Thread by @jposhaughnessy

1/ .@polina_marinova, sometimes cool synchronicities happen. Just as you posted this bit about my wife and my simple rule of "try to raise great adults" precluding saying things like "because I said so" to your kids, I read this

2/ passage from @DavidDeutschOxf's outstanding book "The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World" which does offers an excellent explanation for *why* saying that to your kids is such a bad idea.

Here's @DavidDeutschOxf on the subject:

3/ "Bad philosophy has always existed too. For instance, children have always been told, ‘Because I say so.’ Although that is not always intended as a philosophical position, it is worth analysing it as one, for in four simple words it contains remarkably many themes of false

4/ and bad philosophy. First, it is a perfect example of bad explanation: it could be used to ‘explain’ anything. Second, one way it achieves that status is by addressing only the form of the question and not the substance: it is about who said something, not what they said.

5/ That is the opposite of truth-seeking. Third, it reinterprets a request for true explanation (why should something-or-other be as it is?) as a request for justification (what entitles you to assert that it is so?), which is the justified-true-belief chimera.

6/ Fourth, it confuses the nonexistent authority for ideas with human authority (power) – a much-travelled path in bad political philosophy. And, fifth, it claims by this means to stand outside the jurisdiction of normal criticism."

He frames it perfectly!