Manipulative Tactics

Manipulative tactics are those that can get people into believing something without giving any reason to think the belief is true. Informal fallacies are errors in reasoning that are often used as manipulative tactics, but sometimes we can use a manipulative tactic without actually committing an error in reasoning. Although informal fallacies are only one type of manipulative tactic, philosophers often treat all manipulative tactics as though they are fallacies. Just about every type of manipulative tactic has a corresponding fallacy. I will give examples of various manipulative tactics and corresponding fallacies. I hope to help make it clear that the difference between fallacies and potentially nonfallacious manipulative tactics is generally not important enough to worry about. Some people might defend a manipulative tactic by insisting it’s “not actually fallacious,” but that reply would usually miss the point.

Why Care About Philosophy?

The most popular page on this site has been Philosophy is Important for quite some time, but that page has now been replaced with a new piece I recently wrote (that uses the same name). I was not convinced that the old piece deserved all the attention it got, but it is certainly an important issue.

The older piece that used to be there is now a PDF and can be seen here: 11 Reasons Philosophy is Important.

Eleven Types of Scientism

A lot of people accuse those who are dismissive of non-scientific fields of study of having scientistic views. This raises important questions—Is science always the only legitimate source of knowledge? Could philosophy ever be a source of knowledge?

The main issue concerning scientism that I’m interested in is the scientistic view that philosophy has little to nothing it can contribute. For example, in 2011 Stephen Hawking said, “[P]hilosophy is dead… philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”¹ And in 2012 Lawrence Krauss said, “[S]cience progresses and philosophy doesn’t.”²

Even so, anti-philosophical views are not the only types of scientism, and I believe that some types of scientism can be explicitly favorable to philosophy. What exactly is scientism? I will define and categorize various types of scientism.

More Philosophy Definitions Part 5

I have defined several new philosophically-related terms for the Comprehensible Philosophy Dictionary (a work in progress). You can let me know if you think any of the terms need further clarification or if any need improvement for any other reason.