a city of thought

This is an image that I really like, but that I haven't yet figured out how to state eloquently. So here comes the crude version. Basically, it is my image of my own thought processes.

Imagine that you're looking at a structure of some sort through a dense fog. And as the fog clears, you catch a glimpse, an edge, an impression here and there. But it's less like a structure behind the fog being revealed, and more like the fog itself coalescing into the structure, the city. Thinking is the process of refining this image, of working at it until the edges sharpen and it snaps into focus. But the process isn't smooth; for a long time, you may think that everything is set one way, but then suddenly the whole vision snaps into a different arrangement, and you realize that there are things you never understood, floors and walls and trusses you never imagined. And once you've got one element more or less set, one building, one shape, you start to see its vague connections to all these other half-seen half-understood areas, all these lines stretching out into the distance.

In other words, the process of thinking (and I'm talking about doing philosophy here) is the process of constructing a city of thought.

It is one of the funny aspects of philosophy that everyone has to do this for themselves. This is perhaps why we've made so little progress (as opposed to various other disciplines). We are all always starting anew; we are all required to judge for ourselves - else we wouldn't be doing philosophy proper. (I think this is much like the claim that there should never be normal philosophy; we should always be engaged in (or at least have the possibility of near to hand) revolutionary philosophy).

If this is the case, then how is this a thing that we can do together? What are the works of others to me? If I am required to always be starting over, what help can what another has said be to me?

The answer, I take it, is not so much that they provide us with the answers, but with building materials. And sure, these materials may be flawed; we might want to throw them out and make our own. But there's a difference between proving the Incompleteness Theorems the first time (Godel) and proving them once you know the general path (everyone else). (Though they're both proofs, both equally valid, doing one is much harder than doing the other).

This blog, then, is about gathering raw materials.