by Daniel Yim
ADAM BARKMAN is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Redeemer University College. He has written a crapload of books, but nothing as cool as a Dilbert book. A time he used his power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit is when he convinced his wife to marry him.
RICHARD BILSKER is Professor of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the College of Southern Maryland, where he has taught since 1995. He has broad teaching and research interests in philosophy, political science, sociology, psychology, and the humanities. His books include On Bergson and On Jung. His articles and book reviews have appeared in Teaching Philosophy, Humanity and Society, Idealistic Studies, ephemera, and Hyle. His hobbies include tabletop roleplaying games, single-malt scotch (especially during election season), Doctor Who, and wondering whether he would be better off if he were a cat.
ALEXANDER CHRISTIAN is the assistant director of the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science and a research fellow at the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. He has interests in general philosophy of science (demarcation problem, values in science) and research ethics (scientific misconduct and questionable research practices in medical research). A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself was when he was fifteen years old and saw that one of his female classmates was struggling to fake a sick note for the upcoming gym class. He persuaded her to buy him a bag of crisps and a diet coke in exchange for a well-written sick note. After looking at the note, their sports teacher busted out laughing. Handing the sick note back to his student, he told her: “I hope your prostate problems are no hindrance to today’s 5k cross run.”
CHARLENE ELSBY is the Philosophy Program Director and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Purdue Fort Wayne, researching Aristotle and Realist Phenomenology. A time that she used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for herself was applying to her first office job. And when she says “persuasion,” she means “pie.” She brought a pie to the interview, just to let everyone know that were she to be hired, there would be more pies to come. She got that job, and many a pie were had by all.
GALEN FORESMAN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, home to the Greensboro Four and the Greensboro Uprising. Although he often confuses his powers of persuasion with his magic abilities—or was it the other way around?—he’s certain that the predictive power of these filters will sort it out for him in the future. Surely, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance will ascertain the appropriate distinction for us all . . . until something better comes along.
RICHARD GREENE is Professor of Philosophy at Weber State University, Chair of the board of the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, and Director of the Richard Richards Institute for Ethics. He has edited or co-edited many books; his latest is Twin Peaks and Philosophy: That’s Damn Fine Philosophy! A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself was when he convinced his family that no one owns just one ukulele. Seven ukes later (and counting!) his persuasive skills are still in full force and paying dividends.
ENZO GUERRA is an independent scholar who has published on ethics and comparative religion. A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself was when, as an undergrad, he convinced a mere stranger on a bus that he was a visiting international doctoral student. He felt warm and fuzzy inside being thought more important than he was.
SANDRA HANSMANN is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her interests are focused on women’s issues in the areas of disability, health, and gender-based discrimination and violence. She’s also interested in the use of social media in counseling and disability studies. A time when Sandra used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for herself was when she convinced a men’s rights activist that his “red pill” wasn’t really red, but pink, having decided she’d rather argue about that issue than hear the “involuntarily celibate” asshole continue yammering about the matriarchal world takeover.
CYNTHIA JONES is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Office for Victim Advocacy and Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where she also directs the Gelman Constitutional Scholars Program and is the past director and founder of the University’s Ethics Center.
From the Desk of the CFO: Performance Review: JOHN V. KARAVITIS. “John needs to be mindful of his demeanor when he works with others. [Many managers and co-workers] have expressed that John sometimes comes across like [sic] he was lecturing or explaining the obvious . . . that he knows best and we are all wrong. John needs work [sic] on his communication skills as he is coming across sounding accusational, combative and/or condescending. He talks too much without . . .”
Overall Rating of Employee: Meets Expectations.
Employee’s Response: You meant “accusatory.” There is no such word as “accusational.” And you’re welcome.
CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM
DOCTORATE: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
TEACHES BUSINESS AND ETHICS AT UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON DOWNTOWN
DOES RESEARCH IN:
•Risk management
•Applied ethics
•Social justice
•East-West comparative philosophy
•Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel
IMPORTANT TO KNOW, UNDERSTAND, AND BELIEVE!
•There is no collision
•We will make Amerika greet again
•Vlad Emir Puttin is a nice man
•Little hanz mean big ideas
•Forget all that, just vote earlie and offen
•Oh, and bild the WALL E
IN CONCUSSION:
•No fake climit change
•Dig more cole; make more coke
•Robit Arp is fake news
ELLIOT KNUTHS is a Juris Doctor Candidate at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law. His philosophical interests lie primarily in metaphysics and philosophy of religion. A time that Knuths used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself occurred when he was still in high school. During homecoming week, dressed only in a toga (other people were wearing togas, too—he wasn’t that weird), he used impassioned rhetoric to convince his principal to interrupt the last five minutes of class and play “Shout” over the intercom system, thus emulating a famous scene from Animal House. Although this interlude probably wasn’t very educational and may even have been seen by some as a waste of time, Knuths found it amusing and remembers it better than whichever class it cut short.
