Inframethodology
type: channel
description: A weblog devoted to the underlying craft of research
date: 2026-06-02T10:42:19Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Confidence
items: Why Scholars and Students Should Write Their Own Sentences and Paragraphs
items: Higher Learning, Basic Skills
items: Why English Majors Should Take On-Site, Invigilated Written Exams
items: Calculators, Screwdrivers, and Other Tools
items: On Ruining the Weekend
items: The Human Scale
items: Why I Refuse to Read the Paper David Gunkel “Co-Authored” with ChatGPT
items: Private and Publish
items: A Simple Test

Confidence
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2026-05-20T08:38:26Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: One reason to subject students to “exam conditions” is that it offers them an opportunity to experience what they are capable of. Obviously, the conditions must be reasonable and the prompt must be relevant to the course. But this is easy to ensure by giving students, say, three hours to compose a thousand words of … Continue reading Confidence →
encoded: One reason to subject students to “exam conditions” is that it offers them an opportunity to experience what they are capable of. Obviously, the conditions must be reasonable and the prompt must be relevant to the course. But this is easy to ensure by giving students, say, three hours to compose a thousand words of coherent prose that answers a question they have been equipped to understand. The mere fact that (or degree to which) they understand the question gives them an initial indication of their mastery of the subject. The knowledge needed to answer the question can be acquired through, well, study, including reading, attending lectures, participating in discussions with fellow students, both in and out of class, and carefully thinking things through. The ability to compose two and half pages of prose in two and a half hours can be developed through deliberate practice during the semester, one composed moment at a time. We typically give our students 12 to 16 weeks to master a subject in this way. Our goal should be to give them confidence when forming beliefs, expressing them, and writing them down. Of course, that confidence should come with a measure of humility, a sense of limits, an understanding of where their knowledge can be applied and, importantly, an openness to being wrong, grounded in a sense, also, of the limited consequences of error. That is, a course at university should equip students to think about a subject. And when they “sit for the exam” they should enter a space and a time that is familiar to them, it should be an experience that they have, in various ways, subjected themselves to, a discipline they have cultivated, not for the purpose of the examination, but for its own sake, and which just happens to be required by the conditions of that moment. It is a situation that they have learned to respect and it is by passing through this humbling, which the sincere student should never experience as humiliation, that they will gain their confi…

Why Scholars and Students Should Write Their Own Sentences and Paragraphs
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2026-04-09T08:18:38Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: “Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.” (Barthes) “We are faced with the problem of error.” (Quine) The editor of the Philosophers’ Magazine, Daniel Kodsi, recently defended AI-supported writing as not essentially … Continue reading Why Scholars and Students Should Write Their Own Sentences and Paragraphs →
encoded: “Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.” (Barthes) “We are faced with the problem of error.” (Quine) The editor of the Philosophers’ Magazine, Daniel Kodsi, recently defended AI-supported writing as not essentially different from traditional approaches. Letting AI draft a text for you is like using a dictionary or conferring with an editor or following a style guide. “Writers have always relied on external supports,” Kodsi reminds us: “teachers, editors, friends, books, style guides, dictionaries, templates, stock phrases, genre conventions, and prior texts absorbed over years of reading. AI is simply another such support.” In fact, our resistance to AI is grounded in a myth (and even “cult”) of writing as “self-expression,” which Kodsi thinks we do well to abandon: the basic purpose of writing is not to display the unaided workings of an individual mind. The point of writing is to communicate: to convey information, make arguments, issue instructions, tell stories, record events, or produce understanding in a reader. Once that is clear, the importance of asking who first generated a given sentence diminishes. What matters first is whether the writing says something true, useful, illuminating, or worth reading. Kodsi does grant that there is a “narrow range of cases” where writing might be understood as “fundamentally self-expression” (though he is quick to remind us that here, too, the shoe only fits “imperfectly”.) In my reply to his post, I upped the ante a bit, suggesting that there is a broad class of cases where we want writers to “display” the “workings” of their minds and where we are, in fact, interested in their ability to do this “unaided”. This is a kind of writing that I teach and coach, namely, academic writing. Kodsi disagreed. Academic writing, he suggested, is also mainly communicative; its aim “is to adva…

