Stephanie’s Pillowbook

Perhaps the most wretched aspect of the transgendered world is the perennial labels debate where people throw bricks at each other in the shape of absolute and opposing definitions of themselves and others. We have all participated in these dismal discussions and I’m sure most of us feel a little, well, dirty afterwards…

Why is it such an obsession? Why does it raise tempers so rapidly? It’s hard to say. Partly, I think, it is what Kate Bornstein mentions in Gender Outlaw, the idea I alluded to yesterday that transgendered people tend to construct in solitude world-views that explain themselves and then feel threatened when those world-views are challenged by alternatives. Partly, it is the pernicious desire of some people (as Bornstein also mentions in her book) to assert a hierarchical caste system in which post-ops look down on pre-ops who look down on shemales who look down on drag queens and so on and tediously on. Partly, it is the genuine desire of some to seek their place in the scheme of things: either they feel they occupy some area between or outside transvestism and transsexuality or else they are currently moving from one to the other and feel a little unsure of their path. That apparently irks those who are happy with their place…

Whatever the reason it appears to me that a little understanding of the nature of definitions and their place in argument might be a help (she says in an outburst of mindless optimism!). The subject of definition has been a matter of some interest in logic and semantics and a few basic principles have long been established. The first thing that should be noted is that there is not a single way of defining a term. I am going to list just a few of the most common using transvestite and transsexual as examples of terms to be defined.

But before we briefly survey the various kinds of definition it might be as well to consider when it is appropriate to present or demand or query a definition. In a word, one might say whenever there is some ambiguity about a term used in an argument. If a term has more than one meaning and one is not sure which is being used; if a term is being used in a way that seems new or unusual; if it is not clear whether a term is being used literally or figuratively; if a term appears equivocal or vague or arbitrary; if a term is being used inaccurately or inconsistently; if a term is being used in a deceptive fashion. In all these cases, and others like them, the question of definition properly arises.

It should also be recognised that definition is a practical tool. It serves a particular purpose. In most arguments a definition does not have to stand for all eternity or disclose the essence of a thing. It does not have to be complete or commensurate to the thing defined. It should, however, be adequate, relevant, consistent within the argument, and as concrete as possible.

So, some ways of defining a term:

• Definition by genus and difference. Here a term is said to belong to a larger class and then differentiated from others in that class. How do we classify transvestites, say? As cross-dressing males? They belong to the class male and differ from others in that class by cross-dressing.
• Theoretical definition. A theoretical definition attempts to explain the nature of a thing. This way of defining is naturally of most interest to philosophers and scientists. John Money’s definition counts as a theoretical one reflecting as it does the standard medical view: “The transsexual is genitally an anatomical male or female who expresses with strong conviction that he or she has the mind of the opposite sex, who lives as a member of the opposite sex part-time or full-time, and who seeks to change his or her sex legally and through hormonal and surgical sex reassignment.”
• Lexical definition. This is a word’s common usage. It reflects how a term is used, rightly or wrongly, by most people. It is the definition generally given in dictionaries and such works. Thus Collins English Dictionary defines transvestite as “a person who seeks sexual pleasure from wearing clothes that are normally associated with the opposite sex“.
• Stipulative definition. This occurs when someone introduces a new word into a language. This is not necessarily the person who coins the word. David Cauldwell used the term transexualis first but it was undoubtedly Harry Benjamin who gave transsexual its currency. By doing so he proposed a definition for the word. Of course he cannot control later use - proposals can always be revised.
• Precising definition. This is when a term is defined more narrowly or precisely than usual for a certain purpose. An established definition is limited in some way. So, for example, when Virginia Price started her Tri-Ess organisation in the US she used a precising definition of a transvestite as a heterosexual man who cross-dresses in order to exclude gay crossdressers and drag queens from the group. Most often precising definitions are produced to deal with borderline cases.
• Enumerative definition. Simply lists every thing to which the defined term refers. Only practical of course when the number of things referred to is rather small! But if we name every transsexual we have obtained an enumerative definition.
• Ostensive definition. Is similar but the list is representative rather than exhaustive. Thus we can say a transsexual is such a person as April Ashley or Kate Bornstein. With an ostensive definition you simply point to a thing and say that is what it is. The meaning of the term is demonstrated by showing an example of it. Ostensive and enumerative definitions may not seem very useful on their own but a good argument about meaning will attempt one or the other - they provide a link to reality.
• Operational definition. Lists the tests which determine whether or not the term applies. So, we could perhaps define a transsexual (MtF) operationally as one who has been assessed by a specialist at a gender identity clinic, has permanently removed their facial hair, is taking female hormones, has followed a course of speech therapy, and has undergone SRS.
• Synonymous definition. Is perhaps of limited use. A term is defined by referring to a word that means the same. Thus transvestite - crossdresser.
• Persuasive definition. Is one which seeks to influence a person’s opinion about the thing thus defined. A positive example would be to define a transsexual as a beautiful, brave, gender-gifted person. While defining a transsexual as a misguided and perverted creature who disobeys God’s Will would be a negative persuasive definition.
• Figurative definition. Would be to provide a metaphorical definition. To define transvestism, say, as gender euphoria.

