Today a how-to on dogma busting, with one simple tool – and some precision razor blades, for those who prefer them. Read on, and you’ll be able to debunk everything from curiosity-killing insults, to pseudo-scientific marketing speak, to shaky theories of human nature. A heads-up - it might start OFF sounding technical, but I can assure you, this episode could save you a stack of cash that might otherwise be spent on bullshit backed up by un-reason.

The Faux Terminus — When Un-reason Dresses up as Logic.

This is the post you may or may not have been waiting for! And it is not mini. I realised that when you coin a term, it does take more than ten minutes to lay it out – a lot more, so I am doing chapters and time-stamps today, for your convenience.

This episode is all about the faux terminus, which you met last episode. It is a term I came up with when researching the rhetorical devices used to shut down inquiry. Now, in classical fallacy theory, errors of logic are classified by STRUCTURE. The Faux Terminus, however, looks at FUNCTION – and its function is to shut down inquiry; it is a PERFORMANCE of finality, when curiosity is actually still warranted.

The faux terminus is thus beloved among politicians, western spiritualists, self-improvement gurus and even some psychologists, as we saw last week. They love it, without even KNOWING it, because the term is being introduced now ;) You, dear readers, will hopefully find it useful, cos focussing on function makes it WAY easier to recognise potential dogma. And, as opposed to relying on structural definitions, you won’t have to remember a stack of Latin names for stuff.

If you have somehow stumbled across this at random, and without watching episode 14, that is all good. You are welcome here. I’m Jordan Reyne, a philosophy graduate from New Zealand, who is allergic to self help gurus. This is The Loneliness Industry — a philosophy podcast about how capitalism’s values, structures, and processes divide us from each other, and, more specifically for today's not-mini episode, how they divide us from reason itself. This is the supplement episode I promised in episode 14, and it is all about recognising when someone is not remotely interested in connection or discussion: when they are, instead, trying to perform some final word that isn’t one. Often to make themselves look clever, cool or just more “in the right” than you.

All the rhetorical manoeuvres you will meet today are faux termini, but we ARE going to look at the sub types, already named by philosophers and authors and so on. Why? Because when pseudo spiritualists want to blind you with bullshit, or so-called experts posture instead of proving, you will know EXACTLY what they are playing at. And hurrah hurrah, we meet Jordan Peterson and Jo Dispenza once again, delving into the nuts and bolts of their bad arguments, along with an additional crap-argument case study on a famous psychologist who shall remain nameless, but who claims that human nature is inherently misanthropic.
This episode is not for the faint of heart! Especially if Latin words give you flashbacks to a calligula film you were accidentally exposed to as a child. And I know, it really WONT be for everyone, cos this is kinda hardcore theory development. Have no fear, we will get to the more general stuff on where dogma abounds, in order to try and sell you stuff, next episode.

As a quick recap – the context of this episode, and the one prior and following it, is DOGMA. The faux terminus is the telltale SIGN that dogma is likely incoming, cos dogma is made possible by shutting down questioning. Episode 14 was about the link between dogma and what Karl Jaspers called un-reason. For Jaspers, curiosity and inquiry are vital parts of reason, so when curiosity and inquiry are SHUT DOWN, reason has also left the building. Un-reason operates as a performance — a non-curious kind of engagement that feels like a dick swinging contest and only mimics thought. It employs the two devices we are looking at today – the faux terminus, and its even more evil twin, the faux terminus paralogism. Both are curiosity killers with no interest in killing cats. They kill inquiry instead — sometimes politely, with the poise of good manners. Sometimes with f-bombs, and offensive words about your mum.

Why is curiosity important? Firstly, cos it is the key ingredient in connecting – in wanting to know and understand each other. Second, cos beyond helping us understand each other, it is crucial for understanding the WORLD. Without curiosity, it isn’t just relationships that fail. Even SCIENCE chokes and stalls, as Thomas Kuhn showed us last episode. Karl Jaspers explains that curiosity is what BINDS reason to knowledge – making knowledge the growing, deepening, re-contextualising thing it is. When curiosity is shut down, reason is shut down. That is when knowledge ossifies into dogma, and is the point where you meet the peddlers of thought control, toxic positivity, and psychologists trying to force you to be racist, aka Jordan Peterson.

It was thanks to him, Dispenza and a few other annoying characters, that we met the faux terminus last time, and I promised to go into more detail. Because when dogma is at play, faux termini abound in support of power-games, one one-upmanship, along with dick swinging contests about who has heard of Fantomas, or can name the recording studio that Neurosis used for their 2^nd album.

In short, Faux termini show us that un-reason is in action. So recognising them is a great way to protect yourself from conversations with dickheads. Meaning, NON-conversations that are really about establishing heirarchy, or dividing into in and out groups - and not about connecting.

Meet the Faux Terminus

As mentioned, the faux terminus is called a faux terminus based on its FUNCTION. When a rhetorical move aims to shut out remaining questions, and end the argument, it is a faux terminus. It is an ending that should not be one, because further questioning is actually totally legitimate. That is how it gets its name. It is not a definitive answer, or conclusion, but it pretends to be one.

