Bullshit and Philosophy Part 15

R.A. Kerr, "Getting Warmer, However You Measure It," Science 304 (2004), pp. 80507; see also B.D. Santer et al., "Influence of Satellite Data Uncertainties on the Detection of Externally Forced Climate Change," Science 300 (2003), pp. 128084; and National Research Council, Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000).

173.

Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science (2004). Available at www.ucsusa.org.

174.

M. Gough, "Science, Risks, and Politics," in M. Gough, ed., Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Marshall Inst.i.tute, 2003), pp. 125.

175.

Ironically, Gough lampoons philosophers at the end of his chapter, quoting Feynman: "Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong." Gough seems completely unaware that he has undermined a key point made earlier in his chapter when he was relying upon philosopher Karl Popper.

176.

A salient example of this att.i.tude is a review of Frankfurt's On Bulls.h.i.+t on Amazon.com that complains it "is filled with obvious rhetoric that makes the book sound scientific, when it is actually drivel."

177.

Rhetoric and writing topped the list of programs experiencing growth during the late 1980s, besting programs in creative writing, technical writing, and literature and interdisciplinary studies. See Bettina J. Huber, "Recent and Antic.i.p.ated Growth in English Doctoral Programs: Findings from the MLA's 1990 Survey," ADE Bulletin 106 (Winter, 1993), pp. 4560.

178.

Jesse Holland, "Senate to Open Alito Nomination Hearings." a.s.sociated Press. Online 9th January, 2006.

179.

"Bush Urges Senate to Give Alito Fair, Quick, Unanimous Confirmation," The Onion (17th January, 2006). (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44467) 180.

Jeremy Campbell, The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood (New York: Norton, 2001).

181.

George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 25.

182.

Ken Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52, pp. 4765.

183.

Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).

184.

There are some important exceptions. At both the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota, for example, students are required to take Rhetoric (offered by a Rhetoric, not English, department) in lieu of the usual required Composition courses. It would be interesting to doc.u.ment the contribution to an education through a comparison of these different models.

185.

Plato's unflattering portrayal of poets and Sophists mark the opening salvo in the philosophical war against bulls.h.i.+t, even though Plato availed himself of bulls.h.i.+t in promoting the "myth of the metals" as a principle of social stratification in his Republic. This doublethink has not been lost on today's neo-conservative followers of Leo Strauss.

186.

An updated defense of Franklin's position ("the civilizing force of hypocrisy") is Jon Elster, "Deliberation and Const.i.tution Making," in Jon Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 97122.

187.

Nevertheless, the emerging literature in "virtue epistemology" courts just such uninhibited judgments. See Linda Zagzebski and Abrol Fairweather, eds., Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

188.

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fas.h.i.+onable Nonsense: Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of Science (London: Profile, 1998).

189.

"Let the believer beware!"

190.

On this reading of Galileo, see Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975).

191.

Ernest Gellner, Words and Things: A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology (London: Gollancz, 1959). An academically sublimated form of such language-driven cla.s.s anxiety remains in the discipline of sociolinguistics, whose seminal researcher was Basil Bernstein. His work is compiled in Cla.s.s, Codes, and Control: Theoretical Studies towards a Sociology of Language, three volumes (London: Routledge, 197177).

192.

A good collection of recent work on the epistemology of testimony is the following special issue: Martin Kusch and Peter Lipton, eds., Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33: 2 (June 2002), Part A, pp. 209423.

193.

Among those touched by Kierkegaard were not only the Existentialists but also the young Karl Popper. See Malachi Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 19021945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 8384. I read Popper sympathetically as a "scientific existentialist" in Steve Fuller, Kuhn versus Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Cambridge: Icon, 2003), pp. 100110.

194.

One way to look at the inter-temporal comparison of the evidentiary basis of knowledge claims in the present and the imagined future is in terms of sacrificing a short-term adherence to "only the truth" in favor of "the whole truth" in the long term. I discuss this as a trade-off between correspondence and coherence theories of truth in Steve Fuller, The Intellectual (Cambridge: Icon, 2005), pp. 5160.

195.

On the influence of inquisitorial legal systems on Bacon, see James Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 21718.

196.

For an account of the Lomborg Affair, focusing on the legal issues, see Steve Fuller, "The Future of Scientific Justice: The Case of the Skeptical Environmentalist." Futures 36 (2004), pp. 63136.

197.

On the early problematic inst.i.tutionalization of Baconian ideal, see William Lynch, Solomon's Child: Baconian Method in the Early Royal Society of London (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2001).

198.

See Tal Golan, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature: The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).

199.

"Naturalism" is normally regarded as a metaphysical doctrine, a species of monism opposed to supernaturalism. The doctrine has been historically hostile to monotheistic world-views for their postulation of a transcendent deity, resulting in an unforgivable dualism. This point joins, say, Spinoza and Dewey in common cause as naturalists, regardless of their many other differences. However, the prefix "methodological" softens the blow by suggesting that only the conduct of science-not all aspects of human existence-presupposes naturalism. Even this is false, as any honest appraisal of the metaphysical realist (a.k.a. supernaturalist) strand in the history of science should make apparent. I partic.i.p.ated in Kitzmiller as a "reb.u.t.tal witness," specifically to this bit of bulls.h.i.+t that the judge ended up accepting without question. Philosophers have questioned both why adherence to scientific methodology requires naturalism and why adherence to naturalism must remain merely methodological. These two points are made, respectively, in Theodore Schick, "Methodological Naturalism versus Methodological Realism," Philosophy 3: 2 (2000), pp. 3037; Ma.s.simo Pigliucci, "Methodological versus Philosophical Naturalism," Free Inquiry 23 (2003), pp. 5355.

Volume 24 in the series, Popular Culture and Philosophy To order books from Open Court, call 1-800-815-2280, or visit our website at www.opencourtbooks.com.

Open Court Publis.h.i.+ng Company is a division of Carus Publis.h.i.+ng Company.

Copyright 2006 by Carus Publis.h.i.+ng Company First printing 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Open Court Publis.h.i.+ng Company, a division of Carus Publis.h.i.+ng Company, 315 Fifth Street, P.O. Box 300, Peru, Illinois, 61354-3000.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bulls.h.i.+t and philosophy : guaranteed to get perfect results every time / edited by Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch.