Neologism wanted

January 15, 2020 • 12:30 pm

I’m looking for readers to help invent a new word, since the concept I want to encapsulate isn’t represented by any words or phrases I know.

And here’s the concept. You’re all familiar with the ploy that theologians use when you criticize their ideas. Many of them—most notably Edward Feser, but also Alvin Plantinga and others—will respond by saying, “You haven’t read the best and most thorough exposition of my ideas, in books X, Y, and Z.” And if you read and criticize those works, they just shunt you on to other works.

It’s a never-ending trip down the illusory Rabbit Hole of Fuzzy Thought. They’ll even pull this stunt with other theologians, as when Catholic theologian Edward Feser argued with David Bentley Hart in 2015 about whether dogs go to Heaven—one of the more hilarious theological disputes I’ve documented. Feser, who said “no way dogs can get through the Pearly Gates,” told his opponent Hart that he’d better read Thomas Aquinas to settle the issue. Can you believe that people get paid to argue about such stuff?

Now, I find, advocates of panpsychism are pulling the same trick, saying that you can’t criticize their dumb ideas unless you read every book that’s ever been written about the Consciousness of the Inanimate. I keep reading and don’t find a “there” there, but am still being told to dig deeper. Fool that I am, I often comply, but it’s a futile endeavor.

So here’s my request:  Come up with a word or short phrase (two words) that describes the never-ending requests of those theologians or philosophers who require that that you keep reading ever more books and papers before you’re qualified to criticize their views.

If I find a word or phrase that I want to use, the winner will get a book of their choice among my two trade books, and with a cat or other animal of your choice drawn in along with an autograph. (A winner is not guaranteed, but do your best.)

Deadline: 5 p.m. Wednesday, January 22. You have one week.

Illustration from Feser’s post castigating Hart

 

200 thoughts on “Neologism wanted”

    3. I’d say Jerry is familiar with the “Courtier’s Reply” but that it is problematic for at least two reasons

      1) PZ’s rather extensive clay feet

      2) It’s not a neologism with a meaning that can be gleaned from it’s roots, rather the term is a reference to the title of a relatively obscure sarcastic essay that one must read to get the context.

      Not really sure how to make it into a self-explanatory term, though. Burden Stuffing? Academic goal tending? Fallacy of Sophistication?

    4. But that’s an inverse argument from autorithy, whics is not exactly what Jerry is describing.

  5. How to make a distinction between this idea (which I agree with) and honestly sending a student or question-asker or … yes, a creationist, to the literature? I think a good neologism would have to account for this apparent – APPARENT – double-standard. Perhaps a lack of specificity… don’t know….

    1. Easy. A teacher-.student relationship has an implictly accepted hierarchical component: The estudent goes to the teacher to learn, it’s not a debate between equals. The teacher can put the estudent to task without further justification. The context makes the distinction.

    1. Example usage:

      “He dodged the question with another refelusion to Thomas Aquinas.”

      “He always resorts to refelusions when he is a about to lose a debate.”

  8. Biblicoprocursion, the recursive consumption of yet another crappy article/book that fails to clarify anything.

  10. I have to think of a metaphor based on the “Shephard tone”, a never-ending constant slide of tonal pitch.

    I like that it’s a constantly changing pitch (doubles as sales pitch). I like that the shepard tone never arrives, but goes on forever, and that it’s an illusion. And I also like that its almost like “shepherd”, i.e. herding sheep.

    But it’s a lousy metaphor, because the source domain, the Shephard tone, is not widely known. But these people send their “Shephard’s dog”, or maybe it’s a demand for a “Shephard Literacy” where you can get trapped reading forever without moving closer to an answer or argument.

    2. I’d not known of the Shepard tone until your mention of it here. I checked it out, and WOW! That’s amazing. I wonder what would it be like to listen to a Shepard tone, ascending or descending while on psychedelics.

  11. responses: Ok zoomer/tumor/loomer etc.

    Frank Bartell Assoc. Prof. Anthropology Community College of Phila. 1700 Spring Garden St. Phila., PA 19130

  13. Dear Dr. Coyne,

    I think the phrase you’re looking for already exists: Courtier’s Reply.

    PZ Myers came up with this phrase years ago to describe this exact phenomenon. To summarize: “Before crudely accusing the Emperor of nudity, the accuser first ought to read all these long and complicated treatises on the qualities and virtues of Imaginary Fabrics!”

    Example Use: “As usual, panpsychism enthusiasts are making the Courtier’s Reply to my criticisms.”

  15. Panpsychoticism? The ability to repeat the same behavior and expecting different results.

    1. Or, in reference to the Jesus’n’Mo of a few moments ago (in my browsing), Anser fujaxshit ?

  18. an infinite digress.

    [I’m sorry if this is a duplicate. My first attempt to post never showed up.]

  21. I thought you coined “Sophisticated Theology” for this?

    I know this is three words, but “Argument from References” seems to capture the idea. They treat references as arguments, rather than presenting the argument themselves.

    -Ryan

    1. I was thinking Latin-ish : argumentum ad exhaustum.
      The purpose of the exercise is to simply exhaust the target of the argument.

  22. A previous poster here called it something like “the n+1 principle”. You must have read n+1 books on the topic to be able to comment, where n is the number you have currently read.

    1. Maybe an idiom? “To pull a Peterson”. E.g. “He pulled a Peterson on me [and told me to read all his past works]”. Half-serious suggestion… Or maybe fully serious, I’m not sure anymore…

  24. How about something like an Ourouboros Loop? Endlessly eating its own tail, but never getting any closer to the head (of the matter)?

    1. Reference looping is perfect, also for the noun, reference loop. I was thinking os something self explanatory and also whose translation to other langueges (i.e, spanish, which is my mother tongue, would be as self explanatory. In spanish it would be “rizo referencial”.

    1. The Dodgson Dodge ?
      Though it’s hardly fair to associate a perfectly sane logician with a logical sleight of hand like this.

  34. I would call it ‘quick-sanding’…..once you step into such an endeavor to read all they offer, you are sucked in and find it difficult to get out.

  35. litteraeterum

    Derived from puer aeternus, the eternal child, but modified to refer to writings (litterae) and compressed into a portmanteau.

    1. Darn it – you got there before me! The Wikipedia entry about Escher’s painting mentions a Dutch idiom :

      Another possible source for the people’s [in the picture]looks is the Dutch idiom “a monk’s job”, which refers to a long and repetitive working activity with absolutely no practical purposes or results, and, by extension, to something completely useless.

        1. Or the porn version of a Robert Ludlum novel that was made into a legit film first.

      2. If there isn’t a Star Trek epidose with that name, there damned well should be.

        “epidose” ! My fingers do come up with some good ones from time to time.

      3. When someone rescues a food choking victim and the rescued victim recovers the expelled food and eats it.

  37. Something along the lines of kounelotropy, a word I just made up based on the Greek for ‘rabbit hole’?

  39. Philosophism … and then consider all the modern philosophers who diss Feynman because he claimed that ‘philosophy was wishful thinking’. Obviously anyone who spends a lifetime, or at least 4 years in theology school is going to support their ‘free will’ guided by god vocation and diss anyone who disagrees with them. How true what Max Born said about us all ‘To believe that one has the ONLY truth is a great evil.’ But we all have that only truth, until we change our mind again.

  44. Recrudescence is a real word and aptly fits.

    It was used by Hitchens to describe similar feature of having to deal with, live with, and maintain a constant struggle to fight for reason over theocratic ideas.

  45. Self-reverential referencing.
    (I wrote some really good stuff in my other books.)

    Self-referencial reverencing.
    (My other really good books are really good.)

  46. How about “theological punting” or something like that?

    It’s an old truism that if you can’t explain something to your grandmother in simple terms, you really don’t understand it.

