:D

Yes indeed.

The universe is shaped like the consummation of a human male and a human female.

I think electrical description is particularly prone to seeing the world like a clockwork mechanism -- but it's a good example to get at what I'm thinking. The digital nature of electricity is very much something we constructed. There were regularities there of some kind, of course, but before we shaped copper into circuits with strict yes/no conditions they were not. We had to go out and look for them, imagine what might be and make guesses with some kind of shared criteria for evaluating those guesses over generations.

We wanted electricity to behave like pressure pumps. It was imagined to flow from the positive to the negative, and that description was close enough to purpose.

But now we believe that the flow from positive to negative is, in fact, the opposite -- at least in terms of the description of the flows of electrons.

But back then that didn't matter.


It's in this way that we can observe a regularity which we observe but which is not, strictly, true of the world -- and we can get by all the while feeling like we really do know what it's all about.

So now, we can say we make laws out of descriptions. There appears to be some kind of structure to these descriptions we’ve made. Call them law-like, descriptions. Why are these descriptions orderly, or, describing something a certain way to function as descriptions? — Fire Ologist

I think that's a better question.

I'd say it's because we noticed something that fits with our notion of orderliness.

In a way what I'd say is that there is no more mystery to the regularities of nature than there is to any other description. Why is the red cup red? Why are the regularities I care about regular?

Because we went looking for them and whenever something didn't fit within our notion of orderliness -- usually specified by technological achievement to do what we've done before, but better -- we threw it out.

Rather than an ontological mystery I'd just say "Cuz that's what you went looking for, and found it" -- so sure there are regularities in nature. But to go so far as to say these regularities are laws seems to interpret nature in the form of our government -- where there's some body which creates laws that follow the subject-predicate form and our guesses in science are trying to match what those laws passed by that body "says".

Be it a book of nature ala Galileo or the Mind of God ala Kant there's some order in nature which is mind-shaped, but not ours, and we're trying to "match" that mind-shape with our mind-shapes in order to comprehend nature as a whole.

At least, these are the sorts of thoughts that come to mind when someone says "law of nature" -- there are no laws of nature in the manner that you mean. There are some regularities we notice, but we never comprehend the whole such that we can "match" the shape that reality is with our mind.

The fact that the universe behaves in an orderly and intelligent fashion should be questioned, no ? — kindred

Yes!

I'm attempting to probe your thoughts, not dismiss them.

The universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates e.g. laws of physics. The question that is puzzling me right now is why are there laws in the first place and why is the universe not lawless instead ? — kindred

Are there laws of nature?

I am more inclined to say that there are regularities in nature that we pay attention to.

"Laws" sounds like there's a universally true statement about nature.

Or something along those lines, however we parse that. It's confusing because we're talking in vague terms now.

I can understand the belief that the universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates, like the laws of physics. But my antidote to your question is to ask if you're puzzling over something false -- perhaps there are no laws of nature, after all.

True. I even describe politics with 2's, though it's a recent fad.

EDIT: (thinking how the formatting isn't as easy to translate into binary -- so nonbinary politics are ones which use emphases that are ambiguous to translate into binary)

this Western global upper class is the last place to look for any systemic change. — boethius

Yup.

Basic point of the analysis being that the global revolution, if it is to come to pass, will be mostly carried out by non-Imperial-beneficiaries mostly in poor countries. — boethius

Yup.

There are proletarians in the USA, but they are not beneficiaries of imperialism -- thinking here of migrant farm workers and prison labor as clear cut examples.

Even on this writing challenge, that specifically wanted a philosophical essay — RussellA

Maybe that point needs new wording in the future -- in setting up the event at least we intended to allow both kinds of philosophical writing. Perhaps we ought restate the guideline as "4) Submissions must be philosophical writing, broadly conceived"

My hope was to elicit both kinds of writing, at least, if with more effort than we usually put into OP's and responses.

Who's the "we" tallying the results and scoring the competition? — Srap Tasmaner

The TPF mods, naturally.

It would be much harder to pull off that kind of life now. — BC

Naw. Every age has its challenges and the free spirits are still out there fighting the good fight.

Was my nephew doing philosophy? Was it rigorous? Was it disciplined? Was there logical inference at play, even at four years old? — Leontiskos

Yes.

I find children are pretty open to philosophical exploration, especially with respect to adults. Obviously they're children and do it their way, but it bears all the hallmarks of wonder, asking questions, making distinctions, pointing out what doesn't count, making up rules, etc. etc.