Higher Learning, Basic Skills
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2026-01-21T10:37:03Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: “If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students.” (John Henry Newman, 1852) In the coming years, I expect, the purpose of higher education will be a recurring topic of discussion among academics. What are students supposed to learn at university? How are they to be … Continue reading Higher Learning, Basic Skills →
encoded: “If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students.” (John Henry Newman, 1852) In the coming years, I expect, the purpose of higher education will be a recurring topic of discussion among academics. What are students supposed to learn at university? How are they to be improved? What do we want them to become better at? The answer will have to take seriously the fact that we have the authority only to impart and certify knowledge, to arm them only with ideas and “the authority of right reason,” as Scotus Erigena put it. We may only teach and examine our students. Why should students submit to this authority? What do they gain from it? What does society gain from demanding it of them? An alternative, after all, is fast coming into view. Students are learning to use artificial intelligence to “support their learning,” which, unfortunately, is often indistinguishable (sometimes to themselves and sometimes, it seems, even to their teachers) from avoiding the problem of learning altogether. I’ve pointed out before that when Bertrand Russell suggested that a “system of notation” could almost serve as a “live teacher,” and “a perfect notation would be a substitute for thought,” he was probably not imagining the “stochastic parotting” of large language models. But they certainly do seem capable of substituting for a great deal of the thinking we’ve traditionally demanded of our students. We seem to be on the verge of automating the very problem of knowledge. Our students have been given an epistemic workaround. Now, I have served for about two decades as a writing coach at a major European business school and during that time I have developed what I think is a healthy, working epistemology. I don’t claim to have solved all the problems that philosophers have raised in regards to the nature of knowledge, but I have a confident grasp of what we mean, or should mean, when we say that we are “knowledgeable” people and a…

Why English Majors Should Take On-Site, Invigilated Written Exams
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-11-12T11:04:17Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: [I generally don’t like this kind of stunt. But I was able to generate this essay in under 10 minutes using Microsoft Copilot. While it reused some of the language from my prompts, all the paragraphs (and the title of the post) were generated out of whole cloth by the AI. I had a brief … Continue reading Why English Majors Should Take On-Site, Invigilated Written Exams →
encoded: [I generally don’t like this kind of stunt. But I was able to generate this essay in under 10 minutes using Microsoft Copilot. While it reused some of the language from my prompts, all the paragraphs (and the title of the post) were generated out of whole cloth by the AI. I had a brief exchange with it about why it is so good at generating prose about Hamlet, and then I asked it to write a five-paragraph essay using this fact to argue for on-site examination. I then simply asked it to add two paragraphs (the fifth and sixth paragraphs in the final version) about how (a) students would be incentivized to write at home and (b) how homework could still be used, giving only indicative grades. I have done no editing of the final text at all. I would say it is 100% in line with my views on the subject. I’m posting it here mainly to document where we’re at today. Copilot’s parting comment was, of course, to offer more help: “Would you like me to tighten this into a formal academic style with references, turn it into a persuasive op-ed, or create a version optimized for a university policy proposal?” I left it there.] In the age of artificial intelligence, the integrity of literary education faces an unprecedented challenge. Large language models (LLMs) have made it remarkably easy for students to produce polished essays on canonical texts without engaging deeply with them. Nowhere is this more evident than with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a play that has generated centuries of commentary and analysis. Ironically, the very text we most hope students will wrestle with is also the one they can most convincingly fake an understanding of using AI. This reality demands a reconsideration of assessment methods, and on-site, invigilated written exams offer a compelling solution. The problem begins with the nature of LLMs and their training data. These models are built on vast corpora of text, and Hamlet occupies a privileged position in English-language discourse. It appears in countless…

Calculators, Screwdrivers, and Other Tools
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-11-11T09:47:26Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: On Saturday, I wrote about one objection to my “Prompts and Conditions” post that came up during my faculty development course on “Teaching Writing in the Age of AI.” This post is about another one, which begins with something I say at the end of that post: Surely, we can say what a math student … Continue reading Calculators, Screwdrivers, and Other Tools →
encoded: On Saturday, I wrote about one objection to my “Prompts and Conditions” post that came up during my faculty development course on “Teaching Writing in the Age of AI.” This post is about another one, which begins with something I say at the end of that post: Surely, we can say what a math student at any level should be able to do without a calculator, or what a history student should be capable of without the internet. AI generalizes this problem. In each field, we must decide what students should be able to do on their own. A participant reminded me that the calculator analogy has long been discredited as a helpful analogy for understanding AI, especially if our aim is to limit reliance on it. After all, everyone relies on calculators these days, and very few exams ban their use. This hasn’t caused any kind of catastrophe for education. We have simply changed the way we teach and learn math. I think it’s worth looking into this claim in some detail, I should say. After all, it is my impression that many high-stakes exams — like the American SAT — have very specific rules for calculators that enforce limits on the functions that are allowed. I’m pretty sure this has been the case for as long as calculators have been available; their use is in governed by policy. But the general idea that math instruction hasn’t banned them altogether is of course true, nor have we kept teaching the same “old” things is. In any case, talking about “what a math student should be able to do without a calculator,” the participant suggested, was like asking what a carpenter should be able to do without a screwdriver. The whole point of learning the craft is learning how to use the tools. I immediately liked this way of putting it because when he mentioned carpentry I thought he was going to talk about power tools, but the problem, of course, arises already at the level of saws and hammers and screwdrivers. We may as well start there. Would I say, “Surely, we can say what a carpenter’s app…