Of course not all these ways of defining are necessarily applicable in every case. Some are more useful in certain circumstances than others. I hope, though, that it is obvious that many - like those in the dreaded labels debates - are arguing rather pointlessly at cross-purposes when they discuss definitions.

If you want to come across as a crank or a troll or just plain irritating these are some of the tactics I would recommend:

• - accuse the person you are talking to of being close-minded
• - accuse them of censorship if they criticise you
• - accuse them of being an agent of the establishment (you can be more specific if you like and say agent of the CIA or MI5 or whatever)
• - claim you are being persecuted
• - claim you are the victim of a conspiracy
• - claim that Aristotelian logic, Newtonian physics, modern medicine, indeed Western thought in its entirety, are all thoroughly outmoded ways of thinking and nowadays simply medieval superstition
• - claim that acceptance of the conclusions of science and mathematics is mere conformism, pusillanimity, laziness or shortsightedness
• - always assume that books, magazine articles, television documentaries and websites designed for children, beginners, amateurs, ‘the common reader’ and so on, represent the full extent of current knowledge of any particular subject (do this especially with evolution and cosmology)
• - allude to the wisdom of the ancients
• - claim your arguments proceed from some superior mode of rationality like lateral thinking or some such
• - always redefine common terms to suit (even better if you can redefine several times in one argument)
• - use long words that you hope your opponent won’t understand - or better still, use long words that you don’t understand yourself
• - when confronted with convincing criticism make use of ad hoc rationalising arguments and never admit you’re wrong
• - demand that the other person disprove what you’re saying and jeer when they can’t or don’t
• - insist the other person hasn’t properly understood what you are saying - even if they quote your argument back at you word for word
• - point out, sadly, that people like your opponent are simply not capable (either mentally or morally) of understanding an argument like yours
• - accuse them of not listening - accuse them of not even wanting to listen
• - accuse the other person of getting emotional
• - point out the bad things that have happened to people who believe what your opponent believes
• - wonder what the world would be like if everybody thought like your opponent
• - compare the other person’s arguments to those of Hitler
• - accuse the other person of racism. Even if you have no justification the argument will never recover
• - take all criticism of your arguments personally
• - always carry a big chip on your shoulder about your class, occupation and/or schooling
• - claim special insight as a result of your life experiences
• - claim victim status and view all opposition to your opinions as further victimisation and unwarranted cruelty
• - demand that all your beliefs, however irrational, be respected
• - present the most reactionary views and then put yourself forward as the true radical
• - always question the other person’s motives
• - accuse them of negativity
• - accuse them of being judgmental
• - accuse them of possessing a desperate need to be right all the time
• - wonder aloud at their relish for confrontation
• - insist that proof of your argument exists - it’s just not accessible at that moment (it’s only available to initiates, or specialists, or to those who pay, or some such)
• - always treat the other as if they were immature, naive, a newbie
• - accuse them of being cold and unfeeling whereas you are warm and alive and human
• - claim your way of looking at things is holistic and therefore good - whereas your opponent takes an analytical point of view which is at best limited and at worst akin to rape
• - claim you are entitled to your opinion (however ludicrous it might be)
• - when faced with irrefutable logic or factual evidence sneer “so you say.”
• - insist that both sides of an argument are always of equal worth
• - insist all arguments are dichotomous - there is your point of view and its opposite and nothing else in between