Something more substantive from me: I feel like I'm following along at an intuitive level here -- infinite as something we don't contain but instead outstrips, and noting how this is a kind of materialism jives well with a lot of my thoughts. Also, naturally, I like the analogy to art and noting how the infinite there is the notion that even though philosophy is ridiculous -- which I thought you parsed very well @Jamal -- you pursue it anyways, and still sincerely, while knowing it has no end.

Well, now we can proceed... lol

"Infinity"

Having gone over the disenchantment of the concept Adorno turns towards a particular concept to disenchant it from its idealist home: Infinity.

Then

:D

That's all I had written as I was reading the next bit then read your summation.

The "why these two" question has a deeper answer, viz., they represent the most rigorous investigations into foundational questions in their respective domains, and it’s during the same historical period. Wittgenstein was examining the foundations of ordinary knowledge and language, while Gödel was examining the foundations of the most rigorous knowledge we possess (mathematics). That they independently discovered analogous structural limits suggests this isn't domain-specific but reveals something about the structure of systematic thought itself. — Sam26

:up: That satisfies me, at least. Similar time periods, different areas of inquiry, similar conclusions indicate that we're dealing with something deeper than just a single thinker. Especially as the thinkers, as others have said here, don't see eye-to-eye elsewhere.

I am now caught up to here. One thing I want to highlight that I didn't see anyone else highlight just yet:

To change this direction of conceptuality, to turn it towards the non-identical, is the hinge of negative dialectics. — p 23

The use of "hinge" stood out to me because of his invocation of Wittgenstein. (I did a quick google and PI was 1953, and ND was 1966 for publication dates)

Interesting to me in the way that he's reflecting from Hegel -- the metaphor of a hinge with relation to Hegel makes sense of what he's doing I think. There are some certainties which Hegel would not have grasped or set out as important whereas Negative Dialectics does, namely by the reading so far the particular and the non-conceptual, or non-identical.

Finished my first read. Something I think worth noting from the conclusion:

Unless names are invidiously named, sermons like this one tend to cause less
offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people. — Timothy Williamson

I was impressed by that because I began to think while reading "Is this just a sermon?"

Well, not just -- but an earnest sermon to pay attention to.

Still mulling, but there's a lot of good reflections in there. (And, actually, I thought the paper had demonstrated its point at around page 15-ish)

What I felt may have 'gone wrong' a little was a lack of 'fun' element, which was present in the short story competitions. I wonder if it was because there was not a competition, or whether the word 'essay' makes the writing seem too serious and reminiscent of school essays. — Jack Cummins

I could have done a better job here. And truthfully my hope is someone else takes the spot of coordinator for next year -- I'd like to participate next time!

Great essay @Sam26, and I found your above responses elucidating.

I can see the structural parallel. There's a part of me that still wonders: Why this particular set of parallels? My first guess is that in two disciplines in which complicated thought is required we find a common between Godel and Wittgenstein, and that particular combination is persuasive of a larger structure in thinking that must be -- namely that there will be truths that are not grounded at the same level within any sufficiently "complicated"* body of -- knowledge?

*Whatever that is cached out as

I can see the analogy, but it's the part that I think could really sell the argument home -- not just a strong analogy, but even a reason to bring these people together due to the structure of thought, or something like that. Somehow strengthening the tie between the two examples.

Still, I say that in an attempt to be helpful, and your essay far surpasses my little comments on it. Thanks for your submission!

I regret not having responded in time for your passing Vera. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Yours is a good reflection on one of those perennial philosophical questions, and I enjoyed the quirky contrast between asking what it means to be human and what it means to be lettuce -- two questions of the same form but which we'd probably want to treat differently, so what's the difference?

Rest in Peace, Vera.

Nice. I like it!

I am one of those who likes rhymes in poems because it makes them easier to speak aloud in a manner that captivates the audience. So when I read the above out loud to myself I could feel the rhythms carrying me through the ideas much better -- but that really may just be due to my own preferences and experiences with poetry, too. Thanks for indulging me!

I'll unpin this message since the event is officially over, but honestly I'm going to keep commenting on them too. There's two essays I've yet to respond to, and so will do that by the end of day today.

But they all have a lot of richness and capability to continue spurring on discussion. Unlike an OP, though, I've had to put more effort into even a first response in order to respect the time and care that all of the authors put into their works.

