Preface
This book is a comprehensive historical, theoretical, and practical treatment of pseudo-philosophy — a concept often encountered in both formal and popular philosophy, but rarely with any degree of seriousness and precision. It presents a theory of pseudo-philosophy through the use of models of the genuine philosopher and pseudo-philosopher, and then applies that theory to specific real-world cases.
A primary goal of this treatment is to provide readers with a set of easily applied tools for identifying pseudo-philosophy and responding appropriately to it when it is encountered. The approach I’ve provided is, I believe, understandable and useable by what academics would refer to as “the philosophically unsophisticated reader” while also being of interest to those same academics in terms of the metaphilosophical “infrastructure” that was necessary to develop in pursuing this task.
I have remained focused on the “average person” as the typical reader — not assuming any background or formal training in philosophy, nor familiarity with philosophical jargon and terminology, and presenting things in a casual “non-academic” style so far as possible. In terms of references to the literature (and primarily for the purpose of pointing to additional information concerning concepts employed in the book) I have generally favored articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia — choosing between these in each case based primarily on readability by non-philosophers so long as accuracy and completeness was sufficient. But I have not been reluctant to refer to primary sources when this was required for clarity or accuracy. My intention with this approach has been to make the material more accessible and transparent to those unfamiliar with it. But academics — including philosophy faculty, humanities faculty more generally, graduate students, and undergraduates perhaps majoring or minoring in philosophy — will find no lack of rigor and thoroughness.
Throughout the lengthy term of this project, several people have made my work easier and contributed in different ways. Early on, David Austin and Michael Pendlebury (both of North Carolina State University) were helpful in directing my attention towards potential subjects of investigation and in providing me with a variety of background research materials with which I otherwise would have remained unfamiliar. They also pointed me in the direction of prior work both directly and indirectly related to pseudo-philosophy, and which proved to be of substantial value in the development of my thinking on that subject and related concepts such as pseudo-science and, more generally, the concept of “the pseudo”.
Later in the development of the book, Jeff Painter (who had worked with me at GlaxoSmithKline in applying methods of formal ontology to problems of drug discovery and drug safety) provided unflagging support in providing me with research materials. During the period I was working on the book, Jeff also picked up a law degree — and so provided invaluable insight into the process of patent filing and review that contributed substantially to a portion of my treatment in the case of Keith Raniere that became Chapter 10.
Special thanks are due my wife, Carla Kary Merrill, for suggesting the Raniere case as one of the practical applications of the approach developed here, for listening to me rant on periodically about various topics associated with pseudo-philosophy, for being a sounding board and foil for many of my ideas, and for continuing to encourage the progress of what turned out to be a more lengthy project than I had anticipated.
Finally, Shawn Dawson was especially helpful in pointing me towards Paint.NET to address my needs in image editing, and this saved me untold hours of frustration and despair.
Moncure, North Carolina
December, 2020
