This from an academic article sent to me on 'bullshit attacks'. Walter Carnielli We want to argue that falling into a specific deceptive reasoning which we call bullshit attack is not anything irrational from our side, but rather a rational response from an opponent maneuver, and that the entire episode can bee seen as a game, where logic and a certain principle of rational discussion play essential roles. Indeed, an opponent may act coercively into our reasoning process by using irrelevant facts or assertions, and by telling half truths in such a way that we feel forced to “complete” the story in a way that interest the opponent, perhaps contrary to our own interests. Even to define what is “to deceive” is not easy. The act of deceiving would have to be intentional, and to involve causing a belief - but what about acting as to prevent a false belief to be revised by the other person? And to act as to make the other person to cease to have a true belief, or to prevent the person from acquiring a certain true belief? Of course one can deceive by gestures, by irony and also by just making questions. So there seems to be no universally accepted definition of “deceiving” yet; we assume currently a definition stated in [17]: To deceive = to intentionally cause another person to have or continue to have a false belief that is truly believed to be false by the person intentionally causing the false belief by bringing about evidence on the basis of which the other person has or continues to have that false belief.
Summary. This paper intends to open a discussion on how certain dangerous kinds of deceptive reasoning can be defined, in which way it is achieved in a discussion, and which would be the strategies for defense against such deceptive attacks on the light of some principles accepted as fundamental for rationality and logic. Last lines (after much on Tarski and Godel) - Starting from the understanding that what I am proposing here is not to use methods of formal or informal logic to analyze fallacies, but to pay due attention to principles that also affect logic, discerning the reasons why we succumb under a bullshit attack may help us to understand why we commit other illusions of reasoning. Anyone interested can get the full paper from me by email. On a Theoretical Analysis of Deceiving: How to Resist a Bullshit Attack Walter Carnielli GTAL/CLE and Department of Philosophy–IFCH, State University of Campinas, [email protected] --