I'm really impressed with everyone's work -- I felt a lot of different thoughts going in various ways I wouldn't have without having read them all. The hardest part was even attempting to offer some kind of critical feedback in the spirit of philosophy because of how good they all were. So thanks to everyone for your work! I know I'll continue to respond even though the event is "officially over".

Such as changing it to a dialogue? Or to another structure? Suggestions? — PoeticUniverse

If it were to my preferences then I'd ask you to do something like iambic pentameter where the main thoughts are in the rhyming form of ABAB CDCD EFEF etc. as needed and chosen, and when you reach a conclusion you finish it with a rhyming couplet.

Basically I like Shakespearean Sonnetts.

To be fair -- I haven't read Schiller. I do like your presentation of "play" though.

I'd like to include this notion of "play" into "aesthetic judgment". We both express and judge our taste -- I'd go so far as to say in order to express taste we had to form a judgment of some kind, even if it be an impression and nothing else.

I think philosophy expresses "aesthetics", whereas the artist expresses the art which aesthetics is about. I don't think that the analytic approach must be brutal. It can be, but it can also acknowledge many differences as long as they are clear.

But I agree that the useless nature of aesthetics is what makes it important. Similarly so with philosophy.

May art, and thereby philosophy, be ever more useless I say!

The poems are ten-syllable Rubaiyat-style (as I have extended The Rubaiyat); easy to contain with one breath. — PoeticUniverse

Heh, then it's my ignorance that skips over the structure.

Not your fault but mine.

I'm open to suggestion; do you have any in mind? — PoeticUniverse

I think iambic pentameter works well in English -- but I like the old bard.

Whenever I write a poem I try to think about it as something that will be spoken -- so that the written poem is more like a musical score than the poem, something to be performed rather than read.

So I really like poems which pay attention to their phonic structure and attempt to build rhythms out of the words. There's a kind of magic that this produces in the hearer, and if you can pull it off while making sense it makes for a very captivating poem.

But it takes a lot of time to focus in on phonic structure while also making sense so I thought only 1 part of this epic would be enough of a challenge.

And, really, it's just a preference of mine. Yours was a harder piece to respond to because I could see what you were getting at, but I wanted to respond in kind: with a poem for a poem.

(I like Durant's "every civilization begins like as a Stoic, and dies an Epicurean," too, even if it isn't always true). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd push here and say "Is it ever true?" -- but I'd want Durant to clarify his use of "Epicurean" which I imagine is the more popular image.

Epicurus gets the shaft far more often than deserved so I always want to stand up for him -- especially because I'm guessing Durant means it as in "decadent pathos at the cost of prudence"

I'll just add that the classical formulation of the difference is that science deals with the universal and the necessary. History is always particular though. Indeed, it's the particular in which all universals are instantiated. This doesn't preclude a philosophy of history, but it does preclude a science of history. Jaques Maratain has a very short lecture/book on philosophy of history that makes this case quite compactly, and he's drawing on the "traditional" distinction (in the West) that was assumed for many centuries. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I tried to draw an analogy between science/history as I'm trying to defend it, but then upon examination I thought "Naw -- there really is a conceptual difference here" -- In a way this is a testament to philosophy, though. What we mean by "science" in our world today is a product of philosophical exploration -- it just took some odd 400 years to even be able to point to the distinction in a reasonable manner.

Still, I say this without having read the lecture/book you refer to.

That's an interesting point. I'd generally agree. Historians can sometimes absolutize historicism and scientists of a certain persuasion can sometimes absolutize their inductive methodology into a presumption of nominalism and the idea that all knowing is merely induction. In the latter case, this is sometimes quite explicit, e.g. Bayesian Brains. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

In terms of a logos at work in history, I certainly think we can find one, just not a science. Hegel's theory seems to explain some aspects of 20th century history quite well. There is a sort of necessity in the way internal contradictions work themselves out, and you see this same point being made in information theoretic analyses of natural selection that look at genomes as semipermeable membranes that selectively let information about the environment in, but arrest its erasure. Contradiction leads to conflict that must be overcome. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Given my persuasion I ought agree -- but it's one of those points that I constantly find myself coming back to to work out what it really means, after all. I recognize the irony here -- negating sublation would lead to the sublation of sublation -- but my doubt is a little old fashioned here in wondering just how do I go about making this inference myself?

There are a handful of examples that I can see the pattern in, including my own patterns of thinking.

