Talk:Bulverism

simple example
May be nice to coin a briefer and more obvious example. 144.135.136.210 04:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not proper to just make up an example and stick it in the article, but there's nothing wrong with putting one here:


 * You argue that the Mona Lisa is the greatest piece of art in the world, but that's just because you are a descendant of Leonardo Da Vinci.


 * Kind regards, David Bergan 08:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree that there should be an example.--Mapsfly (talk) 01:12, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Too Many Quotations
The article consists almost entirely of direct quotations. The article could summarize the author's views, citing his works as primary sources. I hope to get around to fixing this in a few days. —Latiligence (talk) 21:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I rewrote one quotation and removed the tag, but please keep this in mind for future contributions. —Latiligence (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Context of A Reply to Professor Haldane?
I want to rewrite this quotation as prose to make the article more encyclopedic, but the quotation by itself is ambiguous. The quotation starts off referring to the Professor's "explanation of this", but the antecedant of this is never made clear, except that they are discussing some kind of "social change". What "change" are Lewis and the Professor debating here? —Latiligence (talk) 13:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that A Reply... was written in response to Haldane's review of Lewis's Space Trilogy where Haldane thought Lewis's stories were rebuking science and scientists. A Reply... was a reply to that review, but it wasn't published until after Lewis's death in some of his essay collections.


 * The change that's being talked about has something to do with replacing religion with science in culture. Haldane was an anti-Christian biologist who thought that this change was better for society, and his argument to Lewis was that Lewis wanted the status quo because he "stands to lose."  Lewis pithily replies that this kind of reasoning could be turned back on Haldane since Haldane would want the change because he "stands to gain" from it... being essentially one of the new 'high priests' of the new culture by virtue of his status among scientists.  So Lewis dismisses that side of the issue altogether because that kind of back and forth makes no progress.


 * Also in the reply, Lewis touches on why he puts faith in democracy to govern rather than theocracy (or the scientific equivalent) even though he is a religious person. (Haldane sort of hinted at some kind of scientific -ocracy.)  And he also writes that Haldane misrepresented his stories as being anti-science, where Lewis clarified that he considers himself pro-science, but anti-"Scienceism".  David Bergan (talk) 16:13, 21 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds like you really know your stuff! :D Do you think you could better integrate the quote into the article? I have insufficient domain knowledge to do anything more than copyediting and cleanup here. —Latiligence (talk) 00:33, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Added a grip of examples
Hey y'all,

In accordance with the "be bold" Wikipedia editing maxim, I jumped in and added a bunch of stuff. I love this essay and use it in my logic classes to teach about the many, many ways of thinking incorrectly.

Lewis' original Bulverism definition I think combines a formal and an informal fallacy. It is both circular reasoning and a genetic fallacy. So please check out the new lede.

Also, check out the new "varieties of bulverism" section. I drew examples from his essay and online and my own brain. The examples need to show (a) the exact nature of the logical error and (b) the scope of the error. It occurs in politics, religion, ethics, sociology, even science, math, and logic.

The examples are not intended to prove or disprove the particular issues invoked. Rather, they show how any of us can make this error.

I added lots of cross references to genetic fallacies, and added this page the category of formal fallacies as well.

I'm a PhD student in philosophy and have worked on other fallacy articles as well as atheism, theism, and so on. So let me know your thoughts or make some improvements!

CircularReason (talk) 16:35, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I like your examples! I did think they all tended to show the atheist/liberal as the person committing the fallacy. There's nothing wrong with that logically, but perhaps it would feel a tad more neutral if we had a couple examples of theists or conservatives reasoning poorly! 76.121.187.193 (talk) 19:25, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Agreed, these examples lean in the direction of liberal Straw Manning and, in any case, are neither as clear nor as concise as they could be. In particular, it is not a fallacy to point out that someone else has employed a fallacy, so if we want the Bulverism examples to come across clearly, we should avoid fallacies in the examples, particularly leaping to conclusions and motivated reasoning. At the very least, I think the afterlife example has to go because it is not a sound argument. Any number of near death experiences (and saying "more than a million" feels like an argumentum ad populum) would not be proof of an after-life as anyone "near death" is, in fact, still alive. There are other explanations for near death experiences besides the existence of an afterlife (such as hallucination), so leaping to that one conclusion is indeed fallacious and it is not unreasonable to suggest motivated reasoning (even if assuming you know that motivation is still a fallacy). More clear cut examples (like Lewis' triangle) are called for. Also, I'm not seeing any citation for these examples, could this be a case of the dreaded "original research?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.8.193.41 (talk) 10:42, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I find that these examples contain unnecessary religious proselytism that load the examples with contentious claims. I suggest reducing the number of examples and focus on simpler non-religious ideas. Godot (talk) 11:07, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I have removed the examples entirely as they seem to be strictly original research. If someone has some examples that can actually be cited to a reliable source, feel free to add some. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 06:32, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

An example
Cartoon illustrating Bulverism and referring to it by name. Might offend some religious types, but https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/bulver/ Could be included directly (under CCL) - even as a part? - or linked. Useful? Pauldavey (talk) 12:26, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

It's a type of ad hominem.
Surely Bulverism is a type of ad hominem argument? But the article doesn't say so. I think this fact should be in the intro. Polar Apposite (talk) 09:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Argento Surfer (talk) 14:55, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Counter-argument missing
This article should have a section noting that Bulverism is not a fallacy, except within an artificial, rationalist framework which is itself a fallacy. We'd be unable to function if we didn't often dismiss arguments because of their source. Yesterday, I was in a supermarket, and I saw a newspaper with a title saying "Proof of grassy knoll gunner!" It caught my eye; and if it had been in the Wall Street Journal, I'd have read it. But it was in one of those supermarket tabloids.

In correct logical reasoning, which is not rationalist, but Bayesian, one constructs a network of possible explanations for every relevant hypothesis, and updates the posterior probabilities over every link in the graph. Whenever two different possible causes both lead to the conclusion with high probability, the probability of being "the" cause must be divided up between them (not evenly; according to Bayes' law). Any time someone makes an argument for a conclusion, there will be at least 2 nodes in the graph to explain the existence of that argument. One says the argument was made because it is correct; another says it was made to advocate some interest. Lowering the probability that an argument is correct because it comes from an unreliable source is the rigorously correct thing to do. It is however dangerous to do so, because humans are demonstrably bad at computing the degree to which that probability should be lowered. So, yes, Bulverism is effectively a fallacy for naive people who don't know how to do Bayesian updating. But it isn't a logical fallacy; avoiding Bulverism is rather a heuristic which gives good results for most people. Philgoetz (talk) 15:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)