• - reduce the most complex situations to binary oppositions which, according to you, must be overcome before you can even begin to discuss the point in question
• - use straw man arguments whenever possible (ie you caricature the other’s point of view and attack that rather than their actual argument)
• - make good use of the domino effect - everything your opponent says must result inevitably in the collapse of civilization or some such calamity
• - treat all demands for evidence or proof as petty-minded nit-picking
• - claim that everything you say and do is “the exception that proves the rule”
• - label your opponent’s arguments with -isms but without saying what’s wrong with them - eg “oh, that’s just solipsism/physicalism/consequentialism/nihilism” or whatever
• - base your arguments on facts everyone knows - like, “we only use 10% of our brains”. No matter if it’s not true
• - accuse the other person of being boring
• - pity the other person - after all, what a sad life they must lead to believe the arguments they are using
• - learn from politicians the art of replying to a question with another, quite irrelevant, question of your own
• - claim that things have always been this way, naturally so, and there’s no point trying to fight it
• - claim your argument is simply congruent with God’s Will, human nature, the Tao or whatever and therefore must be true
• - don’t bother trying to comprehend complete sentences - just pick a word that the other person says and go off on a tangent
• - use weasel words - what you say could be true, you opponent must accept that it’s conceivable, that sort of thing
• - if you can, use spurious statistics
• - refer mysteriously to research which has shown that what you say is true - but never produce it
• - appeal to authority - if someone famous said it, it must be true. If you are an academic prove your most outlandish assertions with speculative sentences that start, “As Nietzsche (or Deleuze or whoever you like) has shown….”
• - quote from great scientists, mathematicians and philosophers - but always from their casual and speculative remarks in conversation, letters, notebooks and never from their papers and other published works
• - don’t allow the other to use any term without scornfully showing how easily the term can be deconstructed
• - simply dismiss every concept your opponent uses as metaphysical and thus logocentric (if not downright Platonic) - and therefore tainted with irrelevance and error
• - always assume that you are the very first person to seriously consider problems such as the relationship between mind and body or free will vs. determinism and that it is consequently vital that the world hears what you have to say on those subjects
• - pretend that problems which were solved long ago are still alive and controversial
• - feel free to reject any scientific theory, mathematical proof or philosophical argument on the grounds that its originator’s beliefs or behaviour are abhorrent to you
• - use feeble analogies whenever possible - and stick to them
• - you just know you’re right - you can feel it in your bones
• - when writing always use capitals and if possible multiple fonts and colours
• - when quoting your opponent put all important words in scare-quotes - in speech do the same by wiggling your fingers in the air
• - if all else fails, scream hysterically that you just hate arguments.

The most tiresome, but unfortunately most common, statement to come across when you are arguing with someone is, “well, I am entitled to my opinion.” It is a dismal proposition and one that makes my heart sink a little every time I hear it. What does the phrase mean exactly? All too often it appears to be merely a conversation-stopper. Whenever someone says it I understand them to mean, “I’ve said my piece and I’m now shutting my ears to anything anyone says to the contrary.” It is an asinine, wishy-washy proposition which serves only to make so much debate maddening and frustrating. Yet when I have complained about it before I have been swiftly and forthrightly accused of being arrogant, confused, inconsistent, a proponent of political correctness and an enemy of free speech. So I feel justified in reposting the argument one more time - with a reminder that there is nothing controversial here, it’s all orthodox and very basic critical thinking.

Let’s spell one thing out at the start: the word “entitled” in the phrase “I am entitled to my opinion,” actually has two quite distinct meanings. In the first case, you are entitled to your opinion in a political, or legal, sense. That is, you are free to believe whatever you like and to say that you believe it. To repeat, you possess the right to have any opinion and to express it publicly. In the second case, which we might call philosophical or epistemological, you are only entitled to an opinion if you can justify it using logical argument or presenting supporting evidence. Obviously not every opinion can be justified in that way. What happens, however, is that entitlement in the first sense is confused with entitlement in the second sense as though every opinion is in fact justifiable.

The political right to express an opinion is usually trivial. In most arguments the right to an opinion is not in question. It goes without saying. If nobody has challenged your right to free speech why assert it? There is no point in repeatedly claiming a right that nobody has disputed. Furthermore, it adds nothing to an argument. Your rights cannot be adduced in support of a statement. Your expression of a right to an opinion does not count as evidence of its veracity. The one does not follow from the other. You are free to believe that the world is ruled by alien reptiles if you so wish. But your freedom to believe that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the truth of that belief. Time and again, though, the argument is made: I believe the earth is ruled by alien reptiles… I am entitled to my opinion. We see arguments of that form by the thousand. There are two ways to interpret that phrase. It either means: I believe the world is ruled by alien reptiles AND I am ALSO entitled to my opinion. In which case the second part is surely irrelevant - it has no bearing on the first part and there is generally no reason to bring it up given that you are freely expressing yourself. Or it means: I believe the world is ruled by alien reptiles AND THEREFORE I am entitled to that opinion. That, I’m afraid, is a non sequitur (”it does not follow“) - the second part of the phrase cannot be logically derived from the first and so as an argument it is fallacious.

Thus the claim “I am entitled to my opinion” is not an argument.Yet it is commonly believed that the right to free expression is equivalent to a right to have one’s every expression taken seriously as a claim to truth. The idea of free speech does not, and never has, included the demand that one’s speech be accepted as truthful. So why do people insist on using their right to free speech as though it somehow proves what they are saying? Why do people act as though their political entitlement to believe anything they like precludes them from being challenged on their beliefs? Why do they apparently think that the very assertion of the principle that everyone is entitled to an opinion is equivalent to the demand that any and every opinion of theirs is worthy of respect?

One reason seems to be that many believe that all opinions are precious - purely because they belong to the person who thought them up. They appear actually to be identifying their opinions with their very self. Indeed, one often gets the impression that they see their opinions as something unchangeable and vital which have grown out of them in some natural or supernatural fashion. It becomes: attack my opinions and you attack me, my very being. It’s as though their opinions are precious simply because they are theirs. And as precious property they are to be held on to at all cost against every threat.

I accept freedom of conscience - you may believe, in your heart of hearts, anything you please. But when you express yourself to the world at large your ideas, opinions and arguments are going to be in conflict with those of others. Now, if you have the right to express yourself, what can you expect? What are the rights, duties, obligations of those people to whom you are expressing yourself? That really is the crux of the matter. Am I obliged to accept anything you say is true? Only if there is evidence to support your assertions. Am I obliged to listen to you? On what grounds? Surely I don’t have to. Life is too short to give a fair hearing to every single opinion and idea that is expressed. Especially when so many of them are plain cranky. Am I obliged to respect your opinion? Or are there higher claims such as truth and justice which oblige me, at least sometimes, to challenge you? Surely there are.

