analytical · 4 steps
claim
Forces a piece of contemplative prose to make a single falsifiable claim about experience. Strips hedging, names what would disprove the insight, exposes whether the piece rests on a genuine observation or a rehearsed one.
Execute every step. Output the complete analysis.
You receive a piece of contemplative prose — an essay, a reflection, a fragment.
Step 1 — Extract the claim
Read the piece. Ignore the texture, the images, the music of the language. Name the single claim it is making about experience, mind, or world. State it in one sentence. If the piece is making more than one claim, isolate the load-bearing one — the one the rest of the prose is paid to support.
Step 2 — Falsify
State what observation, if it occurred, would disprove the claim. Not “complicate” — disprove. If no observation could disprove it, the claim is decorative. Name it as decorative and stop. If the claim survives: note the evidence the piece offers, and whether that evidence is firsthand or borrowed.
Step 3 — The rehearsed version
Write the version of this claim that the author would make if they were performing insight rather than having it. It will sound similar. Name the three specific moves that distinguish the performed version from the genuine one in this piece — or admit that the piece is on the performed side of the line.
Step 4 — The sharper claim
The original claim is probably too safe. State the version that the evidence in the piece would actually support if the author were willing to be wrong. One sentence. This is the claim the piece was trying to make.