Why this format?
From Chains of Reason
Contents |
Two reasons
The format used on Chains of Reason for presenting reasoning was chosen over the current, traditional format of writing in paragraphs for two main reasons:
Clarity
A founding assumption of Chains of Reason is that anyone is capable of understanding, and therefore assessing, any reasoning - however 'advanced', 'sophisticated', 'difficult', etc. - as long as that reasoning is presented with sufficient clarity. One of the main aims of Chains of Reason is to provide a place for people to present reasoning on any topic in a format which helps maximise clarity. The format used on Chains of Reason does this by requiring users to break-down reasoning into a sequence of baby steps, with each argument in the chain always consisting of only two single-sentence premises followed by a single-sentence conclusion.
Universal understandability of reasoning is perhaps most obviously important with respect to the reasoning used to justify beliefs expressed in current political and moral debates. But it is ultimately just as important with respect to scientific, philosophical and religious reasoning in general, given that such reasoning underlies various fundamental beliefs about the world and how to live one's life in it. However, the current main arena for reasoning on such subjects is of course academia, and the often inaccessible nature of academic writings on these areas, from the point of view of the general public, often creates the false impression amongst the general public that the reasoning set-out in such writings must itself be inaccessible to them, that it must simply be beyond their intellectual reach. And because such reasoning is therefore not part of their everyday lives, this can in turn create the false impression that it is not relevant to their everyday lives. Enabling people to follow, and assess, debates which they currently feel are inaccessible, and perhaps also irrelevant, to them is not just desirable as an end in itself, but also because such wider understanding can only lead to wider participation in these debates, which in turn can only lead to an increase in the quality of reasoning itself.
Brevity
Another advantage of the format used on Chains of Reason is that it ensures that only the bare bones of each argument is presented, which means that people can learn about the reasoning behind particular beliefs in as efficient a way as possible.
Further, unexpected, advantages of this format?
Given that the format used on Chains of Reason is so different from the current, traditional format of writing in paragraphs, and has not been widely used before, it is possible that there may be other, unexpected advantages to presenting reasoning in this way.
