Scoring the Accessibility of Philosophical Content

“What ought to be a conversation with the sharpest minds becomes a gauntlet of impenetrable syntax, undefined terms, and rhetorical fog.”

“To resist this trend, we must become more rigorous in how we measure accessibility—not to dilute philosophy, but to sharpen it.”

“These dimensions do not demand that all philosophy be ‘dumbed down.’ Quite the opposite—they demand that it be sharpened for contact with minds beyond the cloistered circle of specialists.”

“Difficulty should arise from the content of the thought, not from a fog of unexamined prose.”

“A philosopher should build conceptual scaffolds, not stack riddles.”

“Accessible philosophy is not simplified philosophy. It is philosophy that risks being understood.”

“Let us write so as to be argued with, not merely admired.”

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Provide an essay that laments the lack of accessibility in much philosophical writing, and introduce the (previously discussed) 13 dimensions along which to assess philosophical writings.

Against Obscurity: Toward a More Accessible Philosophy

Philosophy, which began as a pursuit of clarity and understanding, has too often become a realm of performative opacity. Many readers—bright, curious, and hungry for meaning—find themselves alienated not by the difficulty of the ideas themselves, but by the way those ideas are delivered. What ought to be a conversation with the sharpest minds becomes a gauntlet of impenetrable syntax, undefined terms, and rhetorical fog. This inaccessibility not only fails the reader; it fails philosophy itself, severing its concepts from their potential social and intellectual relevance.

The problem is not new. From the cryptic aphorisms of Heraclitus to the architectural labyrinths of Hegel, philosophy has always flirted with abstraction. But the danger emerges when density becomes a substitute for depth, when obfuscation is mistaken for sophistication. To resist this trend, we must become more rigorous in how we measure accessibility—not to dilute philosophy, but to sharpen it.

To this end, I propose thirteen dimensions along which philosophical writings can be assessed. Each dimension identifies a factor that either supports or obstructs the reader’s ability to track, test, and internalize the ideas presented. These are not reducible to style; they are cognitive and epistemic affordances.

Thirteen Dimensions of Philosophical Accessibility

1. Lexical Determinacy

Does the vocabulary used have clear and stable denotations?
Accessible philosophy avoids needless ambiguity in word choice. Technical terms should be either standard or precisely defined. If “structure,” “truth,” or “form” are used in idiosyncratic ways, those meanings must be clarified early.

2. Syntactic Coherence

Are the sentences grammatical and well-structured, such that they communicate discernible propositions?
Long or nested sentences may be justified, but only when they preserve the integrity of meaning. A sentence that cannot be paraphrased likely cannot be understood.

3. Conceptual Testability

Are the core ideas stated in a form that allows logical or empirical scrutiny?
Philosophical writing gains clarity when it offers hypotheses, implications, or distinctions that can be interrogated, debated, or falsified. Purely aesthetic gestures fail this dimension.

4. Propositional Clarity

Is the writing dominated by well-formed, explicit claims, or by poetic mood and suggestion?
Accessible writing presents arguments in propositional form. The reader should be able to extract premises and conclusions, even if those conclusions are tentative.

5. Cognitive Parsability

Can the average reader mentally parse and track the ideas being presented, without being derailed by abstraction or vagueness?
This dimension gauges how much cognitive load the text demands. A philosopher should build conceptual scaffolds, not stack riddles.

6. Structural Navigation

Is there an explicit structure to the writing that helps the reader orient themselves?
Transitions, signposting, summaries, and rhetorical cues (e.g., “Let us now turn to…”) support accessibility. Readers need to know where they are in the argument.

7. Epistemic Anchoring

Are the claims tethered to a recognizable epistemic framework—e.g., empiricism, rationalism, Bayesianism, etc.?
Anchoring helps the reader understand the rules of the game: how arguments are expected to function and what counts as evidence.

8. Terminological Discipline

Are technical terms used consistently and without equivocation?
Philosophers sometimes shift meanings midstream—using “representation” or “identity” in multiple senses—which disrupts comprehension. Disciplined writing commits to precise usage.

9. Referential Transparency

Is it clear what sources, traditions, or thinkers are being referenced or critiqued?
Accessible philosophy acknowledges its interlocutors. If a writer invokes or departs from Kant, Foucault, or Confucius, that orientation should be declared, not buried in allusion.

10. Inferential Guidance

Does the writer help the reader follow the logical steps between claims?
A strong philosophical style does not simply announce conclusions—it walks the reader through the terrain of inference.

11. Modality Disclosure

Does the author make explicit their degree of confidence or speculation?
Without markers of possibility, plausibility, or certainty, readers cannot evaluate the strength of the claims. Philosophy benefits from verbal precision in modality: “may,” “must,” “likely,” “necessarily,” etc.

12. Emotive Containment

Is emotional language restrained or subordinated to conceptual clarity?
Rhetorical flourish can inspire, but excessive emotional language can obscure the argument. High scores in this dimension reflect a discipline in tone, where emotion serves the idea rather than engulfs it.

13. Argumentative Continuity

Does the essay maintain a coherent argumentative trajectory from start to finish?
Philosophical writing should build. If it digresses without returning or accumulates observations without synthesis, it leaves the reader in fragments.

