I think it’s not so much a circle as a spiral (not in the LLM sense, I don’t think). Each level of justification pushes just a little deeper than the last, even though in words you keep asking some of the same fundamental questions.
The argument I referred to is indeed circular. A spiral is topologically just a line which terminates. It doesn’t have the structure you’re referring to. Maybe if you want to think of your progress as measured on a vertical axis and the steps used to get there as represented on a plane, then the curve plotted above the circle representing the circular argument on that plane would be helical, which has a spiral like shape. However, this is not the same as saying that the argument is a spiral.
I think it’s not so much a circle as a spiral (not in the LLM sense, I don’t think). Each level of justification pushes just a little deeper than the last, even though in words you keep asking some of the same fundamental questions.
The argument I referred to is indeed circular. A spiral is topologically just a line which terminates. It doesn’t have the structure you’re referring to. Maybe if you want to think of your progress as measured on a vertical axis and the steps used to get there as represented on a plane, then the curve plotted above the circle representing the circular argument on that plane would be helical, which has a spiral like shape. However, this is not the same as saying that the argument is a spiral.
Thank you, both for the clarification and for reminding me that ‘helical’ was the word I was looking for.
Thanks for responding, sometimes it seems like my comments ‘fall into a black hole’.