ROB LUZECKY is a lecturer at Purdue Fort Wayne. He finds the life of the cubical worker to be anathema, and counts himself lucky to have an office with four walls and a door. The best part of his day is when he gets to lecture about the coming revolution, aesthetics, and other cool topics to those who have not yet been beaten into submission by vaguely psychotic middle-managers. While he believes it’s entirely reasonable to demand that the world be a better place, he finds that people are more easily convinced of the validity of this claim when they are looking at pretty pictures. He has co-written numerous book chapters on popular culture and philosophy, and co-edited Amy Schumer and Philosophy: Brainwreck! (2018).
DANIEL MIORI is a Physician Assistant and author who has occupied a space at the curious intersection of medicine, ethics, and philosophy for the past decade. Widely disregarded as a talentless hack, he managed to use the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself when he somehow coerced Dan Yim, Galen Foresman, and Robert Arp into including his chapter, which he wanted to call “Epistemology, The Scientific Method, and Why Scott Adams Is Stupid,” in their otherwise informative and entertaining book. He probably has video of them peeing on hookers or s
omething like that.
RAY SCOTT PERCIVAL is the author of the critically acclaimed The Myth of the Closed Mind: Understanding Why and How People are Rational (2012). A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself and his friends was as a teenager under the mesmerising influence of space aliens. Percival persuaded his dilatory friends to attend a rock concert featuring the charismatic Space Preachers, by telling each of his friends in rapid succession, starting with the most gullible and working up to the most skeptical, that all the others he had spoken too had already enthusiastically committed to going. Within his esoteric circle, Percival baptised this tool of persuasion FEARISMM—“the fear of exclusion by accelerated rapid incremental social momentum manoeuvre.” Percival later suffered much anguish over his deviation from his Socratic ideal of being guided by sweet truth. Taking pity on him, the space aliens assured Percival that Adams is at least partly correct: sometimes, in the short-run, facts don’t matter—just what people believe. His only real consolation was that they all had a rock’n’roll time.
RACHEL ROBISON-GREENE is a Post Doctoral Fellow at Utah State University. Rachel has edited or co-edited twelve volumes in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series, the latest being The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy (2018). A time that she used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for herself was to convince her family that getting a new puppy really was a good idea. She was wrong. She should have stuck with good reasoning.
JULIETTA RIVERA, who did the illustration for Chapter 9, is not only a comic-strip creator but also an artist in ceramic and paint, as well as an art teacher. She is the owner and operator of the Gallo Gallery and Studios.
BEN SAUNDERS is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Southampton. His primary interests are in democratic theory and the permissible limits of state action. He’s not sure that he’s ever successfully used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—for anything. If he possessed such power, he’d probably get a job in sales or marketing, instead of doing real work.
DAVID RAMSAY STEELE is an interstellar celebrity author whose books sell far too many copies to be listed in mainstream bestseller charts. He wrote the iconoclastic study of George Orwell, Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview on the Slab (2017). His other books include Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy (2008) and From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation (1992). A time he used high-powered persuasion technique to gain a benefit for himself was when he persuaded the Nobel Committee to award him the Nobel Peace Prize. What? Yes, well, as Scott Adams rightly points out, it would be unreasonable to expect persuasion to work one hundred percent of the time.
ANDY WIBLE is a full-time instructor at Muskegon Community College. He has interests in business ethics, biomedical ethics, and queer studies. A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself was when he was in college and worked going door to door collecting money for a group called Citizens Action. He got paid half of what he collected. Andy went to a house and talked to a lonely young goth kid named Jonathan, he said his parents were not home. Andy returned two hours later and Jonathan’s mother opened the door. Andy said that he had talked to Jonathan earlier. She said, “Oh you’re a friend of Jonathan, come on in.” Andy said nothing and followed her into the kitchen. She gave him a glass of milk and some cookies. Her husband came in and introduced himself. Andy then gave his plea for money. The couple looked at each other and shook their heads. The husband went and got a check for twenty dollars, but Andy didn’t get a refill of his milk.
IVAN WOLFE teaches English at Arizona State University and has a PhD in Rhetoric from the University of Texas, Austin. A time Ivan used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning—to gain a benefit for himself was—well, Ivan tries to always use good reasoning when doing persuasion with adults (it’s possible to do both!). However, he uses persuasion that quite often lacks good reasoning when dealing with his many, many children, and the examples of that are both too numerous to mention and also likely too familiar to anyone out there that is or has been a parent (and if you, like one young soon-to-be parent Ivan talked to recently, think you will be the exception and always use good reasoning when trying to persuade your children, the universe laughs at you).
DANIEL YIM is Department Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Bethel University. He has interests in early modern philosophy, the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, the philosophy of popular culture, and the epistemology of self-deception.