If you wish to believe that the earth is ruled by alien reptiles I really don’t care. Go ahead and think what you like. I am not in favour of censorship, I do not want the thought police to round up alien-reptile believers, I do not demand that their blogs and forums be shut down and their books burned. However, I do agree that someone who believes that nonsense has disqualified themselves from rational debate. They have no supporting evidence for their ideas and they reject a mountain of evidence against them. So why should I respect that particular opinion? I will tolerate it and I will tolerate you for holding that opinion. But if you try to convince me of its truth I will argue against you, because it is factually incorrect, irrational and frankly rather idiotic. To give it any respect would be to lend it credence as a justified belief. It would be asking me to accept it as valid. I cannot do it. Of course this is an extreme and ridiculous example and there are in reality many grey and contentious areas which are much less clear-cut. But then those are the areas worth debating and discussing and that can only be done by challenging and evaluating opinions and beliefs and points of view. Demanding respect simply short circuits the whole process. Yet it is those who persist in argument who are accused of arrogance and of stifling dissent!

I have been accused of both, most irritatingly when I poured scorn on Julie Burchill’s tirade against the transgendered which someone quoted in full on a flickr forum last year. Burchill’s article is a malicious and grossly unfair attack on both transvestites and transsexuals based on ill-informed caricature and inaccurate assumptions. Yet all most people could think of saying in response is “oh well, she’s entitled to her opinion.” It surprised me that the victims of Burchill’s hatchet-job should be more upset at my abusive criticism of her then anything she wrote about them. But so far does the ideology of one’s entitlement to an opinion go. It seems what really shocks is that I was, supposedly, disputing Julie Burchill’s rights to freedom of expression by ridiculing her argument and pointing out its faults. Criticism amounts to silencing one’s opponent. Apparently. How have I done that, though? How could I do that? How am I even capable of censoring her? It’s sheer nonsense. Julie Burchill has been a journalist for thirty years; she has published, I guess it must be, thousands of articles in national newspapers and journals; for some years she edited her own journal; she has published a number of books; she has appeared on national television; she is now, I believe, releasing regular podcasts into cyberspace. This is one person who has shouted her opinions continuously to the world for several decades. She has exercised her rights to free speech to the full. The article of hers I took such objection to was published six years ago in The Guardian to a readership of, what, several hundred thousands at least. It was reprinted more recently on The Guardian’s website which has a potential readership of billions. And it has been copied onto a few internet forums. Now, could someone please explain to me how my comments - read by a few dozen people at most - are silencing Julie Burchill or denying her the right to free expression?

What has happened when any form of questioning itself becomes suspect? It is worth pointing out that the political demand for free speech was originally formulated as a right to criticise, a right to challenge the authority of State and Church, and was based on the perceived ability of any human being to use their reason in deciding any question. There are those today, however, who see any doubt or interrogation as a form of cultural terrorism. Respect for all beliefs is an essential platform in what Frank Furedi calls The Culture of Flattery. It doesn’t matter any more what you believe just so long as you feel confident and content in possessing that belief. While postmodernism is hardly intellectually respectable these days, a watered-down version of it has entered the realm of received wisdom. As a result the relativistic idea of a personal knowledge and experience that values alternative narratives and diverse perspectives rather than truth is now enshrined in current dogma. Perhaps the most dangerous thing about all this is that it seems to generate, and rather imperialistically maintain, a certain self-satisfied but absolutely false consensus - as though there isn’t really any significant conflict between people or contradiction between ideas. It is an attempt to avoid confrontation. The notion of consensus has been reduced to an emotional condition in which we are all happy to agree that we disagree. Nobody must have their preconceptions upset. Social harmony nowadays trumps truth.

Ultimately, the over-rating of the right to an opinion equalises all opinions as though one were no better than another. But the defence is purely formal. There is no substance to it. Furthermore it involves one in a curiously circular argument: if all ideas are valid, then it is valid to think that all ideas are not valid - which contradicts the assertion that all ideas are valid. It’s absurd. There is surely here a trivialisation of both thought and freedom. As though everything is just someone’s opinion . Thinking, properly speaking, has always been distinguished from the holding of an opinion. A thought is not the same as some vague notion which happens to drift through your mind. A thought is not a prejudice or an assumption or a taste. A thought demands time and engagement, welcomes critique and lives off doubt. A parade of opinions is an evasion of argument. What happens, in effect, is that every discussion gets reduced to the level of “which ice cream do you prefer?” - “I like vanilla” - “I like chocolate” - “I like strawberry“. And surely there are nobler conceptions of freedom than simply the valuing of passing whims? Isn’t freedom more than just being able to choose a over b or c? Are we to be satisfied with such an impoverished ideal? Doesn’t freedom involve a sense of responsibility and self-determination that seeks to escape from the shackles of the past and the pre-conceived towards some greater end?

PS. To sum up this post in one sentence: far too many people seem to believe that asserting their right to hold an opinion is, in some way, a defence of their argument; it is not.

For those taking their first steps in the subject a good place to start is with The Philosopher’s Magazine Online. The site contains news, articles and quotations suitable for the beginner, as well as a series of games and quizzes designed to test one’s thinking about logic, ethics, aesthetics, and so on. Try Staying Alive, a little game about Personal Identity.

There’s a good page of philosophy jokes which have been around for a while. Here’s one I can’t resist quoting:

Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch?

Answer: Pay for the pizza.

A venerable site is Causes of Deaths of Philosophers. A few good ones: Thales: Drowned. Sextus Empiricus: Doubtful causes. Ryle: Gave up the ghost. Descartes: Stopped thinking. Berkeley: Divine neglect.

P.D. Magnus and Ryan Hickerson have an amusingly absurd Philosophy Quiz with questions such as Evaluate the following argument: “If conventionalism is true, it must be true by convention. We do not believe in conventionalism. Therefore, we should change our beliefs because conventionalism is self-evident.”

Norman Swartz has a page called Para-Frays, or, The Writes of Passage with examples of philosophical writings which have made him laugh, intentionally or not.

The blog Thoughts, Arguments and Rants had a post some time back entitled Philosophy in Questionable Taste on the subject of philosopher’s breaking-up lines. There were dozens of comments adding a load more lines. A few examples:

The Solipsist: It’s not you, it’s me.

The Humean: Just because we’re always together doesn’t mean we BELONG together.

The Nagelian: You just don’t know what it’s like to be me.

The Heideggerian: I’m just not comfortable with being-in-this-relationship.

The Nihilist: I told you all along that nothing would come between us.

The Unnatural Enquirer has a page on the Philosophy of Kissing with funny definitions of different kinds of kisses. For instance the Zenoian Kiss: “your lips approach, closer and closer, but never actually touch.“

Butterfliesandwheels has a good Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense on their site. For a flavour just take the first two entries:

Acceptance

Nice, warm, cooperative way of evaluating ideas, much better than argument.

Accuracy

Exploded concept. Foolish, Platonic notion that we can get our facts straight.

I love random generators in general and one of my favourites is the Kant Generator developed by Mark Pilgrim which produces sentences based on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The programme is discussed in chapter nine of Dive into Python on XML processing and you can download the source files to run it yourself. Here’s a paragraph I produced earlier:

We can deduce that time is the key to understanding metaphysics, as any dedicated reader can clearly see. There can be no doubt that the transcendental aesthetic (and the reader should be careful to observe that this is true) stands in need of the transcendental unity of apperception; therefore, the things in themselves, in view of these considerations, stand in need to space. The Ideal of practical reason, by means of the practical employment of the Ideal of natural reason, is by its very nature contradictory, as is shown in the writings of Galileo. (Since all of the things in themselves are speculative, the discipline of pure reason excludes the possibility of the manifold.) It is obvious that, in so far as this expounds the sufficient rules of natural causes, human reason, even as this relates to necessity, can thereby determine in its totality the never-ending regress in the series of empirical conditions. By virtue of pure reason, we can deduce that, for example, the thing in itself, in the full sense of these terms, is a body of demonstrated science, and some of it must be known a priori, yet the transcendental unity of apperception would thereby be made to contradict our a posteriori concepts.

Wonderful gibberish - yet it sounds very close to the real thing. As Pilgrim points out, though, it’s much funnier if you’ve ever studied philosophy and had to read this sort of stuff. Kant’s first Critique is the masterpiece of the Enlightenment but his style, it has to be said, is verbose to the point of tedium. If you look at the kant.xml file it’s quite easy to see how the text is produced - although it’s best to read the code from bottom to top and go from paragraph to sentence to clause to vocabulary. There is a Husserl module as well which is also good. I’d like to see a Heidegger Generator - you never know the latter might even throw out random sentences that make sense (which would be an improvement over the original). If you don’t have python installed you can get a few paragraphs of Kantian by going to a page on Bert de Bruijn’s site. Matt Webb has converted the programme into Perl - you can download the source from his page or just view an example in your browser. And you thought philosophy was boring!

The magazine h2so4 has a section Dear Philosopher in which famous philosophers of the past answer reader’s questions. The place to go if you want to hear what Nietzsche has to say on the query “Why do women wear white pumps?”

There are a lot of laughs to be had at Howlers and the Like. The first half are from student essays on philosophy and include such words of wisdom as “Going to a boarding school for the first time, most people are a little apprehensive about leaving the care of your parents and facing life on your own. Death is the same… “. These are followed by howlers from other sources. For example: on a packet of macaroni - “Try it, and try to forget it!” Or from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: “Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen appearances were mending; she began to cut her hair and long for balls… “

Of course we have to mention The Philosophers’ Drinking Song of Monty Python fame - Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle and all that.

If that has whet your appetite you can try the very curious Philosophy Songs - Solipsism’s Painless, Hume on the Brain and the rest!

Sharon Wahl has a written a brilliant and funny story called I Also Dated Zarathustra which is warmly recommended to those who have read Nietzsche’s book.

Daniel Dennett is the editor of The Philosophical Lexicon which introduces to the language such invaluable terms as:

buber, v. To struggle in a morass of one’s own making. “After I defined the self as a relation that relates to itself relatingly, I bubered around for three pages.” Hence buber, n. one who bubers. “When my mistake was pointed out to me, I felt like a complete buber.”

foucault, n. A howler, an insane mistake. “I’m afraid I’ve committed an egregious foucault.”

heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of substance. “It’s buried so deep we’ll have to use a heidegger.”

Tech Support Nietzsche style. Any user requesting help is a weakling who deserves to be crushed beneath your feet with contempt. A travesty of Nietzsche, of course - but still funny.

Larry Hauser has a great page of links to cartoons and comics which illustrate some philosophical conundrum. Try the Peanuts strip which demonstrates the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (really, it’s funnier than it sounds!).

World’s shortest philosophy books. My favourite: Coping with Change by Parmenides.

The Atheists of Silicon Valley have published a list of 452 ridiculous proofs of God’s existence. I particularly like/hate this one because I have horrible memories of participating in it more than once, grrrrr:

ARGUMENT FROM INFINITE REGRESS

(1) Ask Atheists what caused the Big Bang.

(2) Regardless of their answer, ask how they know this.

(3) Continue process until the Atheist admits he doesn’t know the answer to one of your questions.

(4) You win!

(5) Therefore, God exists.

An essay to ponder, The Basic Laws Of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla. I had some trouble finding this again. This site explains why - with a perfect example of human stupidity!

Finally, a joke:

Dean, to the physics department. “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn’t you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper.”

And some old advice:

Don’t LOOK at anything in a physics lab.

Don’t TASTE anything in a chemistry lab.

Don’t SMELL anything in a biology lab.

Don’t TOUCH anything in a medical lab.

and, most importantly,

Don’t LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department.

EDIT: Thanks to Lisa for reminding me about Monty Python’s Philosophers’ Football Match. Here is the first part:

And the second: