Stephen Law

I was invited by Claire Fox to take part in this event. Here are my introductory remarks. I was alongside, among others, Melanie Phillips, Brendan O'Neill, and Richard Angel (Progress).  You might wonder why I, a philosopher, have been invited on to this panel. I guess the reason is I'm interested in and have published on the ways in which bullshit beliefs - myths and prejudices - can get a grip on public thinking. I wrote a book called Believing Bullshit - How Not To Fall Into an Intellectual Black Hole which flags up some of the key signs that we are dealing with a with a myth or prejudice rather than rational belief. So how, in particular do prejudices regarding women, black people, Jews and so on get started? Well, once it's been suggested that a certain group have some 'problem' - that women have a bad driving problem , say, or Jews have a greed problem , it's usually not hard to find examples. After all, inevitably, some women are terrible d...