Index
absurdity, 40, 47, 49–50, 52, 127–137, 151
Adams, Scott, x–xi, 3–14, 15–24, 25–34, 36–45, 47–54, 55–67, 68–80, 81–99, 101–112, 113–124, 127–136, 137–146, 147–154, 155–165, 169–182, 185–197, 199–209, 211–223
affirmation, 178, 181
Against Method (Feyerabend), 191
Alice (Dilbert character), 101, 112, 120–23, 130–33, 165
ambition, 26, 52, 63, 143
anchor strategy, 171–74, 181
Ancient Greece, 3, 6, 10, 40, 50–51, 114, 142, 156–160, 182, 200
aporia, 41
Aristotle, 9–11, 51, 54, 98, 137–144, 149, 156
Asok (Dilbert character), 64, 117, 120–21, 127, 132, 157, 161, 163
Augustine of Hippo, 9
authority, 6, 65, 76–77, 82
The Avatar (character in God’s Debris), 200–209
Bacon, Sir Francis, 73
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Cipolla), 187, 192–93, 197
Bateson, Gregory, 164
Beauvoir, Simone de, 101–02, 144–45
belief, 175–77, 187–191, 206–09
bias, 11, 13, 23, 26, 53, 78–80, 98, 169–183, 190, 194
Blair, Hugh, 9
Booth, Wayne, 9
Bostrom, Nick, 213
Brady, Tom, 17
Breitbart, 63, 89
Brown, Derren, 5
Bruce, Lenny, 197
Buffett, Warren, 15, 157, 160
Burke, Kenneth, 9
Bush, Jeb, 26, 62
Camus, Albert, 125, 127–29, 134–35
Carol (Dilbert character), 101, 123
Carter, Jimmy, 16
Catbert, 112, 130, 132, 134, 147
Chakhotin, Sergei, 178
Cherokee (Native American tribe), 26–27
Cialdini, Robert, ix, 179
Cicero, 9
Cipolla, Carlo M., 192–94
Clemens, Samuel, 197
Clifford, W.K., 189–190
climate change, 16, 187–89, 196
Clinton, Bill, 62
Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 4, 21, 25, 30, 32, 54, 87, 90–94, 215
The Clouds (Aristophanes), 7
CNN, 89
cognitive dissonance, 5, 13, 23, 53, 84–85, 96–99, 194
confirmation bias, 11, 13, 23, 26, 53, 78–79, 98, 190, 194
conjecture, 97, 174, 180–81
consciousness, 29, 78–79, 90, 169–174, 181, 205–07, 213–223
Conway, Kellyanne, 83
corporate culture, 57, 127–28, 131, 134, 136, 138–39, 145, 162, 165
creationism, 60, 133, 152–54
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 55
Crooked Hillary, 25
The Crowd (Le Bon), 178
DARPA, 60–67
The Dilbert Future (Adams), 4, 113, 131
The Dilbert Principle (Adams), 135, 152
Deep Blue (computer program), 219
Democratic Party, 26, 31, 90, 94, 113–14
dialectic, 38–42
Dickens, Charles, 55
Dilberito, 52
Dilbert, 3–4, 37–45, 47–52, 57–60, 63–67, 71, 79–80, 101, 104–05, 112–13, 116, 119–123, 127–135, 137–146, 147–154, 156–165, 192, 197
Dilfer, Trent, 17
Dogber
t (Dilbert character), 59, 112, 115, 130, 139–141, 144, 147–154, 158–59
Einstein, Albert, 77, 180, 191
Either/Or (Kierkegaard), 44
election campaign, 2016 presidential, ix–xi, 25, 79, 84, 87, 90, 95
emotion, 33, 79, 84, 96, 104–05, 109, 116, 133, 146, 169–170, 178, 181–84, 194–95, 217, 222
empiricism, 187–196
epistemological anarchy, 191, 195
epistemology, 132, 134, 187–89, 191–95, 207–09
error, 72, 79, 173–76, 187, 201
The Ethics of Ambiguity (Beauvoir), 144–45
existentialism, 128–140
Facebook, 67
facts, 3, 8, 9–11, 15–19, 21–23, 81–99
two meanings of “fact,” 82–83
fallacies, 48–50, 71–79, 211–223
begging the question, 77
complex cause, 75
false (objectionable) cause, 75
misplaced authority, 77
Pinocchio, 211–223
falsifiability, 190–91, 195
feminism, 101–112
Feyerabend, Paul, 191, 195
fiction, 19, 147, 152–54, 212
filters, xii, 23, 53, 81, 97–98, 182
Fire and Fury (Wolff), 86
Fox News, 63
fracking, 93–94
Freud, Sigmund, 190
fuck-you money, 215
gay marriage, 99
Gigerenzer, Gerd, 172–73, 174, 180
Gini, Al, 159
God’s Debris (Adams), x, 199–209
Golden Age, 86
Gopnik, Alison, 177, 179