inclusive philosophy done publicly
What would I do differently if I were to present again?
I would take my own advice.
know your audience
I wrote this presentation for a public audience but did not properly consider who that public would be. My experience delivering presentations like this has been mostly professional, and they were more like training workshops. It's a very different dynamic compared to an academic audience.
I’m a copywriter and proofreader by trade. When I write, I write to tell a story. Because while people like information, they enjoy stories. So I was trained to tell stories: show don’t tell. However, contemporary academic philosophy does not tell stories - it just tells. In my first philosophy unit at university our lecturer told us that philosophical writing is very straightforward:
Say what you’re going to say
Say it
Say what you said
No frills, no fuss, no ambiguity. How else are we to engage with ideas if not explicitly? Start with your most important idea and then explain why it is so. In this respect, philosophers and journalists have a lot in common. There is a saying in journalism:
Don't bury the lede
The lede is the most newsworthy part of a story. It’s the barebones facts of the event that is being reported. This is where philosophy and journalism diverge: journalists go on to tell the story, philosophers go on to … explain the lede in dry, bare essential detail. No frills, no fuss, no story.
The most common feedback I’ve received on my philosophical writing is
“the essay would be stronger if your primary theses was more prominent throughout”
“Make the structure of your argument more explicit”
“Be clear about your argument from the beginning”
You can see the tension here: I’m telling a story. Philosophy presents an argument. I’m showing, philosophy is telling.
The irony is that most of the canon of western academic philosophy is not explicit. It is not clear. It is not plain. Some of it even tells stories. In my presentation I tried to tell a story, and I tried to tell it explicitly and unambiguously.
It didn’t work.
kill your darlings
Inclusive design is one of my "darlings". In hindsight I spent too much time talking about different types of inclusive design; I should have just given my own interpretation and owned it. I started with inclusive design because I thought it would be the least-familiar concept to my audience. However I should have started with philosophy of mathematics and made explicit how the gaps and flaws I discussed contribute to events like Gracie's video and the subsequent backlash.
Reordering the presentation so that "inclusive design" was introduced second would have made it easier for the audience to connect the principles of inclusive design with the model of mathematics I proposed. I also needed to make explicit why that model is inclusive.
The short answer is: by structuring the philosophy of mathematics around human cognition, we are literally putting "human" at the centre of the design. The 4E model is a useful framework because it encompasses mental, physical, social and environmental contexts of people. It is comprehensive that way.
Lastly, I would probably soften some of my "absolutist" statements. To say they weren't appreciated by select members of the audience is an understatement...