On Ruining the Weekend
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-11-08T10:46:23Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: I’m running a faculty development course this month called “Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI” and it has led to some interesting discussions. I asked the participants to read and reflect on my post, “Prompts and Conditions,” which I wrote a couple of years ago, when the challenge that AI might pose for … Continue reading On Ruining the Weekend →
encoded: I’m running a faculty development course this month called “Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI” and it has led to some interesting discussions. I asked the participants to read and reflect on my post, “Prompts and Conditions,” which I wrote a couple of years ago, when the challenge that AI might pose for higher education was just coming into view. I think the basic idea of the post was agreeable to most of the participants, but a number of them had some interesting reactions to what I would call the “rhetoric” of the post. I want to address two of them in particular in a post each. One of the participants noted a parenthesis at the end of what I took to be a very practical remark about setting deadlines. Here’s what I had written: If we imagine classes are held on Mondays, students can be given the take-home prompts at the end of the class and submit their essays on Friday (there’s no need to ruin their weekend). “Doesn’t this suggest that our students don’t want to learn? Why would we presume that studying on the weekend ruins it?” asked the participant. He recalled that when he was a student he was happy to spend his evenings and weekends studying and, indeed, that he felt that he was expected to do so by his teachers. Is this something that we have suddenly abandoned? (And, we might add, does AI force us to do so?) Now, I must say that I had not expected anyone to take this remark as seriously as that. The idea of “ruining” a weekend by doing school work was only intended as a lighthearted gesture at the priorities of young people. But perhaps playing to these priorities is ill-advised; and perhaps it comes off as condescending, even to the students who have them. It’s always worth thinking about the rhetorical effects of our pedagogical strategies. In defending my choice of words at the time, I did point out that he was taking a rather hard line against another kind of concern that teachers often express for their students: not everyone has the luxury …

The Human Scale
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-09-16T09:48:40Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: When I talk about academic writing with students at the Danish Design School, I begin by showing them a short clip of Thomas Leslie, Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, talking about Pier Luigi Nervi’s approach to designing structures. Before I unpack it, I encourage you to take five minutes to watch it … Continue reading The Human Scale →
encoded: When I talk about academic writing with students at the Danish Design School, I begin by showing them a short clip of Thomas Leslie, Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, talking about Pier Luigi Nervi’s approach to designing structures. Before I unpack it, I encourage you to take five minutes to watch it yourself (from 27:25 to 32:12) and see if you can discern the lessons for writers that I extract from it. First of all, it’s useful to think of your writing problem as in some way related or analogous to the problems of your academic discipline. (When I talk to students in innovation management, for example, I tell them that “Good writing is the creative destruction of bad ideas”; when I talk to project management students, I try to get them to see to that a collaborative writing project is one of the most difficult projects they may ever manage.) Getting students think of writing a paper as a “design problem” is especially apt, not least on Leslie’s definition of a “designer”: “someone who thinks things through.” Another great point that he makes early on is that Nervi’s greatness lay in not “throwing up his arms” at “impossible constraints” but, rather, going ahead and working within them, to “hack together” a solution under the material conditions he had been given. Indeed, for Nervi, the aim was to build something “out of almost nothing” and this, of course, is the essential and difficult problem of the writer: to use the very limited materials provided by words to express what we know. Nervi, as any writer must, was also able to adapt his thinking to the time constraints he was given. He had a deadline and he made sure that his design could be realized within it. But what I really love about Leslie’s presentation here is the way he relates the handmade components (the ferrocemento components of the roof) to the larger project. The “rigorous, algorithmic process” of producing and assembling the pieces ends up producing an impressive “architec…

