How to get going with your thesis

 A new Rationale user working on a PhD thesis emailed the following:

I finished my comps in March and have been working to nail down my dissertation topic since. I have too many interests and little discipline so it’s been daunting. Notably, I sat down last week with rationale and decided to map out what I was thinking and feeling. I used the reasoning tools to nail down my main argument, the assertions I am inclined to make in support of that argument, and then what I know (or believe) supports those. Trying to not get bogged down, I next skipped to basis statements that helped me sort out which of these things I know are supported in the literature, which I need to do original logic on, which I need to test using a game model, and which I need to support using case studies. And finally – after months of circling, I went to the text panel and got the skeleton of a précis. Spent three more days cleaning up and thinking, and then as of this morning I sent those 4 pages off to a prospective adviser to start a conversation.

It might also be useful later in the process, articulating and evaluating what you take to be your core arguments.

If you’re writing a thesis, or some other elaborate piece of argumentative prose, then its a good idea to try mapping your arguments just to test whether you really know what they are.

If you actually have any substantial arguments, and if you are truly clear about what they are, mapping them should be a trivial exercise – just whacking claims into boxes and putting those boxes where they belong in the logical hierarchy.

However, it almost never is a trivial exercise.  We are, in fact, often quite deluded about the extent to which we really understand our own arguments.   Of course often we’re aware that we’re not fully on top of the arguments.  The more interesting point here is that, most of the time, when we think we know exactly what they are, we’re laboring under a kind of illusion of clarity.  There’s nothing like the demand to lay out the arguments in a map (well, a map observing the core principles of good argument mapping) to puncture the illusion.

The amount of effort you find you need to put in to get a tolerably good map of your arguments is a measure of the lack of clarity you have about those arguments.

(This assumes that you’re using a tool, like Rationale, which reduces to almost nothing the mechanics of producing an argument map diagram.)

Clichés have a silver lining

 The Telegraph is carrying a piece, At the end of the day, you’ve given 110 per cent, which mocks clichés – and implicitly, those who use them.  The piece contains ten or so winning entries in a competition to cram the most cliches into a short text.

Interestingly, the word “cliché” doesn’t appear in the piece – they use “infuriating phrase” instead.  Maybe there’s a subtle difference there.

It is mildly amusing, though all the cleverness and jollity soon becomes a bit tiresome.

Not so long ago, I would have read the piece with the attitude that one as reader is presumed to have – a kind of smug superiority.  Of course *I* wouldn’t use these clichés – only the dull, the vulgar, the crass, the stupid would rely on such banal and overworked turns of phrase.

However I feel a little different now.  Having been doing far more “business communication” – writing, and especially conversing – than I ever used to do, I find myself relying on clichés more than ever before.  Is this because my brain is atrophying the longer I spend away from the intellectual realms of philosophy and cognitive science?  Perhaps.

But I think there might be something else at work.  Communication is only in part a matter of sending information, contained in the meaning of one’s words, to another person.  It is also about establishing a kind of rapport – conversing with them rather than talking to them.  In that “conversing with”, clichés are very useful.  They are standard moves from a common repertoire, allowing conversants to synchronize their thoughts and attitudes.  Sure, instead of saying “we’ll be giving it 110%” you could say something like “we’ll be working like untenured academics” but the very originality of such a phrase is likely to throw some sand in the conversational gears.

There is a useful analogy with that universal business cliché, the standard handshake.  Such a dull way of greeting somebody!  Why not, instead, try shaking their hand side-to-side, or with one’s fingers clenched, or with a wet hand, or… or hold their arm, stroke their hair, touch their nose… Try any of these more imaginative alternatives, and you’ll instantly create the perception that you are at the very least a bit odd.  You’ll seriously impair your chances of a successful business relationship. People want to know that they’ll be able to “play the business game” with you, by standard rules, not your creative and unpredictable rules. Shaking hands in a more or less normal way is just an opening signal that you’re interested to see the game go well.

So give clichés a break.  There’s something to be said for them.