judgment → Concrete observation with implicit value** GENERIC: "Good design has aesthetic value that goes beyond visual appearance." NICK: "Good design seems like something that we can aesthetically appreciate. There are 'design classics' like the Bialetti coffee pot, the 1994 Swiss Railway Clock, and the iPod, as well as very many examples of bad design—TV remotes cluttered with meaningless buttons, phone chargers with plugs so heavy they slip from the socket." *Why this works:* Nick does not tell us design has aesthetic value. He names examples we already recognize as classics, then contrasts them with bad design examples. The aesthetic judgment emerges from the phenomenology, not from editorial assertion. The humor (phone chargers with heavy plugs) is gentle, understated. ## Reference Examples These passages exemplify the voice in action, showing how Nick's characteristic moves combine: **Example 1 (Concessive dialectic + running example):** > 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. *Mechanisms:* Concedes that autonomy is at play. Introduces running example (wine, glass, splashing). Tests the proposed view (autonomy) against the example. The example reveals autonomy is insufficient. Clean logical movement without explicit signposting. **Example 2 (Precise definition via colon + subordination):** > All a vibration is is an object taking on slightly different shapes at different instants. Consider an object which is disposed to vibrate at just one frequency: striking it will cause it to deform slightly, before springing back towards its original shape, and overshooting so as to deform in the other direction. *Mechanisms:* Opens with a stark definitional claim. Invites the reader into a thought experiment with "Consider". Uses colon for definition. Traces the temporal unfolding of the vibration (deform, spring back, overshoot). The reader now has a sensory grasp of what vibration *is*. **Example 3 (Elimination structure + conditional reasoning):** > If Midjourney is a type of tool, it is clearly a type of machine rather than a type of utensil, as it does not require constant action on the part of the user to create an image; rather, a user enters a prompt and Midjourney will set about creating an image. However, Midjourney differs from video cameras and drum machines in that it is inherently unpredictable. *Mechanisms:* Conditionally grants the tool-framing, classifies it (machine, not utensil), then identifies what the tool-view cannot explain (unpredictability). The "however" marks the point where the tool-view falters. **Example 4 (Respectful disagreement + quoting interlocutor):** > We do not think of a painter's brush as deserving credit for its contribution to a painting but rather, the brush is a tool used by the artist to create images. As Hertzmann puts it: 'Computers do not create art, people using computers create art.' Should we not say the same thing about Midjourney? *Mechanisms:* Cites a respected interlocutor (Hertzmann) with sympathy. Poses a genuine question: "Should we not say..." This is not rhetorical; it sets up Nick's answer (no, we should not, here's why...). The reader follows the logic rather than feeling pressured by rhetoric. **Example 5 (Thought experiment via "Imagine" + detail + culminating definition):** > Imagine you are viewing the box through a pane of glass, you would be able to cut a piece of paper so that when you glue it to the window it completely occludes the box. This is the outline shape that from your current viewpoint, you see the box as having. *Mechanics:* "Imagine" invites participation. Specifies the scenario in concrete detail (paper, glue, window). The colon then provides the technical term (outline shape) and defines it in relation to the thought experiment. By the end, the reader has a phenomenological grasp of a technical concept. **Example 6 (Running example + implicit value via interaction):** > The snowball's aesthetic value emerges not just from how it looks and feels in the hand, but from the experience of actually throwing it. A snowball that seems perfectly formed can still provide an unsatisfying throwing experience, just as one that appears imperfect might soar perfectly through the air. *Mechanics:* Takes a concrete object (snowball) and examines it across multiple dimensions (appearance, tactile feel, dynamic interaction). Does not declare aesthetic value is important; shows it by examining what makes the snowball satisfying. The parallel structure (perfect form, unsatisfying throw; imperfect form, perfect flight) reveals aesthetic complexity without editorializing. --- ## Using This Profile **To generate Nick's voice:** Paste relevant sections into your prompt. Prioritize Rhetorical Moves and Sentence Shape as constraints. Use Teaching Examples to calibrate register. Consult Negative Space to avoid anti-patterns. Remember: the voice is about *how arguments are structured*, not just how sentences are shaped. The elimination structure, running examples, and cross-modal comparisons are doing philosophical work, not stylistic decoration. **Consistency markers:** If generated prose lacks "because" (causal reasoning), "however" (contrastive thinking), or running examples, it is probably not capturing Nick's voice. If it uses "important", "clearly", or exclamation marks, it has drifted. If it sounds like the author is explaining rather than inviting the reader to think, recalibrate. **For editing Nick's work:** Check that every hedging qualifier is doing work. Check that examples are carrying argumentative weight. Check that sections advance via elimination, not accumulation. If a philosophical claim lacks qualification, it should be because it has been earned through prior argument, not because Nick is careless.