Why I Refuse to Read the Paper David Gunkel “Co-Authored” with ChatGPT
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-09-08T10:41:43Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: The journal Human-Machine Communication recently published a paper by David Gunkel called “Prompted by me. Generated by ChatGPT,” which he promoted on X under the slogan “Death of the Author.” I had a look and quickly made up my mind not to read it. After a little more thought, I realized that my personal decision … Continue reading Why I Refuse to Read the Paper David Gunkel “Co-Authored” with ChatGPT →
encoded: The journal Human-Machine Communication recently published a paper by David Gunkel called “Prompted by me. Generated by ChatGPT,” which he promoted on X under the slogan “Death of the Author.” I had a look and quickly made up my mind not to read it. After a little more thought, I realized that my personal decision should also be a maxim for others. “I think it’s important for academics to refuse to read this kind of paper,” I said, reposting his paper. Over the past few days, David and I have been going back and forth about it, and he finally suggested that I should make an argument for my refusal. This post is a (too long) first draft of that argument. TL;DR: David’s “process note” abrogates responsibility for the text by pre-emptively deferring an unspecified amount of its intention to a stochastic process. The note is not a declaration but a disclaimer. This renders the text uninterpretable. Let me begin with what I hope is an elementary logical point that I was surprised to have to make repeatedly in the threads on X. If there are good reasons not to read a text, they are not to be found in that text itself. If that were the case, one would have to read it in order to defend one’s refusal to read it, a catch 22. Indeed, on X, David has implied that I am rejecting an argument that I am refusing to read, but this isn’t a fair criticism of my stance. I am refusing to even hear an argument on the basis of how it has been presented. What, then, are my reasons and on what basis have I formed them? I did, of course, have to read some of the paper before refusing to go on. I read the title, the byline, the abstract, and the process note. I have also consulted the journal’s policies, especially those related to AI. And I have had a look at the editors and editorial board of the journal; David serves on the latter. In the “Process Note on Composition and Attribution” — which, to be precise, has been placed in a box and is signed, enigmatically, “The Authors,” although the…

Private and Publish
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-09-02T11:28:46Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: With my blog more out of view than has been in the past, I’m finding that I approach writing with less urgency. This is a good thing, I think, but I will need to establish an entirely “private” writing practice if I want to make any thing of it. That is, I need to start … Continue reading Private and Publish →
encoded: With my blog more out of view than has been in the past, I’m finding that I approach writing with less urgency. This is a good thing, I think, but I will need to establish an entirely “private” writing practice if I want to make any thing of it. That is, I need to start thinking about writing more “publishable” pieces. I have put those two words in scare quotes to signal the uneasy tension between them and their difference from the mood of blogging. When I am writing a blogpost, as I am doing now, I almost feel like I’m thinking out loud, in public. In fact, my catchy title (of which I am at this moment still quite proud but may feel differently by the end) came to me while writing the first sentence of this paragraph. Blogging isn’t something we do in private and posting isn’t quite publishing. And writing essays and books has an altogether different feel. It requires days and weeks of lonely work, unobserved by others, sometimes making progress, sometimes losing ground. None of the struggle is visible to the reader except as a trace in the final product, often seen mostly in its imperfections. (Hopefully, most of the struggling ends up being successful, and therefore invisible.) There is some legitimate concern these days about the private/public distinction, the erosion of our privacy by forces outside of us. But perhaps we also need to understand the practices that maintain our privacy from the inside and, perhaps ironically, this doesn’t mean withdrawing from the world, staying out of public view. Rather, it means carefully selecting, in private, what to share with others, through publication. This idea that publishing a work properly, not merely posting it to the internet, constitutes an “interiority,” a privacy of the mind, is interesting to think about. It’s also an experience that I don’t give myself often enough. I like to think that I have a rich and interesting inner life, but, truth be told, I don’t work on it, I don’t elaborate it, nearly enough in pro…

A Simple Test
type: item
creator: Thomas Basbøll
date: 2025-08-07T10:21:13Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: I just asked Microsoft’s Copilot to write me a 1000-word essay about the normative implications of Quine’s naturalized epistemology, giving it a prompt of less than 20 words. It immediately complied and, within a few seconds, generated a coherent essay that could easily earn a decent grade in an undergraduate philosophy course. What I mean … Continue reading A Simple Test →
encoded: I just asked Microsoft’s Copilot to write me a 1000-word essay about the normative implications of Quine’s naturalized epistemology, giving it a prompt of less than 20 words. It immediately complied and, within a few seconds, generated a coherent essay that could easily earn a decent grade in an undergraduate philosophy course. What I mean is that if a student had written the same essay under closed-book conditions, given three hours at the end of a course, it would clearly have demonstrated a familiarity with the texts studied (Copilot was able to correctly cite the two key texts that I would have) and an understanding of the issues involved. The exact grade would of course depend on the level of the course and the standards of the teacher, but the student would certainly have had to attend the class and at least skimmed the readings to pull it off. I mention this, not to counter those who still insist that AI is not capable of doing their assignments, but to answer those that would have us abandon as meaningless any assignment that an AI can easily do. Keep in mind that my little test used a very low-level model (Copilot is available for free to all staff and students at CBS) and my prompt consisted of a one-sentence question along with the instruction to generate a 1000-word essay (it went over by about 100 words). A sophisticated student, faced with a 5000-word term paper at the end of a course they had not followed very closely, would be able to provide a better model with the course syllabus, learning objectives, and even the actual readings. Given a few hours, and assuming an above-average intelligence, they could no doubt cobble something together that would be quite impressive by pre-2022 standards. This ability to fake a semester’s worth of learning over a weekend is the problem we have to have face, I think. In the future, I think universities will have to make students sit for written exams, on-site and off-line, more often. A degree that does not requir…