If you didn’t watch episode 14, that's OK. You’ll still recognise an example from your own childhood. When you whined your best, frustrated, scrunch-faced whine,
“But why can’t I stay up and play tetris for 6 more hours?”
and your equally frustrated, exhausted parent replied,
“Because I said so, that’s why.”

Obviously, question time is over, though the question itself was legitimate. You might even considers this childhood example the stone-tool ancestor of all faux termini — blunt, effective, and perfect for bashing curiosity to death. Ye olde parental “because I said so” is an example of what is known as an appeal to authority — or, if you like Latin, argumentum ad verecundiam.

With appeals to authority, we claim something is true because some higher-status entity said so. In this case, the parent is claiming their own parental authority. The person or role becomes the source of truth — being a parent makes you right, in this case. This kind of faux terminus shuts you down by demanding deference to power or rank.

But, there are many other kinds of faux terminus. Each one has it’s own STRUCTURE with it’s own particular name. These come out of classical fallacy theory, which focuses on structure. As you might already see, just recognising it is a faux terminus is usually enough to recognise un-reason, and it’s easier than memorising a stack of Latin names. That is why I am putting the term out there.

Even so, because some of you ARE curious, for which I applaud you, we will go through these different structures today. These were defined and named by various philosophers and even authors, over time. Think of it like this though. The faux terminus is the genus, and the particular TYPES of faux termini, with their various structures and names, are the species. Things belong in the genus “faux terminus” because of their FUNCTION and that function is shutting-down inquiry. The species of faux terminus are all about HOW inquiry shut down, and are defined by structure.

A tasteless analogy for you.

Murder has the FUNCTION of un-aliving someone. Strangulation, stabbing, or locking someone in a room with a Jo Dispenza audiobook on repeat play, are all about HOW that murder happened. Sometimes it’s enough to know it was murder. Other times we want to stare too long at the crime scene.

From Unquestioned Authority to Power Games.

Now, I want to focus on the performative aspect of dogmatism — even when we’re looking at structure. Childhood examples are easy to spot, because you have an authority figure who doesn’t need to try to win a power game. When someone already holds power, they don’t have to build an argument; they can simply perform bare-bones authority. That’s why ESTABLISHED dogma can be so barefaced:
“It is so because God willed it.”
“It is a law of nature.”

This kind of lazy performance lets the function shine through — it’s conversation-stopping, not truth-seeking. Nether makes an argument. They just DECLARE.

Now, such no-frills performances of a shut-down are not much of an issue for tired parents denying a child a game of Tetris. But if some authority in your world feels so secure in their power that they perform appeals to authority as lazily as “cos I am your boss,” you could be dealing with someone who sees you as a pawn they can shuffle about in their life-long chess game. So run.

Once power has to justify itself, though — in politics, institutions or dick swinging contests about who is the coolest — dogmatism evolves new costumes. It becomes performatively logical, rather than performatively “ug”. You’ll hear things like:

• “Science has already proven that…” (when it hasn’t) or

• “History shows us that people like you always fail.” or

• “If you question this, you’re part of the problem.” or, a favourite among defenders of capitalist ideology

• “The market has spoken.”

In such contexts — where it’s all about power, but that power is not yet established — we start to dress up arguments more cleverly. Some of the above are still appeals to authority, or tradition, but done a tad more convincingly.

In other words, there are performative levels of faux termini — each telling us something about power, dogma, and how convincingly un-reason can masquerade as logic.

“Stop talking shit and drink your beer, Science Boy” is obviously not a very stylish faux terminus, even though it is one. But take this from the world of Western spiritualism:

“If you find this hard to accept, then it’s another sign you aren’t in alignment.”

That one sounds like insight. Millions of enlightenment-course punters find it persuasive.
If you don’t, I’m glad. But it is wearing much shinier garb than “Stop talking shit, science boy.”

At the top level of faux termini, the ones performed with real elegance, none of us are entirely immune. The slickest of faux termini are ones that Immanuel Kant would call paralogisms. These are arguments that look logically sound whilst quietly NOT being. Jordan Peterson’s arguments in defence of IQ tests — which we dissected last time — are one example. Arguably. So are Joe Dispenza’s physics-plus-spirituality hybrids.

Borrowing from Kant, I’m giving these especially polished faux termini their own label – the faux terminus paralogism — the Ferrari of faux termini. They’re expensive-looking, over-engineered, and almost always driven by men who are trying to compensate for something.

Now I said Jordan Petersons argument was ARGUABLY a faux terminus paralogism. As we shall see, what counts as ‘logical-looking’ does VARY. Sometimes greatly. For some people, shouting ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’ already sounds like reason — even when it’s just a tantrum in a lab coat. My focus here is on performance and function, so when I put these species of faux terminus into categories here, it is more flexible than when one focusses, as philosophers traditionally do, on structure.

To recap what we’ve gone through so far – and if you are still here, I love you. Most people do not delve into logic of their own free will, so respect. Here we go:

• Faux termini are defined by function, not structure. Their function is to stop legitimate inquiry.

• Each KIND of faux terminus may use a different structure (appeal to authority, non sequitur, etc.) to do that job.

• A faux terminus paralogism is the subset of faux termini whose structure mimics logic itself — the illusion of reasoning executed with enough finesse to convince.

Next up, a quick taxonomy of common structures—grouped by their potential for performative slickness.

If you want to jump to the case studies on Joe Dispenza, an unnamed psychologist, and their respective Paralogisms, the timestamp should be in the show notes or on screen for YouTube. (If you DO skip, you will miss an amusing surprise about Peterson though.)

For those who wish to stay with me, we are about to enter the twisted menagerie of faux termini, designed for your convenience in recognising dickheads in an a more specific fashion. Or to even use yourself, for those special occasions when someone is performing instead of really conversing, and you just cannot be assed.

Fasten your seatbelts as we enter the theme park of un-reason — complete with Latin signage, circular logic rides, and a gift shop selling fake full stops.

Taxonomy section — the guided tour through the dance moves of un-reason.

Just so you know, you will be tested on this. Kidding. What is cool about the term faux terminus is that is means you DON'T have to remember Latin names. Unless you so chose. All the things we mention here are sub-types - the species – within the broader genus of the faux terminus. These are like the named moves you can call on to kill the conversational dance. They are different official flourishes that will always culminate in, “Voila! Performance over! Nothing more to see here!” i.e. a faux terminus.

A quick note for those whose favourite hobby is objecting to things:
Formally, philosophers of logic group fallacies by structure (formal vs. informal) and by intent (relevance, presumption, ambiguity).
I’m arranging things differently here — by level of social sophistication, or in other words, how much effort and style the move entails. The boundaries here ARE fuzzy, because this is phenomenology, not logic, meaning, both the listeners perception and the speakers performance play a role. If you happen to find straw men more convincing than tautologies, you might rank these moves differently. The performer’s ability also comes into play as well. You will see when we get to tautologies, that the same move could be done crassly and clumsily, or executed with more style.

The Crude and the Personal — School Disco Bully Faux termini

We are going to start at what I have decided is the shallow end — the crude, obvious and almost always NASTY faux termini. These moves don’t look much like logic. They are more like the angry outbursts of a bullying teenager, as they struggle to do the side-step at school discos. I mean, ad hominem even sounds like a side-branch of human evolution that died out from sheer thuggishness.

For this section, we welcome to the dance floor: the ad hominem, the tu quoque (too-KWOH-kwee), the “what about X” defence, and the mocking dismissal. When those who use these things are actually too OLD for school discos, these faux termini become more like the conversational equivalent of a pub fight — offensive, pointless, and not something you want on your record.

Let us start with the ad hominem argument, which attacks the person, not the point they’re making.

Like when you say, “What do you think, Bob. Is this beer is only popular cos it’s pitched as boutique and elite? I find it kinda flat,”
and Bob fires back,
“You wouldn’t know if a tyre was flat.”

That’s the ad hominem in action — no engagement with the point, just a drive-by insult so you’ll shut up and get on with drinking.

To my earlier heads-up though, even though ad hominem arguments are usually unsophisticated, they CAN be dressed up a little. You will know this if you’ve ever tried telling your boss that you’ve been given more work than you can possibly complete in the allotted time, and got this reply:
“You’re obviously not a team player.”
This line is still the teenager two-step, I structure. The same brawly shift in focus — from what you SAID to you being the problem. So the structure: a shift in focus from the point itself, to YOU. The function: well, its a faux terminus, and its function is always... conversational shut down.

Next up: the Tu Quoque — or “you too” defence.
Have you ever chatted with a friend, and raised concerns that your neighbours constantly have screaming fights, where kids start crying, and pot plants are shattered on walls? If you have, and your “friend” is a dickhead, you may have been met with,
“Yeah, but you argue with your spouse too.”
If you have, you have met the Too Kwoh Kweh, which is not the follow up book to Don Kee Ho Te.

It is an argument that dodges the issue by accusing you of hypocrisy. It says: you don’t have the right to make that point if you’re even remotely entangled in anything similar.

I get one of these regularly — people commenting, “You hate capitalism’s core values, but you still want people to support you… financially.”
Meaning: you criticise capitalism, yet you participate in it.

The Tu Quoque sounds convincing because it borrows the moral posture of consistency — “You can’t say X if you also do Y.”
But logically, it’s irrelevant.
Whether you live up to your own principles has no bearing on whether the principle itself is true.
If a chain-smoker tells you smoking causes cancer, they’re still right.
The truth of the statement doesn’t depend on the purity of the person saying it. And just FYI to that commenter: nobody opts out of capitalism like it’s a Netflix subscription. We have to survive inside it. If not, we end up homeless. And still part of capitalism cos we have to beg for money.

All that is why it’s not a real argument — it doesn’t address what’s being said, it just goes after the person who’s saying it. It replaces engagement with the claim itself with a moral audit of the speaker, and that swap is the sleight of hand. It confuses hypocrisy with error — as if being inconsistent automatically makes you wrong.

Up next: whataboutism.
This one’s another redirect, but instead of redirecting to YOU being the problem, it redirects to other problems. It says, “The issue you are talking about doesn’t count, because somewhere else, something worse is happening.”

Imagine if Moana, in rural New Zealand, complains that a company is dumping untreated excrement into the river that runs past her house, and someone from the company replies,
“What about China? The pollution there is astronomical! You should be more concerned with that!”

The tactic here is deflect, distract, and declare moral immunity through comparison. Which, of course, does not address Moana's legitimate issue.

You find this kind of faux terminus a LOT in self-improvement culture.

“You say you’re burned out and need rest? What about all the single mums working three jobs and still finding time to work out every morning?”

Again, the same dismissal of the problem at hand, coupled with you being told you have no right to say anything.

This is not an argument. It is a distraction technique.

Next up, short and sweet, HBO presents, the mocking dismissal.

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

Which is way cooler and more efficient than
“stop talking shit, science boy”

Even if it has the same structure. That is because HBO have better scriptwriters than me.

A mocking dismissal uses ridicule instead of refuting an argument. It is the last of our school yard faux termini, and I do not encourage you to go and practice them with a friend.

The Bureaucrats of Belief — Line-Dancing Faux termini.

Our next set of non-arguments is not necessarily more sophisticated than the school disco, but they tend to be less personal. Here we see the kind of moves one does when desperately concentrating on following a pattern. So this section is kind of like LINE dancing. It’s all about adherence to established procedure, ALL the time, just like your parents and grand-parents did. We begin with the appeal to tradition argument.

“Mum, why do we always ask the Higher Power to give us bread when everyone in the family has a gluten allergy?”
“Because that’s what we’ve always done, dear.”

Obviously, there is no good reason for doing this, and some very good ones not to. Such as saving on toilet paper costs. And in case you think that kind of logic only lives in isolated towns and church basements, here’s one from last week in a German hospital:
“Doc, why do you prescribe proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux without first testing whether patients actually have high stomach acid — given that the same symptoms can arise from low stomach acid?”
“Because that’s what we always do.”

Yes. This was from a so-called doctor. And it just so happens that this conversation went on to include live specimens of our next two argument types — because when tradition starts to looks stupid, appeals to authority, aka “ad verecundiam” arguments often rush in to hold it’s quaking hand.

Me: “But isn’t it dangerous to do that, given that a lot of people — like me — have very LOW acid production, and proton pump inhibitors will lower it even further, creating more fermentation and so on?”

Here it comes.. Wait for it...
“Look, I’m the doctor here.”

We meet the appeal to authority for the second time, and in its proper section. The appeal to authority thing isn’t just typical of over-tired parents or doctors in Germany, either — it’s typical of how dogma evolves under pressure. When “we’ve always done it this way” fails to persuade, the next fallback is status. Another way for un-reason to preserve itself.

Doctor frankensheisse went on to add the finishing stomp in his line dance with this comment:

“And you certainly won’t find anyone HERE who thinks like that.” meaning my comment on low stomach acid.

This man could not manoeuvre out of his line-dance-level moves. That last one is known as “the majority mirage” argument, or the “ad populum” argument. It doesn’t even assert truth directly — instead, it actually implies that truth is irrelevant if no one else agrees. Incidentally, this one also illustrates perfectly how un-reason can really feed into loneliness because it essentially uses social isolation as epistemic proof: if your view is not shared by enough people, it must be wrong. It weaponises belonging too, by implying that your being in a minority, an out group, makes you laughable.

Of course, he was laughing on the other side of his FACE when I shouted

“That is an ad populum argument! Dickhead!”

...Not really. Cos Germans don’t laugh. At least, not the ones who have failed to study medicine. Instead, he promptly put me in the crazy menopausal foreigner file, where he keeps anyone with an accent, a vagina or questions he can’t answer.

Lets move on to a classic that is used by those who’ve somehow, despite growing up in a barn dance, managed to rise higher than your village doctor. Now this might be a surprise. Please write in the comments if the appearance of this particular person in this particular category is shocking for you. We him last episode and he delivered us a wonderful example of “the false choice” argument. Yes, Jordan Peterson. But he isn't alone in being lo-fi. You hear this one a lot in politics where any disagreement with someone in power triggers the whole “you are either with us, or against us” thing. Peterson is a LITTLE more slick than that, which is a good illustration of the fact that any of these structures can actually be wielded more convincingly, or less.

Peterson’s false choice argument was as follows: “you either accept that IQ tests are valid, or you throw out the whole of psychology.” As with the politician, he makes it look like those are the only two options. You can either fund the welfare state, or the military. The false choice argument is just that – reducing what are actually complex issues to a black or white type choice. For the record, other options DO exist, like throwing Jordan Peterson out of psychology, or admitting that IQ tests are flawed, and keeping some of psychology…. Though really, I wouldn't have had much of an issue opting for the second thing given what the DSM and CBT and done for society. Done TO society, I should say.

Now, as mentioned last episode, Peterson uses this false choice in a sort of hostage manner. He doesn’t think anyone WOULD chose option B. So there is an implied version of the next kind of argument in his statement too – that anyone who WOULD chose to throw out psychology is an idiot. This is called the emotional hijack and it replaces reasoning with pressure. In this case, the pressure to not look like an idiot.

Because who wants to be the fool who “throws out the whole of psychology”?
That’s how these arguments work: they weaponise belonging, shame, and fear of ridicule to keep the dance going. And in-group, out-groups happening. Divide and conquer. Old hat.

So when that social pressure won’t suffice, the next step in the sequence is the Process Shield.
This is the kind of faux terminus where the speaker retreats behind the machinery of the system itself, and you hear things like,

“That’s just how science works,”
or “These are the established methods.”

Which really means, “I’m not prepared to question the process — and nor should you be.”
It’s the rhetorical equivalent of hitting “autopilot” and insisting the plane is still being flown..

Full disclosure here - it surprised me too, that Jordan Peterson ended up in the line dance category. I hadn’t actually grouped the argument types by performative level when I did the last episode, and just kind of assumed Peterson belonged in a more convincing category — one that would earn him the title of faux terminus paralogism. But alas. Peterson’s logic is a lot less sophisticated than I thought at first glance – even if I knew it was a faux terminus. That illustrates a couple of points too. Firstly, that recognising a faux terminus can be way easier than categorising arguments from specific structures. Second, it helps see why what gets called a paralogism is contestable. Clearly, for some of us, the false dilemma, majority mirage, and appeal-to-emotion combo looks logical… ish… when I’m not paying enough attention.

Last of all in this section, my very least favourite - tautologies. I dislike these things so much that I introduced a tautology jar into a flat I once lived in, and if someone ever used one, they had to put a pound coin in it as pennance, for the Christmas fund. If they did a very clever one, which no one noticed, they could take a pound back out. All pointing to the fact that eve within one particular move, performance level varies.
Here is the tautology that contributed by FAR the most funds to our end of year Christmas party:

“It is what it is.”

No shit Sherlock! Things are definitionally equal to themselves! MURDER is what it is, and saying so tells me nothing about whether you think its OK, terrible, or circumstantially justified. And that is the whole point. There is no information in a tautology. They are not arguments. They are statements that are automatically true by definition and don’t even engage with the issues at hand. So you are literally just throwing a true thing at someone and saying “there you are. Discussion over.” Like shutting down a conversation with the sentence “cats exist!”

Missteps and Dancing in a circle

Now, this group is, at least potentially, a little more stylish than a line dance — in that they’re, metaphorically speaking, attempts to step outside the line-dance pattern or the two-step school-yard meanness. These are the free-style moves of logic — attempts at reasoning that don’t quite come off.

We covered the non sequitur last episode. Like the tautology, it can involve statements that are true but don’t actually follow logically from the premises, or don’t have much to do with the point at hand. It’s like trying to invent your own dance move, only to fall on your ass.

For example, when you do an episode about how loneliness is structural, and someone comments, “But in 1878 Nietzsche said XYZ.” The statement may well be true — but its relevance to the argument remains mysterious. They, too, could just as easily have said, “Cats exist, therefore I am right.”

The point is: just because a statement is true doesn’t make it a conclusion to any discussion in the world. A non sequitur pulls you onto a tangent that feels connected, but actually isn’t. Now, the non sequitur can appear similar to the next move we will talk about, the red herring. The difference is that a non sequitur breaks the logic, while a red herring totally changes the subject.
So on from non sequiturs to fishy comments.

Another live example from those who love to hate! Again, on an episode about competition driving loneliness, someone wrote “So you hate hard work, then?”
A sudden pirouette directly away from the point. This red herring reframed the whole conversation around moral character instead of social structure. Suddenly we’re not talking about capitalism producing loneliness any more; we’re defending our work ethic.

It’s the equivalent of suddenly throwing a moonwalk into the line dance. It’s not a logical error so much as a diversion tactic.

As is this next one — the Straw Man argument.
As made famous by manipulators and high-end bullies who know the two-step is too obvious, and instead decide to gaslight you about which dance is even going on.
More clearly, the straw man argument works by building a sort of proxy statement to stand in for what someone really said.

Let’s say Charlie comments that dogs are wonderful because they’re loyal, loving, and warm.
If Karl wanted to shut Charlie down — as only a psychopath, or a cat person, would want to — he’d simply rearrange what Charlie said so he could make them feel small.
Lets not forget, that’s what all of these tactics are about.

For example, Karl could say: “So, you’re saying human beings aren’t capable of offering authentic love? I’m really hurt by that, and to be honest? It sounds like a projection of your own inability to love.”

Charlie never said a damn thing about human beings being able to love them. Karl is making little stories up for himself – and not because he failed his listening test at school. He invented a stand-in – a straw man - deliberately, so he could tear it down. If you recognise such moves, my commiserations, seriously. I feel your pain, cos I did not invent this example. So let the straw man argument be a reminder of why recognising faux termini is so crucial. It stops you wasting time with psychopaths or cat lovers. Hehe, I AM kidding about cat lovers. You are fine.

Now we get to the dance move made popular and profitable by western spiritualism. Circular Reasoning, or Begging the Question (or if you like Latin, petitio principii). The not so distant relative of tautologies – but a tad more stylish. Think of it as a tautology that, instead of going in a line, goes in a circle. More innovative, but still logical fallacies.
Circular arguments assume what they are trying to prove. And this is where we finally move into all the stuff we love to hate on this channel, because Western spiritualism is not only AWESOME at these, it has monetised them. Take for example the following classic:

“The fact that you have issues with this PROVES you’re not in alignment.”

In New Age / self-help rhetoric, “alignment” is a reified synonym for agreement or attunement to a supposed higher truth — usually the speaker’s model of reality, energy, or “vibration.” That creates a self-sealing system — any dissent automatically confirms the speaker’s framework. The logic assumes that alignment is real, definable, and measurable by agreement — but that’s precisely the thing it’s meant to be arguing for, not assuming from the start.

Like so much faux spiritualist crap, and as we discussed in episode 10, this happens to be a remix of neoliberalism — the one we’ve all heard since birth:
‘If you try hard enough, you’ll succeed.’
Which, of course, gets used to tell you that if you didn’t succeed, you just didn’t try hard enough.
Nothing to do with structural violence, racism, sexism, or the fact you only have one leg — just a lack of hustle. The circle both explains and justifies itself, while erasing external factors (inequality, luck, exploitation, structural barriers, etc.).
This isn’t just circular logic; it’s capitalism’s favourite bedtime story.
It loops endlessly — success proves virtue, virtue proves success — until you collapse from exhaustion believing its all your fault.

The Sophisticated and the Cunning — “The Academic Faux Termini”

And on the coattails of the monetised moves of western spiritualism, we get to the level where paralogisms mostly live — the high-rent district of bullshit. The penthouse ballet studio of un-reason, where dogma pirouettes in front of mirrors and quotes itself.

I say “mostly” cos do not forget - a paralogism, as Kant defined it, isn’t one particular argument type. Whether something counts as a paralogism depends on who’s watching, and how well it’s executed or disguised. As we saw with Jordan Peterson, any kind of faux terminus might be a paralogism, even if it lives in a shack, so long as the speaker puts a convincing enough tutu on it.

At this level, the structures can take a century to unpack. And as this mini episode is the longest episode I have done to date, I am opting for two case studies, starring two well known Ferrari drivers, desperately trying to compensate for something. Two real world examples from the land of utter clap-trap. Jo Dispenza returns to the stage, along with a certain well-known psychologist whose theory of the human condition makes the claim that, deep down, we all want to be as far away from each other as possible.

By the end, it’ll be clear why both classify as faux terminus paralogisms — assuming you thought they looked logical at all.

Just quickly though: the names and functions of the moves and manoeuvres at this level.

• The Misfiled Concept (Category Error): Taking an idea that belongs to one domain and forcing it into another, so the analysis misses the target.
  Example: “Loneliness is a choice.” (treats a structural/social condition as a personal preference.)

• The Ideological Machine (Systematic Paralogism): A whole worldview built from self-reinforcing bad logic; every part props up the others, so it looks airtight from the inside.
  Example: “Real patriots never question the government.” or “Women won’t date you because you’re not in your masculine.”
  …the latter of which we get from the intersection of heteronormativity, the reduction of complex emotional dynamics into caricatures, and the neo-liberal habit of turning every form of suffering into a personal performance issue.

• The Pseudo-Scientific One (Scientific Paralogism): Borrowing sciencey words to sound proven while skipping actual method, evidence, or falsifiability.
  Example: “Quantum frequencies prove abundance.”

• The Academic Gaslight (Epistemic Paralogism): Using the vocabulary of philosophy or knowledge-making to prevent questioning—gatekeeping disguised as rigour.
  Example: “That’s not rigorous enough to question.”

Taken together, these paralogisms show how un-reason maintains the grammar of reason. They differ in method — some scientize belief, some weaponise philosophy itself — but all do the same structural work: they stabilise fragile ideas by simulating coherence.
The paralogism doesn’t destroy logic outright; it inhabits it, maintaining its form while emptying out its substance. That’s what makes it so insidious — it blurs the boundary between sense and non-sense.
To make that tangible, let’s meet two living examples. Both borrow the tone and aesthetics of reasoning — one from science, one from psychology — and both use them to perform certainty.

Case Study 1 – The Faux termini of Jo Dispenza

Jo Dispenza — a man who gets far too much airtime here, considering how inane I find him. This case study shows what happens when the language of quantum physics and neuroscience is monetised and repackaged into fashionable promises. It’s what you get when facts from fields of enormous complexity and mathematical rigour are decontextualised into a kind of creed — one built on beliefs like “shifting your frequency” or “collapsing your quantum field” will help you redesign your life, body, and future.

This is the territory of the Scientific Paralogism — claims dressed as science, with all the gloss of empirical rigour but none of the grounding. When you encounter phrases like “quantum entanglement of consciousness” or “mind-matter coherence” in a self-help context, you’re watching the mechanics of a paralogism in full flow: pseudo-science mimicking the real thing.

Here is a quote taken from “Unlimited Jo Dispenza”

https://drjoedispenza.com/dr-joes-blog/one-foot-in-the-real-world-one-foot-in-the-quantum-world

The link is in the blog is you want it. It’s a textbook case of what I mean by a paralogism dressed as science. Hold onto your hats. Or rather, your lunch.

“While the body as matter is the vehicle which enables us to operate in this 3D realm, there is a greater part of ourselves that is connected to a field of information beyond this realm. In this quantum realm… there is no separation and everything material is interconnected in oneness. Back here on Earth… our senses fool us into believing events are separate. In order to create from this unknown field, we have to disassociate from everything that is known — become no body, no one, no thing, no where, in no time — for it’s in this place we become pure consciousness.”

At first glance, it might sound coherent — for some even profound. And I am sorry to burst your bubble if that’s the case. But let’s look closely at the structure.

Premise 1: In the “quantum realm,” everything is interconnected. (this is a speculative gloss on physics; not fully established in this sense.)

Premise 2: Our senses give an appearance of separation. (this is a Kantian-style claim about intuition and appearance. So there is some grounding at least.) But here we face a leap:

Therefore, we should dissociate from embodiment (“nobody, no one, no thing…”) to access “pure consciousness” and create reality.

The crack is in the THEREFORE: The crack is in "the therefore." The premises are ontological — meaning, they’re about what exists or what reality is made of — while the conclusion is psychological, about how humans should think or behave. The “therefore” crosses categories without warrant. So it’s a category error wrapped up in a scientific paralogism: physics-sounding vocabulary is used to license a behavioural “ought.”

Now you know. And, instead of having to yell “what TOTAL bullshit” – which is a low level faux terminus itself, even if it’s true - you may, instead, cry “faux terminus paralogism!” or “categorical error with a scientific paralogism.” This is not guaranteed to win you friends at parties, but it might confuse anyone talking about it into silence.
The sad part is, because this is DOGMA, Jo himself is unlikely to give a shit. BUT let his accusations of low vibrations glance off your new-found bullshit-naming shield, and wound him in the sales figures.

Case Study 2 – The Psychologist of overreach

And now, to a psychologist I’m choosing to keep nameless — though some of you will recognise the argument. Let’s call him Dr. Solo. This case study is about how un-reason dresses itself as data in an effort to look empirical. It too shows how the label “paralogism” is somewhat subjective — cos some of you actually called this one out as un-reason straight away, meaning it failed to disguise itself successfully.

Dr. Solo’s argument was this. At their core, human beings want to be as far away from one another as possible. Solo professed that he could prove it, and his “proof” was a single post-covid survey where the majority of people stated that they did not want to return to work – because of their colleagues.
It feels empirical. Well, to him at least. Spoiler: it isn’t. Let’s look at his argument first, then at the unspoken leaps.

Dr. Solos argument was this:

1. Premise P1 (survey report): In a post-Covid survey, a majority of respondents said they did not want to return to the office because of their colleagues.

2. Conclusion C: Therefore, human nature is fundamentally misanthropic (people want to be as far apart as possible).

In terms of logic this isn’t convincing, cos the conclusion clearly does not follow from the premise. However, from the context round his statement, there WERE implied bridges we can look at.

Premise P1 (survey report): In a post-Covid survey, a majority of respondents said they did not want to return to the office because of colleagues.

Hidden bridge B1 (equivocation): Not wanting to return to the office because of colleagues = wanting distance from people.

Hidden bridge B2 (reification): Wanting distance from people in that situation = core, species-level human motivation.

Conclusion C: Therefore, human nature is fundamentally misanthropic (people want to be as far apart as possible).

It should be apparent that, even with these additional bridges, “I don’t want to be in this workplace with these colleagues under these conditions” is NOT equivalent to “I want distance from all people.” That is swapping a contextual preference for a global disposition. It is a false universalization, taking a partial observation and stretching it to cosmic size.
This is the equivalent of saying, “Most people at work love sushi, therefore the human soul craves raw fish.”

