Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Bullshit

  • Taqiyya, Tawriya, and Creative Lying

    Here: Perhaps you have heard of taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances, primarily when Muslim minorities live under infidel authority. Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances—including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah—provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a…

  • Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?

    Sam Harris poses the following question to physicist Lawrence M. Krauss: One of the most common justifications for religious faith is the idea that the universe must have had a creator. You’ve just written a book alleging that a universe can arise from “nothing.” What do you mean by “nothing” and how fully does your…

  • Never Bullshit! Mitt Romney on Non Sequiturs and the Null Set

    Thinking about the mendacity of Obama, Schumer, and Kyl, I was put in mind of a post of mine dated 6 June 2007 from the old Powerblogs site in which I expose some bullshitting by Mitt Romney.  Here it is again.  If you want to be taken seriously by intelligent people, you must never use words…

  • Do Physicists Bullshit?

    To be precise, my question is whether or not there are any written specimens of bullshit produced by physicists. I submit that there are such examples. Herewith, one example. First a simple point of logic: To show that there are Fs, it suffices to adduce one F. And note: a person who produces a specimen…

  • Philosophy, Fiction, and Bullshit

    In On Becoming a Novelist (Harper & Row, 1983), John Gardner raises the question of what the aspiring writer should study if he goes to college: A good program of courses in philosophy, along with creative writing, can clarify the writer's sense of what questions are important . . . . There are obvious dangers.…

  • Bullshitting and Lying

    What is it to bullshit?  Perhaps the best way to understand bullshitting is by comparing it to lying. So what is it to lie? The first thing to understand is that a lie is not the same as a false statement. Suppose I make a statement about something but my statement turns out to be…

  • Is Philosophy Bullshit?

    Intuitions about the value of philosophy vary wildly. For many it is just bullshit, "bullshitting about any topic" as a particularly benighted student of mine once wrote on a teaching evaluation. (What a joy to be quit of the classroom for good!) But anyone who says this sort of thing understands the nature of bullshit…