{"id":7895,"date":"2026-04-09T09:18:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T08:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:20:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:20:01","slug":"why-scholars-and-students-should-write-their-own-sentences-and-paragraphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/?p=7895","title":{"rendered":"Why Scholars and Students Should Write Their Own Sentences and Paragraphs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

“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)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The editor of the Philosophers’ Magazine,<\/em> Daniel Kodsi, recently defended<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> 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”<\/a>. This is a kind of writing that I teach and coach, namely, academic <\/em>writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kodsi disagreed. Academic writing, he suggested, is also mainly communicative; its aim “is to advance knowledge by putting claims and arguments into public circulation.” Here it doesn’t matter who is making the claim. “What matters is the research, not the researcher.” Moreover, published research today is not a pure representation of what one or several researchers had on their minds at the time of writing, put the result of a complex processes involving a variety of actors. “Research assistants, editors, peer reviewers, and colleagues already shape academic work in extensive ways, and none of that is thought to invalidate it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I countered (as I had already suggested in another thread<\/a>) that the so-called replication and criticism crisis is rife with scandals in which blame for errors (and outright fabrications) is deflected onto, precisely, research assistants and co-authors. While I grant that the contributions of research assistants, editors, and peer-reviewers is a normal and accepted part of academic writing, this happens on the background of a presumption of authenticity, authorial intention. Anyone who has let a chatbot generate a text that expresses (even quite accurately<\/a>) their own ideas knows the sadness of lost authenticity. Signing your name to it feels fraudulent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a deeper issue here, which arises, not in cases of research misconduct, but precisely in the cases were it conducted normally. Kodsi suggested I elaborate a bit on it because it didn’t seem obvious to him. This post is an attempt to re-articulate my intuitions about the essence of academic writing<\/a>, why AI can’t do it<\/a>, and why you shouldn’t let it<\/a>. As you’ll see, I could be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In science, publication is not just a means to “circulate” ideas and discoveries. In fact, I would argue that good ideas and real discoveries will find receptive audiences willy-nilly, whether or not they are published in reputable journals. They will circulate as working papers, seminars and conferences presentations, and by personal emails. And they will implemented in subsequent scientific research and technological development. The main purpose of academic publication is not to communicate research results, but to expose those results (and the ideas they embody) to the criticism of qualified peers. This requires the researcher to present them in ways that are open to interrogation by other knowledgeable people, both pre- and post-publication. In a word, publishing our results (in conventional academics form) makes us corrigible<\/em>. It tells our colleagues, not just what we found, but how we found it, so that any mistakes we may have made along the way will be noticed by people working with the same methods, framed by the same theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here the researcher does in fact matter as much as the research. Research is embodied in social and material conditions, including the actual flesh-and-bone bodies<\/em> of researchers. It is the researcher whose methods must be corrected and whose instruments must be re-calibrated if they are making serious errors (or, in those hopefully rare cases, if they are committing outright fraud). “Publish or perish” is a defensible norm precisely because we want our epistemic authorities, whether they are speaking in the classroom or to the media, to be under continuous “peer review”. We want the people who speak confidently about how the world works to also be speaking carefully and clearly to people who know something about it too. In short, it matters whether the words on the pages that they sign their names to were “generated” by their own minds, not by computing statistically plausible passages of prose on the subject, even when the claims made are perfectly true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, perhaps, composing our thinking in critically open paragraphs that make explicit claims about the world, and support, elaborate, or defend those claims<\/a>, shapes our thinking, preparing it to be corrected (or corroborated) by peers we respect. That is, scholars who do their own writing are establishing precisely those logical connections between their ideas that will let them more efficiently update what Quine called their “web of belief” in light of counter-evidence to any one of them. Prosing our worlds, we might say, weaves the web in ever finer threads that allow changes to be made precisely, without, except in the extreme (but also easily identifiable) cases, having to discard a whole theory and replace it with another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We expect academics to be thus prepared for criticism. Not just willing to hear it, but able to respond to it, sometimes by changing their minds. And we don’t want these changes to result in chaos and confusion; we don’t want our knowledge of the world to be turned on its head very often. (We don’t want “progress through revolution” all the time!) We rely on our institutions of higher education (including academic research) to keep the ebbs and flows of our stream of consciousness orderly, to keep our questioning within reasonable limits.* This is simply what it means to be academically “literate”<\/a>; and we expect this of, precisely, academics themselves — not just their editors or machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kodsi’s argument tends in the same direction as those who declare, on Barthes’ dubious authority, “the death of the author”<\/a> in order to liberate the reader from the intentions of the writer and make what they will of a text, except that Kodsi seems more intent on liberating writers from the moralizing demands of their readers. As a mode of (or, as Susan Sontag suggested, a stance against) literary interpretation, I’m all for it. But, for academic<\/em> purposes, I would deploy Foucault’s proposed “author function” (an application of his idea that a discourse is shaped, in part, by its “enunciative modality”) with a straighter face and insist that our authorities commit themselves to recognizable roles. Not least, to assume the position of a subject in the discourse, an author — or even a potential author, a peer, a hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon fr\u00e8re — is to open yourself to questions from other knowledgeable people. The prose of the world<\/a> prepares our minds for critical discourse. Academics should be better prepared than most to be wrong. It is by writing that we prepare our bodies to face our errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_______
*As I was writing this sentence I couldn’t help but think of Kafka’s little allegory in “The Great Wall of China”<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Try with all your might to comprehend the decrees of the high command, but only up to a certain point; then avoid further meditation. A very wise maxim, which moreover was elaborated in a parable that was later often quoted: Avoid further meditation, but not because it might be harmful; it is not at all certain that it would be harmful. What is harmful or not harmful has nothing to do with the question. Consider rather the river in spring. It rises until it grows mightier and nourishes more richly the soil on the long stretch of its banks, still maintaining its own course until it reaches the sea, where it is all the more welcome because it is a worthier ally. Thus far may you urge your meditations on the decrees of the high command. But after that the river overflows its banks, loses outline and shape, slows down the speed of its current, tries to ignore its destiny by forming little seas in the interior of the land, damages the fields, and yet cannot maintain itself for long in its new expanse, but must run back between its banks again, must even dry up wretchedly in the hot season that presently follows. Thus far may you not urge your meditations on the decrees of the high command.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“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<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7909,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions\/7909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inframethodology.cbs.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}