Bullshit philosophy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10813564 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rima Basu (0000-0001-8083-5996, Claremont McKenna College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 206 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Synthese (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0039-7857 • E-ISSN: 1573-0964 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11229-025-05198-x |
| OpenAlex | W4413441979 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
Academic journals and peer review serve dual roles in the academic ecosystem: advancing knowledge and advancing careers. This duality can lead researchers to employ strategic opportunism to game the system through a variety of means ranging from fraud to plagiarism. This paper highlights another strategy that can seem instrumentally rational in the face of these pressures: bullshitting. With respect to philosophical research, such an approach is especially troublesome because the bullshitter takes advantage of the degree to which philosophical practice, in aiming at understanding, relies on the principle of charity. As I demonstrate in this paper, this extension of charity to others is not just something we do for moral reasons, it has an important epistemic purpose as well, one closely tied to an epistemic aim of philosophy. In undermining charity, the bullshitter undermines the philosophical enterprise itself. Bullshit philosophical inquiry thus risks leaving us both morally and epistemically worse off
Epistemology · Metaphysics · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of language · Philosophy of science · Philosophy of technology · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |