Thinking About Thinking¶
Flew, A. (1975). Thinking About Thinking: Or, Do I Sincerely Want to Be Right?.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Informal Fallacy
- Run the validity check on this inference and it passes: "all things that are both \(X\) and \(Y\) are \(Y\)" is a tautology, valid under every interpretation.
This sourceCoins and analyzes the 'no-true-Scotsman' move — a universal claim rescued from a counterexample by post-hoc redefinition of the subject term, leaving it a content-empty tautology.
- Run the validity check on this inference and it passes: "all things that are both \(X\) and \(Y\) are \(Y\)" is a tautology, valid under every interpretation.
- No True Scotsman
- In argumentation and informal logic it is the original "no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
This sourceOrigin of the "No true Scotsman" name and the porridge example, presenting the move as an ad-hoc redefinition of a subject term to immunize a universal claim against counterexamples.
- In argumentation and informal logic it is the original "no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Mechanisms¶
- Ad Hoc Boundary-Shift Probe
- That double signature — post-hoc timing plus circularity — is what separates a genuine no-true-Scotsman dodge
This sourceCharacterizes a genuine no-true-Scotsman maneuver by post-hoc timing and circularity.
- That double signature — post-hoc timing plus circularity — is what separates a genuine no-true-Scotsman dodge
- Category Boundary Stability Check
- Its strength is exposing the ad hoc redefinition, best known as No True Scotsman: the move that rescues a universal claim by re-drawing the category to expel every counterexample, so the claim can never be wrong because it no longer means anything fixed.
This sourceIntroduces No True Scotsman as the ad hoc redefinition of a category to exclude counterexamples and make a universal assertion unfalsifiable.
- Its strength is exposing the ad hoc redefinition, best known as No True Scotsman: the move that rescues a universal claim by re-drawing the category to expel every counterexample, so the claim can never be wrong because it no longer means anything fixed.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 4 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 1 other way.
Registry ID ref:93ccb56b1137 · see in the full table