  48. dirimens copulatio
    but wait theres more!
    Just to be crude, it sounds like he’s playing with himself, which is true, he’s not interested in what you think.

    Amplificationism,
    from the above, but a play on, getting louder! by bearing you down ironicly, on more shit.

  50. It’s more of a ploy than a concept. My recommendation: “inartful dodging”—and those that practice it are, “Inartful Dodgers”.

  51. Foreshortening fallacy?
    –referring to the familiar illusion in optics and art, of course… Webster’s interestingly defines “foreshorten” as “to shorten by proportionately contracting in the direction of depth so that an illusion of projection or extension in space is obtained”)

  53. I have two, both plays on existing phrases:

    “Special Reading”. A play on the logical fallacy of special pleading, in which the claimant moves the goalposts or makes up exceptions when a claim is shown to be false.

    “Vapordare”. A play on vaporware, which is software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written or designed. In the case of vapordare, the claimant dares his or her opponent to do more research, but somehow that research didn’t make it into the claimant’s arguments when their case was actually presented.

    2. Very good, but I think it can be abbreviated slightly to let it roll off the tongue. If you will allow me:

      Sisyphustry.

  64. Bibilophize: to cite only one’s own writing in defence of one’s theories.

    Or, perhaps biblioficate: to cite only one’s own writing in a pompous and dogmatic way.

  65. Wackamoleism.

    Every time you expose one fallacy another one pops up. Eventually a ‘previously wacked’ one pops up again and Sophisticated People hope you don’t notice.

  70. How about “Feser-ize” or “Feser-ism” after the great philosopher Edward Feser? (I was inspired by the term “Bulverism,” a term coined by C.S. Lewis to describe another type of dishonest rhetorical tactic.)

    I know that Professor Ceiling Cat is a dear friend of Feser, and Feser would be really honored if the term caught on and became part of our language. 😉

    Alternate idea: “Plantificate” after the illustrious Alvin Plantinga.

  72. As much as it pains me, I too would recognize PZ Myers contribution of the Courtier’s Reply – however it’s not a particularly catchy phrase for this particular epistemic snipe hunt.

  74. It’s hard to go wrong with Greek and Latin roots.

    Panlogian for Greek.

    Omniliberian for Latin.

    Both are just literal translations of “all books”, with “-ian” added to make it an ideology of sorts.

    Or mix and match as desired, to annoy linguistic purists. Panliberian? Omnilogian? They both sound a little bit better to me, and are somewhat easier to say.

    1. Or mix and match as desired, to annoy linguistic purists.

      With, as the phrase goes, malice aforethought.

  79. Thought of proof-seeking but that would work for any thought one was attempting to convince another of, true or otherwise. Maybe adding false in front or to shorten, make it false proofing.

  80. Constantly being referred elsewhere in a seemingly endless and futile attempt to get a serious answer to a reasonable question = calling the helpline.

  84. The Tantalus Trap because tantalus can’t help but to reach for the grapes or water but as soon as he does it disappears yet that’s what he does forever in Tartarus.

  85. “Down the Mohole” is my suggestion.

    I suggest this because of the fatuity and futility of the Mohole Project — what an expenditure of brain power, time, and money, only to fail in its objective and be publicly ridiculed for all that effort — “Trust me, if you just dig a deeper and deeper hole into the earth, you’d find the answers you were looking for.”

    “He took me down the Mohole,” “I got sucked down the Mohole,” and so forth. Shepard’s descending tone as background music.

    1. As the contemporaneous(*) joke went

      ♫Mo–ho–hole
      And a barrel of funds♫

      I’m not sure if the emojis will make ith through WP. They should be Unicode “Beamed eighth notes” ♫ U+266B ♫

      (*) It was before my time, but I read the story in books published in 1970, which I remember reading not long after. The topic keeps on coming back, most recently with the launch of the Japanese vessel Chikyu a couple of decades ago, which is also advertised as being able to drill “into the mantle”. More specifically, it can handle a drill string of nearly 8km length with it’s thousand tonne lifting capacity top drive. If someone makes sufficient ultralight drill pipe, that might be exceeded (where did those 12km of Russian titanium drill pipe from the Kola borehole go? Probably into someone’s hip pocket in used, small denomination notes.)

