Ezekiel Bulver is a figment of C.S. Lewis’s imagination, and though the famed author never did write the full biography of Bulver he intended, the backstory of the character was outlined in Lewis’s essay on the topic of Bulverism:
“Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — ‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.”
Bulverism is alive and well in the Twenty-First Century as well. Endless arguments on the Internet (which I again implore the reader not to get involved in) cycle through every logical and rhetorical fallacy known to man, including this one. In fact, Bulverism is now becoming even more common because it piggybacks on other common rhetorical templates which have had a recent uptick in popularity.
Bulverism combines the Genetic Fallacy (an attack on the source of evidence that serves as a dubious proxy to its veracity) with ad hominem (an attack on the person making an argument, who serves as a dubious proxy to the argument itself). It’s quite easy to Bulverize an argument. Only three steps are necessary:
- Assume the point you are attacking is wrong.
- Identify the person making the point. If you cannot do this, assume that the person is a member of some group which is easy to attack within this framework.
- Explain why the point is wrong as a function of either the group membership of the person, or the motives of the person (optionally, though preferentially, citing the motives of the person as a function of the person’s group membership).
The insidious thing about Bulverism in the modern day is how easily it sidles into the rhetoric of identity politics and privilege frameworks. To be clear: Bulverism is a rhetorical and logical fallacy that *sounds like* a cogent argument invalidating a point based on the privilege of the speaker. The difference between the two is that in the cogent argument one can back up the claim with an explanation of how the cited group must necessarily have an observational bias or other incorrect/imperfect information on the matter (even if the link itself is left unstated for brevity or energy savings); Bulverism assumes it without the ability to explain it, and can even assume the influence of the group in the absence of any evidence thereof. In short, it’s another form of bullshit.