Are You Full of Bulverism?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]It does involve a sort of unfalsifiability because any rejection of the theory is reinterpreted in light of the theory itself. So the example you gave of the conservative black woman, she is then regarded as uh having internalized uh oppression. She's embied the norms and the values of the ruling class. And so there's there's nothing she can do to convince her opponents because once she rejects their theory that is viewed as itself evidence in support of the theory. So it does become unfalsifiable.

[00:00:50]Bill, we can address two issues by dispelling one fallacy. One issue is theological, the other is political or social. CS Lewis called the fallacy bolverism in his book God in the dock from a hypothetical character named Ezekiel Bolver who as a child decided his mother was wrong about a geometry problem because she was a woman. So from the outset, Bill, it looks like bulverism is or similar to the genetic fallacy. Is that right?

[00:01:23]Yes, that would seem to be the the indication.

[00:01:27]Let's look at a common theological issue. Shenvy and Sawyer Wright, quoting, "In that essay, Lewis then mused on how atheists attempt to debunk belief in God by appealing to wish fulfillment." "Of course you believe in God," says the atheist, "because he is a psychological projection of your need to feel loved. He is a coping mechanism arising from a guilty conscience. He's the result of wish fulfillment that arises from your desire to escape death.

[00:02:00]Lewis pointed out that the atheist had committed a common but disastrous logical blunder in making such claims.

[00:02:09]Uh end of quote. Now here's how CS Lewis addresses it. Uh Bill and he's such a good writer. I want to read the whole passage. Uh quoting Lewis. Suppose I think after doing my accounts that I have a large balance at the bank and suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is wishful thinking.

[00:02:27]You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition.

[00:02:32]Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures then and only then will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vaporing about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you're merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do in fact break down as arguments. Now afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error. You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this, the only real issue, by busily explaining how he became so silly. Uh, end of quote. You know, by the way, Bill, I've often thought that you should have done a third PhD in psychology to answer a lot of the questions that you receive. is Lewis obviously trying to separate the psychological from the logical here. In essence, even if I'm mentally ill, when I do arithmetic, one can do the math and see if I added it correctly. Yes, clearly he's making that decision. It's a distinction between one's rational justification for one's beliefs and one's psychological motivations for holding those beliefs.

[00:04:36]And a person's beliefs are not false because of his psychological motivations. They would only be false because he's got his facts wrong. He's not rationally justified. And so in attacking a view um one needs to be uh careful not to be attacking the person's psychological motivations for why he believes as he does. Uh you need to be looking at what justification he offers for his views. Back to the article, Shenvy and Sawyer write quote Lewis is correct. Bulverism is facious.

[00:05:18]Even if someone does have an ulterior motive for making some claim, it does not follow that this claim is false. The kind of cynicism that bulverism demands is a universal acid that will ultimately dissolve and deconstruct all truth claims. If we are permitted to dismiss the truth of a claim on the grounds that the person making the claim has some hidden desire that supposedly motivates the claim, what claim will emerge unscathed?

[00:05:49]Do you believe that the Earth is a sphere? Ha, no wonder. You're probably getting kickbacks from big geography lobbyists. Uh, do you claim that 2 plus 2 equals 4? Well, that's because you're a mathematician. You have to say that or you'd lose your job. End of quote. You know, that's maddening, Bill. Uh, you can reply, "I'm not getting kickbacks."

[00:06:12]And they reply, "Yes, you are." And round and round it goes. So, Bill, have you prepared for things like this in some of your debates?

[00:06:20]Um, oh, I think that one always has to consider whether or not one's objection to an opponent's point of view might not equally apply to one's own uh point of view. And I find that non-believers are particularly susceptible to this trap.

[00:06:39]For example, um they may say, "You have no good arguments for your view." but they're completely oblivious to the fact that they've offered no good arguments for their own view. Uh and so I think one has to be um really careful to apply the same standards to both parties in any debate. Bill, I remember listening to a debate between a Christian and an atheist years ago uh in which the Christian said in a rebuttal uh you lost your faith because you were involved in a wacky religious cult that tainted your thinking. That's why you're an atheist.

[00:07:21]And the atheist immediately replied, "That's ad hominin and has nothing to do with my arguments." So I guess is that bulverism in action? And is it basically an ad hominon? I I think it is it it it's really the genetic fallacy. It's not so much ad homonym which is usually insulting the person by saying he's unintelligent or he's um a failure at what he does or um he's ugly or something of that sort that the ad homonym is a personal attack. But what these folks are talking about is a genetic fallacy where you try to invalidate a point of view by showing why a person came to adopt it. For example, the only reason you think democracy is the best form of government is because you were raised in the United States. uh and even if that's true, that says nothing about the truth or falsity of his belief uh in the worth of democracy. It it's very tempting to try to invalidate someone's view by showing how they came to hold it. for example, in your case uh or illustration saying that you became an atheist because you were involved in this um religious cult.

[00:08:50]That may be true, but that does not do anything to refute atheism or show that theism is true. You know, it's easy to see how this fallacy operates in politics as well as theology. We need to realize that critical race theory is an application of critical theory. So when one defines critical theory, one can evaluate critical race theory. Uh so let's get into that. The article continues, quote, while anyone regardless of their ideological leanings can engage in bulverism, it is almost unavoidable to those who embrace contemporary critical theory. Recall that the critical tradition stretching all the way back to Marx has always insisted that people were socialized into a false consciousness by being immersed in the ideology of the ruling class. Thus, in modern times, whites are blinded by the system of white supremacy that dominates our country. Men are blinded by the patriarchy. Straight people are blinded by heterosexism and cisgenderism. the rich are blinded by capitalism and classism. End of quote.