But I also know it's very easy to read patterns into what we're considering. And at least as I understand it Hegel's philosophy of history is pretty out there to the point that, while I find it interesting, I know exactly how it'd sound to anyone who thinks time is linear.

I'm fairly skeptical of a logos in history, too, but I doubt that's surprising :D

But you cannot predict this sort of thing in any strict sense, because it is always particular. A great image for this is in Virgil. Virgil is very focused on the orientation of thymos (honor, spirit) in service of a greater logos (the good of the community, the historical telos of Rome, and ultimately, the Divine). However, although his gods (themselves a mix of personified man-like deity and more transcendent Logos) set the limit of logos in human history, and characters only ever recognize them when they leave. I've been rereading the Aeneid and this seems true in almost every case; only when they turn to go, when we are "past them" in the narrative, are they recognized as gods by man. It's very clever, and works well with elements in the narrative that are skeptical of the ultimate ability of man to consistently live up to logos. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I like your ability to draw analogies to pre-modern philosophy. And definitely appreciate the references to poetry.

I don't think we can predict these things in a strict sense, of course. History is too particular for that. But then, to wrap this back to the OP, to what extent does the world-builder philosophy help understand these historical moments? Not prediction, but what is the relationship? "Sense-making"?

@Baden -- Just reread trying to look for an "in" for discussion. And the thing I'm wanting more of is specification of these enzymatic knowledge machines: How do they interact with the independent flows of code such that in place of identification, or in combatting this?, we get or somehow are interrupted by knowledge? But that's a Kudos on your writing because it means I wanted more, basically. It's an interesting premise, and I like the theoretical set up between what I would call, for lack of a better word, two subjectivities -- the social subjectivity (operating independent of individual intent) and the individual subjectivity (that sense of being you which, due to social subjectivity, is often a process of identification-with and enactment).

A thought that comes to mind are Koans. They're meant to stop that circuit of the self in a way.

@PoeticUniverse

Icarean poet; capture it all
A breadth so wide with Being as your bride
How can you speak this Truth without a fall?
Visions from which a muse in you confide?

But do not neglect basic rhythm-rhyme
The form speaks deep from the mouth of the muse
And though we can break form some of the time
We do so to demonstrate and bemuse

The world's ineluctable poetry
rather than being said is better seen


*****

As a lover of Lucretius I appreciate that someone attempted to tackle the poetic form of philosophy. But I think that for a poetic philosophy structure is very important to pay attention to. I would encourage you trying to tackle just one of these parts and turn it into some sort of structure just to see if there's one that speaks to you -- in a way it's more a preference on my part, but also I think it'd be a good exercise to try.

I'm interested in the general thrust of your essay where you're speaking in favor of aesthetics. I'm more inclined towards a cognitivist aesthetics, but not necessarily because that's the reason we are drawn to something but rather because that's the form of philosophy, and I've noticed that by trying to articulate aesthetic attraction I notice more about the art-object and others like it than I did before -- rather than clouding I see articulations of aesthetics as a way of opening them up for further experience, to see something even more deeply.

However, and perhaps predictably, I don't see this as somehow separate from the political sphere. There's a sort of aestheticism that I can see as being politically neutered, but a proper play wouldn't want to be neutered -- politics and power go hand in hand. But it is by our aesethetic judgment that we develop the capacity for choosing when to exercise power and when to let it go for the benefit of others. In this sense I can see a place for "Play" -- in a way the totalitarian destroys play by giving us an answer to which we must conform, as it's the good answer. But in play that's not exactly so settled.

Great work @i like sushi

@Benkei I doubt you'll find this surprising, but my reaction was an answer to the question:

Why do you preach to the choir?

So that they choir will sing.

There's a character that fills shop floors that I call "The Cowboy" -- the cowboy sees themselves out in this world alone with nothing but themselves to rely upon, and furthermore, the cowboy knows they're good enough to get by without anyone's help. They'll accept the consequences of whatever comes. In a way this is an ultimate form of self-responsibility -- accepting any consequences whatsoever and adapting to said consequences. But on the other hand it's false: You're not a cowboy, you're Teddy whose worked in the maintenance shop of Parks and Recreation for 15 years and hasn't paid his dues while reaping the benefits of a union contract.

So, yes, I agree with your position and by that fact it makes it difficult for me to be critical.

Perhaps the audience here is more used to engaging with non-axiomatic content?

