Research time: the use of trivial examples

What I want to do now is consider the use of trivial examples, for two main reasons:

  1. Based on what I have already covered, one would think that the use of trivial examples was okay. After all, they are firmly grounded in everyday experience, so we are likely to form reliable intuitions from examining them.
  2. Nevertheless, my supervisor objected to my use of trivial examples early in the development of my Masters thesis.

I don't really know why, for my purposes today, that 2 would hold, however. For a start, my supervisor was referring me primarily to the comments made to him personally by one of the markers of my Honours thesis. Apparently, that marker had had a particular problem with some of the examples that I had used in a section on etiquette. He said that they seemed to be like "table manners". I'm afraid I don't really know what the problem would be with considering table manners in a section on etiquette, however.

Based on my discussions with the supervisor, I hit upon an acceptable reason to avoid (but not eschew) trivial examples. It would beef up the writing more if I focused on practical issues of a pressing nature. Nevertheless, that still seems to be of merely rhetorical significance.

I would very much appreciate the opportunity to talk to him again about the use of trivial examples. I seem to have much more reason to consider them now that I have performed the research mentioned below. At least, I should find some work somewhere that criticises trivial examples. I should not have to come up with reasons for it on my own, because I have no problem with such examples. One of the problems that I used to have as a philosopher was that I was all too content to "shadow box" rather than deal with real opponents. I think that this prevented me from being able to properly see the force of certain possible objections to my own views. If I am going to get back into philosophy now, therefore, I must make a clean sweep of such problems, and turn over a new leaf.

In the meantime, though, I will not be opposed to the use of trivial examples that I believe will foster reliable intuitions. I will still try, however, to find some sort of criticism of them.

The sort of examples I have in mind, however, are mainly autobiographical. I hope that that will be sufficient to keep the reader thinking in sympathy with me as I take her on the journey thorugh which I went to learn my lesson in question.

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