  86. This may sound too simple, but my suggestion would be “dig deeper”. That can’t hurt, can it now? Digging deeper may result in reading a lot of, well, shit, but reading shit will always be helpful in refuting shit.
    And for those who are interested in a philosophical and at the same time erxtremely satirical exposé on the subject and are empowered with the German language I suggest reading “Welche Tiere und warum das Himmerlreich erlangen können” (loose translation: Which Animals, and why, can reach Heaven). This is a very special book which will certainly never be translated to English or any other language. Read it. If you can’t do German… learn German and: read it.

    1. You are right in theory. However, lazy online debaters often characterize their opponent in their minds as just uninformed or not knowing enough to see the light. Instead of putting in the effort to understand their opponent’s points and counter them, they essentially say “Here, read this!”

      Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to refer to the extant literature but it has to be done judiciously and not out of pure laziness or lack of respect.

  87. Recurseion

    re.curse.ion /rɪˈkəːsː.ʒən/

    The practice of describing myths, theology, etc. in terms of the myths, theology, etc. that come before them in a series: occurs when a numinous thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type.

    While this apparently defines an infinite number of numinosities it is done in such a way that this is ensured to happen.

    See also: apologetics.

    2. The practice of describing myths, theology, etc. in terms of the myths, theology, etc. that come before them in a series

      Could you pass the bottom turtle from that stack?

  89. Here are a few. They’re variants of the root of “pentateuch” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/pentateuch) which the theologian offenders should certainly find familiar. Different prefixes for different levels of offense.

    multiteuch would be more than one, but it mixes Latin and Greek.

    polyteuch also means many, more than one.

    Those are relatively mild.

    staphyloteuch would be a cluster of books.
    (https://www.yourdictionary.com/staphylo#websters)

    streptoteuch is a twisted chain of books.
    (https://www.yourdictionary.com/strepto)

    The last two prefixes are of course also used in staphylococcus and streptococcus in reference to bacteria. Useful for serious offenses. Really obscene violations could combine prefixes:

    polystaphyloteuch
    polystreptoteuch
    polystreptostaphyloteuch

    A never-ending sequence would be an
    infiniteuch

  90. I’m against it. There is too much potential for misuse – or rather, actuality of misuse, as with “The Courtier’s Reply”. It’s not that the problem isn’t real, but the problem of stopping research too early is also real. What the situation needs is a Bayesian analysis, looking at the last N books on each of the M leading sides of a debate, and seeing how many intelligent nonpartisans had their minds changed…

  91. How about “conniption fit” because that’s what Edward Feser has every time he types things.

  93. I have never understood why there us such an objection to dogs going to heaven. Why do some people who believe in heaven object so strenuously to dogs going there?
    And don’t tell me I need to read more books. Thanks.

    1. Obviously dogs can’t go to heaven. The cats wouldn’t let them in.
      Their opinion is very much divided on the subject of humans.

      I know, I know. Argument from authority.

  94. I’d suggest Sisyphean Bibliography (Sisyphean adj. denoting a task that can never be completed).

  95. The apprehension paradox: the more you apprehend, the more you’re told to learn.

  96. This is probably too wordy, but how about “drink from Loki’s horn”. Loki chalanged Thor to drink the ale contents of a sheep’s horn. Howevever, the horn was connected to the ocean, so Thor would’ve hsd to drank the whole ocean to win the contest.

  99. Here are a few:
    Bibliotrekking
    Rabbit-holeing (as in continually sending you down one)
    The library gambit

  100. schadenbuch : literally “harm book”; the constant referral to yet another book which only obfuscates the original premise without adding anything to the logic of their argument.

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