Dr. Solo inflates a post-pandemic workplace sentiment into a species-wide ontology. Alongside being a false universalization, there's equivocation and ecological fallacy in there too, just for bad measure.

Arguably, this is a faux terminus paralogism because the survey numbers give Dr. Solos argument it the shape of proof, while he makes the classic shutdown manoeuvre: the data have spoken; the case is closed. If it looked like logic to you, it was a faux terminus paralogism. If it looked as logically flawed as it truly was, then it’s just a bog average faux terminus. In either case, Dr. Solos reasoning tries to close inquiry by pretending that the evidence already covers all possible cases. That nothing new can be learned, because the conclusion has swallowed the world.

Lest we forget, dear readers, whatever flavour of faux terminus is used, power and/or dogma are in play. Someone doesn’t want you thinking further. Someone doesn’t want you asking questions. Jo Dispenza makes a buck when we stop inquiring. Dr. Solo gets to look like an intellectual authority. Next episode, we’ll look at who else profits — from self-improvement to the health and even medical industries.

But for now, here’s your Crib Sheet of Un-Reason — four quick questions to spot which flavour of faux terminus has just killed the vibe:
• Am I suddenly the focus now? → You’re dealing with a School-Disco Bully.
• Is some third party being invoked — “tradition,” “authority,” “most people,” or “the process”? → A Line-Dancing Bureaucrat has entered the room.
• Did I feel an odd sense of confusion about what this has to do with anything? → Thwarted by a Freestyle Failure (non sequitur / red herring / straw man / circularity).
• Is this “ending” dressed like a seminar paper, with cobbled-together jargon or “I’m a famous expert” bravado? → That’s a Paralogism.

Bullies win by insults; Bureaucrats by ritual; Freestylers by distraction; Paralogisms by costume.

Part 7 – How to Reopen Inquiry
And finally — for those of you for whom hope dies last — here’s how to keep the conversation alive. Because some faux termini don’t come from dickheads at all; they come from decent people who’ve been sold the idea that performance looks like confidence.

Try asking: “What evidence would change your mind?”
If the answer is “nothing,” you’re officially not in reason-land.
You’re in faith-land — where the high priests wear PhDs, the school-yard bullies laugh at their own jokes, and the marketers cash in on all of it.

Part 8 – Closing reflections

Now, if you’ve made it this far, I should probably send you a certificate in the post or something.
Seriously — most people don’t voluntarily wade through logic, Latin, and the taxonomy of dickhead arguments in their free time.
So respect. You’ve earned your Faux Terminus Spotter badge.

Because that is the key takeaway, with the rest being the justification for it.
You don’t need to memorise every term or diagram or philosopher I’ve mentioned.
You just need to recognise the performance — to know when someone’s shutting down inquiry instead of engaging in it.
You just need to notice when you’ve been served a conversational stop sign, and to call it what it is: a faux terminus.
That’s the whole utility of the concept.
Once you can spot that move, you are not, in fact, shut down. You are not beaten in a game you didn’t even sign up for. When you can spot a faux terminus, you get to choose how you respond — name it, laugh at it, refuse to part with your hard-earned cash, or believe you are flawed or lesser… or ask the only question that ever really reopens inquiry:
“What evidence would change your mind?”

If the answer is nothing, you’ve left reason-land and entered faith-ville—
where the high priests wear PhDs, the school-yard bullies laugh at their own jokes, and the marketers cash in on all of it.

Because the faux terminus isn’t just a logic problem; it’s a relational one.
A terminus says: “I don’t want to understand; I want to win.”
And when logic lookalikes are used to do that — the Faux Terminus Paralogism — the alienation doubles: reason becomes a weapon, and curiosity starts to feel naïve, or even shameful.

This is how un-reason works under capitalism.
The appearance of rationality is monetised. Certainty sells, so we learn to perform it.
In mimicking certainty, we lose the ability to think — and to connect.

So when I talk about the faux terminus paralogism, I’m not just naming bad arguments.
I’m naming the machinery that rewards them:
the “rational man” who crushes debate, the influencer who “settles” complexity in 30 seconds, the CEO who ends discussion with “strategic decision.”
Different stages, same applause line: finality.

Episode 14 said curiosity is the motor of reason.
The faux terminus is the cork jammed in that engine.
The faux terminus paralogism is the cork with a certificate of authenticity.

But the cure remains the same: keep asking.
Not to perform intelligence, but to stay in relation — to the world, to others, to the possibility that we might still be wrong.

Because every time inquiry is killed, connection dies with it.
And when curiosity walks back on stage, the play starts again.
Next post is the third and final part of this Dogma miniseries — and we’re looking into health, beauty, medicine, and wellness: the industries where dogma thrives by selling us the tools of our own isolation, while claiming to fix all our woes.
We’ll unpack how perfectionism, control, and competition are propped up by pseudo-science, popularism, and the fear of being alone.
And we’ll look at how our bodies and minds become the canvas on which un-reason is acted out — and who ultimately profits from our so-called self-improvement.

I hope to see you then