[00:10:06]So in brief, Shenvy and Sawyer define critical theory as, quoting them, a philosophical approach to culture and especially to literature that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures that produce and constrain it. And you know, Bill, it's probably a subject for another podcast, but they they say aspects of Marxism apparently reveal roots of critical theory all the way up to what some of the stuff we're seeing today. We often think of Marxism as strictly economical with its emphasis on the conflict between the ruling class and the lower class, but critical theory includes social and political conflicts. Uh do you think that's the connection that Shenvy and Sawyer are trying to show with >> I think that the the power struggle would be uh the point of connection the uh your your opponents those that you criticize.

[00:11:12]Uh you can do so by saying that everything they do is motivated by this um lust for power and therefore is is corrupted by it. And that enables you to um dismiss the views of your opponents without really weighing their truth.

[00:11:34]Instead, you just uh accuse them of um wanting to have inequitable power arrangements uh with them on the top.

[00:11:48]Shenve and Sawyer continue, quote, given this foundational assumption, contemporary critical theory cannot avoid appealing to bulverism. But what happens if a conservative black woman rejects the idea of systemic racism or the patriarchy or transgenderism?

[00:12:09]Again, critical theories applies the answer. She is suffering from internalized oppression. She has embied the norms and values of the ruling class and has not yet attained a critical consciousness.

[00:12:24]Critical theory therefore enshrines bulverism, a facious form of reasoning at the very heart of its approach to knowledge. Its pronouncements become unchallengeable.

[00:12:37]No matter who you are, your claims can be dismissed either as an attempt to protect your privilege or as a symptom of your internalized oppression. Your identity alone is sufficient to show that your beliefs are false. End of quote. Wow. You know, I was trying to think of an analogy for this, Bill.

[00:12:58]Suppose somebody says, "No Irish person likes jazz music." And a person walks up and says, "I'm Irish and I love jazz."

[00:13:07]And they just say, "Yeah, you're only saying that because the Jazz Music Society has brainwashed you." No matter your reply, their pronouncements are unchallengeable uh unfalsifiable maybe. After all, they are the elite, the sophisticated, and have attained a critical consciousness.

[00:13:29]Uh Bill, it's the enlightened versus the unenlightened. uh it looks like >> I think you're right that it does involve a sort of unfalsifiability because any rejection of the theory is reinterpreted in light of the theory itself. So the example you gave of the conservative uh black woman, she is then regarded as uh having internalized uh oppression. She's embied the norms and the values of the ruling class. And so I there's there's nothing she can do to convince her opponents because once she rejects their theory that is viewed as itself evidence in support of the theory. So it does become um unfalsifiable. the objections against the theory are explained away in terms of the theory itself. Uh which precludes it's being refuted. Uh and so that um is a is very problematic for this uh critical theory. Let's look at uh how to respond to all of this. The article continues, quote, "As we've seen, bulverism is so foundational to contemporary critical theory that it often won't be perceived as a fallacy at all. The belief that our culture is suffused with oppressive narratives that dictate what we believe and what we can know is not seen as corrosive anti-nowledge, but as a mark of sophistication."

[00:15:09]And several responses are possible, they say. Now, here are their suggested responses. They write, "First, try explaining why bulverism is a flawed approach to knowledge. If your interlocutor is a Christian, citing CS Lewis's use of the term and his explanation of it may be useful. Uh, it may also be useful to point out how this approach to knowledge will undermine basic Christian doctrine. For example, if a Christian endorses bulverism, uh what will they say when a progressive tells them, "You only believe in the Trinity because you've been brainwashed into white western theological norms."

[00:15:54]Or, "You only you only believe that Jesus died for your sins because you feel guilty about all the sins that you've committed." End of quote. there again the uh one's psychological motives are separate from one's arguments.

[00:16:10]>> Yes.

[00:16:10]>> It's not it's not always easy to get someone to see this especially if there's a heated debate going on.

[00:16:18]Yes. And I think it's good to identify the fallacy that we've spoken of as the genetic fallacy. Bulvarism doesn't communicate anything that that has no meaning apart from the man's proper name of a fictional character.

[00:16:35]But the genetic fallacy will be discussed in any intro to logic book as one of the informal um logical fallacies uh like argument ad homonym or argument adop populum or or things of that sort. So explain what the genetic fallacy is. In fact, I I remember I had a debate with a secular astronomer I think out at Holy Cross in the East and his whole opening speech was just a tissue of logical errors. And so in the cross-examination time, I thought, how can I how can I do this?

[00:17:20]And and so I just asked him, I said, "Do you know what the genetic fallacy is?"

[00:17:25]And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, could you explain it then to our audience?" And he tried to explain it not very well. And so I I gave a little bit better explanation. And then I said, "Now, can you explain to us how your opening arguments do not commit the genetic fallacy?" And it was just really awkward because it was so obvious that that's exactly what he had done. Now at the same time to have a positive takeaway from this article, I think that we should be self-critical uh Kevin and we should ask ourselves have we absorbed viewpoints uncritically.

[00:18:11]Um, we should ask ourselves, am I biased in favor of people of my own race? Um, do I have a negative attitude toward members of the opposite sex? We don't want to be deceived by not rational influences. Um, but then the best thing to do is to offer good reasons for what we believe that are based on generally acceptable facts and then offer good objections to our opponent's point of view that are also evidentially based on generally acceptable facts. And so that attitude of being self-critical and and open to correction, but then at the same time emphasizing the objective uh arguments and evidence in support of our view and against your opponent's view will help to avoid this problem.