Unsolicited advice.

People ask me for advice in writing often. While I don't pretend to be an extraordinary writer, I have worked hard over the years to improve myself. All this time, I've been in the corner, hurriedly scribbling on a piece of paper.  It's woven from the fibers of all the other writers and essayists stored in my memory, and it's edited by all the teachers I've ever had.  At the end I found myself in possession of a carefully drawn map of the pitfalls I've encountered and the paths I've unearthed and created around them. I carry it with me at all times, but you can borrow it. Or better? Make your own.

 

Still less confusing than Port Authority city transit routes.

The most useful piece of advice I've ever received came from a professor at Princeton by the name of Jim Pryor, via my philosophy professor (who has been immensely helpful during my time here at Allegheny). Essentially, Pryor calls upon you to channel your inner Descartes and build yourself a strong foundation for your paper.

But before you go off in search of a piece of wax to examine for the next few hours, pull up a chair and grab hold of a bit of that crazy skepticism.

You thought you were writing this paper for the average reader, with a forgiving sense of compassion for all the interesting things you have to say? Pfft. You're writing for Descartes' evil daemon now.


He's mean.
He doesn't care what you have to say. Why should he? In fact, he delights in proving you wrong whenever he can.  He will pounce upon weak arguments and crush them into tiny, little bits.  Don't leave cracks in your argument, or you'll never hear the end of it. The daemon gets angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

He's lazy.
Being an evil daemon is hard work, what with constantly deceiving everyone about everything day in and day out.  Do you think he has time for this shit?  He wants the shortest, most direct path to your argument daemonly possible.  Don't mess around with unnecessary verbiage and impertinent, tangential arguments.  Be clear and concise.   

He's stupid. 
He tells people that he could have passed that epistemology class if he had tried and that he enjoys his dead-end job in the department of deception, but the 'evil genius' moniker is just a facade.  A complicated argument will throw him into tangles of confusion.  You must ensure that every inference is guaranteed to be the one you intended. Leave no room for interpretation, and explain every point fully to avoid logical holes.  No need for an infinite regress madness (I'm looking at you, Achilles), but gaping holes aren't preferable either. 

If the daemon is sitting in the corner, crying in an existential heap, congratulations! You've written a great paper.  And if you've defeated the best, you've defeated the rest.  Base your paper on this hypothetical worst case scenario and, like Descartes, you'll be left with an incorrigible foundation upon which no dissonant argument can safely stand.  Your paper thinks, therefore it is...awesome.

 

The skeptical daemon, defeated.