About this module
Language can be used to inform, persuade, and connect — but it can also be weaponised. This module examines the ways speech acts can go wrong, from Harry Frankfurt’s analysis of bullshit to classical and contemporary theories of lying and propaganda. We consider what makes these “speech attacks” distinctive and what, if anything, should be done about them.
Topics
What is bullshit, and how does it differ from lying?
The philosophy of deception and lying
Propaganda: manipulation, ideology, and language
Free speech and its limits
Games & Experiments
Gilbert, Krull & Malone (1990)
Start experiment →A classroom replication of Study 1 from “Unbelieving the Unbelievable.” Learn an invented Hopi vocabulary, get occasionally interrupted by a tone, then sit the identification test. The diagnostic asymmetry — false propositions misidentified as true under interruption — is what Spinoza predicts and Descartes does not.
Details
2026 · University of Reading