Reclaiming the Mission of Philosophy

These dimensions do not demand that all philosophy be “dumbed down.” Quite the opposite—they demand that it be sharpened for contact with minds beyond the cloistered circle of specialists. Difficult ideas are worth exploring. But difficulty should arise from the content of the thought, not from a fog of unexamined prose.

Accessible philosophy is not simplified philosophy. It is philosophy that risks being understood.

Let us write so as to be argued with, not merely admired.

Provide scores (0-10) along those 13 dimensions for the three attached philosophical writings.

William James – Pragmatism (7,083-word Extract)
George Santayana – The Sense of Beauty (2,239-word Extract)
The Deeper Thinking Podcast (The Opposite of Everything is History)

Dimension	William James – Pragmatism	George Santayana – The Sense of Beauty	The Deeper Thinking Podcast
Lexical Determinacy	9	7	3
Syntactic Coherence	9	8	4
Conceptual Testability	8	6	2
Propositional Clarity	9	7	2
Cognitive Parsability	9	7	3
Structural Navigation	9	7	2
Epistemic Anchoring	9	6	1
Terminological Discipline	8	7	3
Referential Transparency	8	6	4
Inferential Guidance	9	6	2
Modality Disclosure	9	7	1
Emotive Containment	8	6	2
Argumentative Continuity	9	7	2
	104	80	29

Annotate extracts from each of those three sources with insights on the existence or lack of accessibility.

1. William James – Pragmatism (Accessible)

I offer you the following simple concrete example:
A squirrel is clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; and he moves round the trunk in a circle, keeping his body opposite the trunk all the time, so that if I move round the trunk in the same direction, keeping it between me and the squirrel, I also move in a circle, and the squirrel always remains on the opposite side of the tree. The question is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not?

🟦 —This opening is vivid, uses plain language, and defines the central puzzle clearly. The lexical determinacy is strong: terms like “opposite,” “circle,” and “go round” are not left to metaphor.

Some say yes, because the man changes from north of the tree to east, south, and west, and finally to north again. Others say no, because the squirrel keeps scrambling around the tree, keeping its belly turned towards the man, so that the man never passes in front of it.
Which party is right?

🟦 — This anticipates objections and models philosophical disagreement in ordinary terms. There is strong inferential guidance—James helps the reader track both interpretations before resolving the tension.

I believe that the quarrel is purely verbal, and that the remedy lies in making clear the meanings of the two alternative phrases.
“Going round” in the practical sense means passing from north through east, south, and west, to north again. In this sense the man goes round.
But in another sense, if “going round” means successively getting to the front, right, back, and left of the squirrel, the man fails to go round.

🟦 — James resolves the ambiguity through careful analysis of the term “go round.” This demonstrates high propositional clarity and strong cognitive parsability.

2. George Santayana – The Sense of Beauty (Moderately Accessible)

That the claim of universality is such a natural inaccuracy will not be hard to show.
There is notoriously no great agreement upon aesthetic matters; and such agreement as there is, is based upon similarity of origin, nature, and circumstance among men, a similarity which, where it exists, tends to bring about identity in all judgments and feelings.

🟦 — While more formal than James, this is clear and well-structured. The argument is introduced methodically. The syntactic coherence is strong.

It is unmeaning to say that what is beautiful to one man ought to be beautiful to another.
If their senses are the same, their associations and dispositions similar, then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both.

🟦 — Santayana does a good job anchoring claims to shared epistemic grounding (e.g. sense perception). He resists universalism with conceptual testability in mind.

If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will be to another even invisible, because his classifications and discriminations in perception will be different, and he may see a hideous detached fragment or a shapeless aggregate of things, in what to another is a perfect whole.

🟦 — This is a cognitively denser sentence. While still clear, the sentence could challenge readers unfamiliar with technical aesthetics. Propositional clarity here begins to fade.

It is absurd to say that what is invisible to a given being ought to seem beautiful to him. Evidently this obligation of recognizing the same qualities is conditioned by the possession of the same faculties.

🟦 — Santayana tightens his argument by linking perceptual apparatus with aesthetic judgment—an excellent example of epistemic anchoring.

3. The Deeper Thinking Podcast (Inaccessible)

Somewhere, a story begins where fire speaks before humans do.
The flame does not symbolize, it orders.
This myth, older than record, organizes the world through what burns and what resists, what transforms and what remains.
It does not seek meaning, it arranges it.

🟦 — This highly poetic opening is emotionally evocative but lexically indeterminate. What does it mean for a flame to “order”? Is “arranges meaning” metaphor or claim? Propositional clarity is absent.

These are not metaphors, they are operations. And the question is not whether they are true, but what kind of mind needs them?

🟦 — This statement actively dodges testability. The author reframes the inquiry as psychological rather than logical, creating distance from epistemic evaluation.

Claude Lévi-Strauss saw in stories like this, the evidence of an unconscious architecture, one that transcended geography, language and time.
He looked at myths not as inventions, but as patterns repeated with eerie fidelity across difference.

🟦 — Referential transparency is partial here—Lévi-Strauss is mentioned but not contextualized. A reader unfamiliar with structuralism will be disoriented.

The mind that needs oppositions is not wrong. But perhaps it is incomplete. Perhaps it seeks structure not because it is universal, but because it is afraid of what comes without it.

🟦 — This is poetic speculation offered in place of a testable claim. The modality is concealed, and the emotional register—”afraid of what comes without it”—suggests psychological drama over philosophical clarity.

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