Month: January 2026

Lies are untruths told with the intention to deceive. Lies are bad. Kant is well known for his moral argument against lying. Deception blocks us from acting on our own autonomous will. If I am deceived about the terms of a business deal, for instance, I will wind up doing something I really don’t want to do. This is why we prosecute fraud. Lying amounts to coercing a person through their own mind and coercion is a paradigm example of failing to respect a person.

According to Harry Frankfurt, bullshit is worse than lying. The difference between lying and bullshit is that the liar at least has enough regard for the truth to try to make his lies plausible and to hide his deviation from the truth if he can. Bullshit is untruth without the slightest regard for the truth. What makes bullshit worse, according to Frankfurt is that it undermines regard for the truth generally, both by example and practically. A liar, when caught, is ashamed of his deception precisely because he has regard for the truth in spite of his cheat. The bullshitter is shameless. Truth just doesn’t matter to the bullshitter. Truthfulness at large suffers as a result.

Perhaps there are contexts where we play at bullshitting, temporarily setting aside regard for the truth in favor of some idle amusement. Perhaps we should excuse a good deal of barstool bullshitting as relatively innocuous messing around. But then a bullshitters disregard for what is true can be deployed in quite pernicious ways.

Take, for example, the bullshit response of several Federal Administration officials, including our president, in the immediate aftermath of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preeti in Minneapolis. Absent any credible evidence, these two were slandered as domestic terrorists posing threats to federal law enforcement agents, thus justifying their killing. Not only was evidence lacking, cell phone video pretty clearly refutes these allegations by high-ranking government officials.

This is bullshit with a point. The point of the blatant falsehoods pronounced by Greg Bovino, Kristy Noem, Steven Miller and Donald Trump in the face of clear evidence to the contrary is to assert the priority of the Trump Administration’s power over the truth. Demonstrating shameless disregard for truth is the point.

This assault on the truth is also an assault on our rights, liberty and democracy. Here’s the argument:

• Having rights, liberty and democracy requires the rule of law
• The rule of law requires a healthy regard for the truth
• So, having rights, liberty and democracy requires a healthy regard for the truth

This simple argument is logically valid, that is, it’s conclusion must be true if both of its premises are true. But we haven’t established the truth of the conclusion until we’ve explained why the premises are true.

The alternative to the rule of law is the rule of man. This amounts to one form of authoritarianism or another. Chaos might sound like a further alternative, but chaos, being inherently unstable, can only last until some strongman takes charge and then we are back to authoritarianism. As the rule of man, authoritarianism is not bound by any of the guarantees of rights and liberties embodied in the law, starting with the constitution. This explains why our first premise is true.

Next, there is no rule of law without a healthy regard for the truth. Any competent lawyer will tell you the law is administered on the basis of facts and law. Remove the facts, the truths, from this formula and there is no basis for applying the law in any effort to uphold our basic rights and liberties. The rule of law cannot survive the death of truth. Whatever the law happens to say, an artful bullshitter can present unlawfulness as though it were lawful. When the facts no longer matter, neither does the law. This is why our second premise is true.

So, it looks like our argument is both valid and sound. Now we have one clear reason to thinking that a healthy regard for the truth is essential to a free and open society where we can hope to enjoy rights and liberties.

The argument above is not the only strong conceptual link between basic regard for truthfulness and having a free and open society. It is just the one that is most relevant and clearly illustrated by the Trump administrations assault on Minneapolis. And, of course, healthy regard for the truth, while necessary, is not a sufficient condition for having a free an open society. It’s just the necessary condition for a free and open society that is being put under extreme pressure by the sort of bullshit we’ve seen from federal government officials recently.

In the din of social media rhetorical warfare, it is too easy to dismiss charges of authoritarianism in Trump’s governing style as mere politically motivated name calling. But this amounts to ignoring the reasons leading many to fear an authoritarian take over in the USA. And this is why it’s important to examine those reasons in detail. I’d love for the argument I’ve offering here to be flawed in some way. I’d sleep better if I could shake off the fear that my home, a land of the free, is sliding towards authoritarianism. I invite Donald Trump’s defenders to explain how my concern is irrational. Absent that, expect resistance.

This will not be a post about the meditative aspects of constructing proofs in symbolic logic (doing proofs is probably not the sort of meditative activity Zen masters will recommend). I’m rather interested in the Buddhist notion of non-attachment and how it applies to critical thinking.

Buddhism maintains that the cause of all suffering is attachment. This is the Second Noble Truth of Buddhism (the First Noble Truth is just the observation that there is suffering). I think this applies to belief and opinion as well as other kinds of attachment. When we are attached to a belief, we are likely to feel threatened when it gets questioned by someone who thinks differently. Now ego is involved, and the conflict is not so much between ideas as between believers.

We see attachment in the sometimes-lauded attitude of being “true to your beliefs.” On the face of it this sounds like an endorsement of dogmatism. This is not a good thing. Dogmatic attachment can present an insurmountable obstacle to liberation from a false view. This can be a significant source of suffering in itself. Of course, attachment to a false belief can lead us to do irrational things. But even when no untoward practical consequences follow, dogmatic attachment to a belief breeds defensiveness and hostility towards those who think differently. This is its own form of suffering. So, as critical thinkers, we should not be “true to our beliefs.” We should instead be committed to following the better reasons where they lead.

The Third Noble Truth of Buddhism holds that the way to cease suffering is to relinquish attachment. And the Fourth Noble Truth recommends an Eightfold Path for achieving this. The first step on the Eightfold Path is Right Understanding, or right vision. Here Buddhism is directly concerned with developing a clear understanding of reality. ‘a knowledge and vision of things as they really are’ (S.III,59). The Buddhist sutras go on to promulgate a number of more specific theses as parts of a true understanding of reality. These include recognizing the transitoriness of all things, the unity of self and world, and so forth. Critical thinkers may question the specific metaphysical principles that typify Buddhist world views, but Right Understanding endorses some clear critical thinking advice on the way to building a Buddhist understanding, including questioning assumptions and recognizing appearance as a fallible guide to truth. So, Buddhism incorporates a good deal of critical thinking.

It’s one thing for Buddhism to support critical thinking. The more ambitious suggestion I’d like to advance is that critical thinking itself can be understood as a kind of intellectual Buddhist practice. Intellectually, non-attachment means being open-minded and thinking critically. We may still wind up holding beliefs when the evidence and reasons warrant this. But there is a difference between holding a belief and being attached to it. we can hold a belief and remain prepared to modify our assessment of it when we encounter new evidence or argument. It’s just the clinging part that leads to suffering.

We are critical thinkers to the degree that we are committed to following the better reason. When I engage another’s argument with the singular aim of evaluating it on its own merits, I am practicing non-attachment. It may be difficult for a person to stay in this space. I suspect many skilled critical thinkers may follow through on their commitment to evaluate an argument fairly and yet feel a pang of grief when they find an argument against a view the like compelling. Or just as likely, an advanced critical thinker may still feel some anxiety over how to defend the preferred position. And yet, I have seen mature professional philosophers accept the complete demolition of their argument with grace and equanimity. That’s pretty Zen.

Personally, I have often found myself amused at discovering I’ve held some false philosophical opinion. A new philosophical insight can slap me with the sort of humorous incongruity people appreciate in a Dave Chappelle joke. This is why I’ve prefaced this note with an image of Budai, the laughing Buddha of the Chinese Chan tradition, from which Japanese Zen Buddhism developed. The intellectual enlightenment facilitated by Buddhist intellectual non-attachment is fun. That’s pretty much why I like doing philosophy.