Thanks for the post! I think there are particularly egregious examples where this clearly holds—e.g., I think it’s probably good to have a norm that when pushed on something specific that’s ambiguous authors say “[This] is what I meant”, instead of constantly evading being pinned down.
That said, I think there are many examples of essays where authors just did not foresee a potential interpretation or objection (an easy example is an essay written years before such discussion). Such writing could conflate things because it didn’t seem important not to—I think precision to the degree of always forestalling this is ~infeasible. I’ve talked to people who point at clear examples of this as examples of sloppy writing or authors reneging on this responsibility, when I think that particular ask is far too high.
To be clear, this is to forestall what I think is a potential interpretation of this post, not to imply that’s what you meant.
Thanks for the post! I think there are particularly egregious examples where this clearly holds—e.g., I think it’s probably good to have a norm that when pushed on something specific that’s ambiguous authors say “[This] is what I meant”, instead of constantly evading being pinned down.
That said, I think there are many examples of essays where authors just did not foresee a potential interpretation or objection (an easy example is an essay written years before such discussion). Such writing could conflate things because it didn’t seem important not to—I think precision to the degree of always forestalling this is ~infeasible. I’ve talked to people who point at clear examples of this as examples of sloppy writing or authors reneging on this responsibility, when I think that particular ask is far too high.
To be clear, this is to forestall what I think is a potential interpretation of this post, not to imply that’s what you meant.