I have professors of philosophy and PhD holders following the work who initially reacted just like some of the comments here - but many have since come around and now advocate for the core argument. — James Dean Conroy

Cool. I do not mean to pick on this as something which isn't worthwhile, I'm only speaking my first impressions to the best of my ability (by the time I promised I'd respond). The writing felt opaque in a way that it was kind of hard to engage with for myself -- it could just be because you've condensed so much into a short amount that I'm not picking up on all the nuances on a first read. I found myself agreeing with your assertion that life must be presupposed for any evaluation to occur, but uncertain what it really meant overall -- hence the picking and wondering.

@Jack Cummins I liked that this essay was a review and kept to that role. I've noticed that it's hard for people to write a review because they over-editorialize and input their opinion on the subject matter, but you did a good job of sticking to the authors and their claims with a minimum of commentary.

@ucarr

Just as the time compression of abstract thought makes mental constructs seem timeless, the time dilation of absential materialism makes intentional constructs seem immaterial. The time compression of abstract thought is to the time dilation of absential materialism as the discrete boundaries of the particle form are to the probability clouds of the waveform. — ucarr

Your section on time is the part I found the most interesting of this reflection. "time compression/dilation", in the context of your equation for material reality, reminds me of Kant. Actually your schema generally reminds me of Kant, for that matter -- the material reality outside of the senses to the senses to the physical mind to the mental correlate to the concept to the sentence -- and were this to continue in that vein your time compression/dilation would take place somewhere in-between the neural correlates to the mental and the mental.

Only you do go a step further and equate basically everything with material reality, even the supervening mental correlates.

That'd probably be the part that's hardest for me to wrap my mind around. I have often thought of how to naturalize Kant, but ultimately gave it up because it just always seemed to go a step too far for what is written. And once naturalized you end back in the antinomies of freedom/causation, for instance -- the noumenal took care of the "beyond" in his system. How would you account for such an antinomy using your equation? Or would it just be set aside as uninteresting?

@James Dean Conroy

Captured my first impression of the essay, and I think 's insight is correct.

- DESCRIPTIVE — it shows the structure under all value, without telling anyone what to do. — James Dean Conroy

What do you make of 's find? Is that the same as what you intend here? Mostly asking here because that paper explicitly recommends that philosophers, policy-makers, etc. adopt this attitude with respect to evaluating "systems". That looks like an ought to me. I.e. telling people what to do.

- AXIOMATIC — deny it and you contradict yourself. — James Dean Conroy

Is contradicting myself bad? What if contradiction lead to life thriving?

Everyone has a human right to both opinion and beliefs, and all opinions and beliefs are equal. Yet this is not a solid foundation for a society and would lead to anarchy. It is in the philosophical essay that opinions and beliefs need to be justified. — RusselA

@RussellA

I'm noticing throughout the essay that this is the plank on which you seem to advance your case for the philosophical essay as a necessary part of philosophy. I think you've done a fine job of defining the philosophical essay with your citations, but this is the part of your claim that I think is somewhat "taken for granted" in the essay -- not that you won't find people who agree with it. I think it's one of those commonsensical beliefs common among philosophers, so it will likely pass many on the rhetorical level -- there's nothing to argue there so there's no reason to argue the plank.

But it is the part I found myself thinking "But..." to, and noticing how though the appeal to deliberation with facts and reason is supported by the notion that any society which does not have this kind of philosophical practice will not be a society at all, but anarchy. If you could support that intuition then I think your essay would be strengthened.

Are you truly unable to see Haidt's point? Have you ever watched children at recess, playing a game and disputing the rules? — Leontiskos

Well, at the park at least.

That's very much what children do when they play anything at all.

Contrariwise, when an adult plays a video game with children, they get their ass beat, but they are never accused of breaking rules. They are just laughed at because they are so bad. — Leontiskos

Now note I'm talking about children playing with children. They do all the stuff you're describing no matter the medium -- at the park, playing wall ball, playing pretend, playing "a game", or playing MineCraft.

I think that the video game is singled out with respect to marbles because there's a kind of nostalgia for an age that didn't exist, as if children were somehow better off then than now, and our modern technology is ruining their development.

At one point it was comic books that would ruin children's minds, then television, and now video games. It's the same concern played out over and again.

So Haidt compared video games to marbles and says that the video game is inferior to marbles because Piaget would play marbles with children and intentionally break the rules to see what the children did, which was to somehow negotiate the rules of the game in order to keep playing.

There is a video game called MineCraft which doesn't exactly have rules to play by. There are rules in the sense that it is a physics engine where different simulations of objects interact within some set of rules which are apparently deterministic. But there's no reason to do one thing over the other. I've watched children play video games in the exact manner that Haidt praises the negotiation of rules for marbles -- the children are in fact still children even with different technology, and they negotiate all kinds of rules all the time.

I want to do much more than I have done so far. — Truth Seeker

Understandable.

In terms of your goals, though, I think that the best you can do is continue to do as you've been doing. Your goals are all worthy of pursuit.

They are, however, very big goals. And not just 1 very big goal, but 14 very big goals.

I'd suggest starting to look at how much one individual can achieve in the circumstances they find themselves in. There's a lot of important things to pursue, but an individual person is very limited on what they can effect in the world. As a fellow dreamer of a better tomorrow whose tried more than one thing I can tell you that I, at least, had to recognize my limit as an individual. Maybe you'll find a better route other than a kind of faith and doing what you can today for tomorrow, though it be so little.

The idea is not that guessing is a feature, but rather that a game which involves rule-negotiation is superior to a game which does not. Hence Haidt's claim that, "A video game is really like the junk food of games..." — Leontiskos

I think that's an opinion written from ignorance, honestly. I play video games with my family all the time, and negotiations about the meta-rules of play are a part of that. It's not that different from a board game -- it's not like you can hack the laws of physics to make dice roll a different way. So it goes with a video game -- you can't hack the code, but you still play with others and form relationships and negotiate through them and that's what makes the game good.

↪Moliere complains that Aristotle’s “induction” is not (deductively) valid, but according to Piaget this is a feature, not a bug — Leontiskos

I don't complain about it -- I understand that guessing is a feature, and not a bug. What I noted is that there's a limit to guessing and checking due to our finitude, much in line with Kant's epistemology where science can count ofas knowledge, but not (EDIT: knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and metaphysics cannot count as knowledge, though the mind will continue to pursue it due to how it functions and desires for a complete picture.

The Ideas of Plato, and explicitly God, Freedom, and Immortality are the things beyond reason's ability to justify in from theoretical cognition. We can practically know them, but this is a kind of rational faith rather than a knowledge like we know causation.

I think that Aristotle believed you could make inductions up to that point because the universe is finite, and so even if you're wrong there's going to be a good guess out there to find. Even in metaphysics.

Kant, on the other hand, took the problem of induction seriously -- was it even a problem in Aristotle's time? Is Aristotle's topics anything other than a students guide to thinking about inference rather than a deep philosophical treatise? -- and answered it. The answer, however, cuts off knowledge of the deepest IDeas traditionally associated with philosophy, at least of the theoretical sort.

My noting that his induction isn't valid is more or less associated with his metaphysical conclusions rather than everything he ever said. I think once you're talking about God, Freedom, or Immortality theoretical knowledge can't touch it -- mostly due to Kant's influence on my thinking.

You've switched the topic. You said, "it would defeat the point of the website to exclusively do philosophy by PM, perhaps." I can see that you would have no qualms with someone who only PM'ed, but it does seem to me that the purpose of the website has to do with a forum. — Leontiskos

It's not a change of topic to note what the "perhaps" I had in mind as an exception was. Also, on the other side, "perhaps" means that there's something I could have overlooked while still saying there's nothing wrong with philosophy by PM, even by the standards of a fora. It is and has been a feature since the forums inception.

Echo chambers, so I believe, we all believe are bad. Or at least understand that to be a danger. Wanting scrutiny in the public eye, so I believe, we all believe to be good.

PM's are a means to facilitate avoiding the bad and pursuing the good.

So an OP which says, "I might also invite PM contributions," is saying, "I might invite some of you to contribute to our personal relationship"? That is a very curious reading. Usually when an OP talks about "contributions" it is talking about contributions to the thread. Surely you see this? — Leontiskos

I'd say it's contributing to the question, sure. Not just any PM -- but ones about the question. Necessarily that doesn't contribute to the thread, but it could still contribute to the forum in the same manner that my analogy meant.

So, yes, it is a forum, and the forum is a community, which comprises many sorts of relationships -- even when it's a specialty topic. Sometimes a person wants to contribute to a topic without contributing to a thread, and that would most likely be due to some relationship involved such as "I tend to see you as a trustworthy person on this topic, so..."