The Vibe Salesman

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

― Jean-Paul Sartre

Sentence first, verdict afterwards

— The Red Queen in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

1

It is a strange year to be thinking a lot about ethics and metaethics. I have been in the process of overhauling many of my views in those areas and in philosophy generally. One of the conceptually thorniest issues I have made up my mind about recently is the source of normativity. I have settled on the Kantian view that the source of normativity is ultimately ourselves as rational agents. That is, the power that rules have over us is our acceptance of them, whether implicit or explicit. I used to eschew this position for fear that it would collapse into relativism. I now see that that was a mistake, overlooking many strengths of the view. Our acceptance of rules being what gives them their authority over us does not mean that the interpretation of those rules is merely up to our attitudes. Nor does it mean that we get to choose the rules/norms we are implicitly accepting.

In better understanding the metaethical terrain around normativity, I feel as though I have been able to better understand the motives and moves of bad faith actors and reasoners more clearly. I hope to share that understanding here. The goal of this note it is to analyze a certain kind of bad faith epistemic player—who I will call the "Vibe Salesman"—through the Kantian lenses of autonomy and responsibility. Kant argued that the normative force of reason comes from within us, "the moral law within" for a normative-ethical example. He argued that we become responsible for our claims and actions because we take ourselves to be responsible, qua rational agents. This is Kant's notion of autonomy. The concept of responsibility I will use here will be Kant's idea that in making a judgment, we autonomously hold ourselves responsible to something for that judgment's correctness.

In this note, I will show how, using Kantian notions of autonomy, judgment, and responsibility, the Vibe Salesman demonstrates that they are playing a different epistemic game than good-faith epistemic players. By inspecting what agents are doing, I will show how, to borrow Sartre's words above, the good-faith epistemic agents are "obliged to use words responsibly, since they believe in words" and the Vibe Salesman is not so obliged. The rational good-faith epistemic agent holds themselves responsible for the consistency and consequences of their judgments and to things in the world for standards of correctness. The Vibe Salesman is not playing the good-faith rational game. He is not obliged to "use words responsibly" because he is holding himself responsible to only feelings or claims so fragile that he is afraid to explicitly state them. For the Vibe Salesman, the vibes are in the driver's seat and the observations and arguments are merely passengers.

2

This is of course, just another way of talking about irrationality and bad-faith argumentation. In seeing what something cannot be (in this case rational discourse) we get some interesting insight into what it is. The Kantian toolkit employed here has distinct advantages in these tasks. It allows us to more easily identify and dismiss the elusive Vibe Salesman in the arena of argumentation by determining his real motivations, allowing us to easily predict his next move, and realizing the ultimate futility of rationally engaging with the irrational. It is because of this last advantage that I will ultimately prescribe side-stepping engagement with known Vibe Salesmen.

(It should be noted here that my purpose here is not Kant exegesis. I will borrow tools from the Kantian toolkit as they suit my purpose here and I won't spend much time talking about Kant's views specifically.)

3

First, I will describe who the Vibe Salesman is, broadly, then I will lay out some exposition for the Kantian toolkit I want to use to disassemble and inspect the Vibe Salesman's epistemic behavior. I will not pretend to have an exhaustive defense of the Kantian principles here, but the same inferences about the Vibe Salesman's behavior go through in whatever reasonable analytical vocabulary the reader would like to transpose them into. Then, I will describe some of the epistemic pathologies that the Vibe Salesman exhibits with this Kantian toolkit. I will conclude by offering some explanations of why there are so many Vibe Salesmen out there and how we should act in a world of them.

It should be noted that my characterization of real or imaginary epistemic players as "Vibe Salesman" is only meant to target their epistemic behaviors, not their character generally. One may be a Vibe Salesman in one arena or topic and a good epistemic player in some or all others. Nothing here is intended to be an ad hominem attack on all of someone's views or the entirety of their person.

4

I call this imaginary character a Vibe Salesman, precisely because he must sell, not convince, in order to spread his ideas. Who is the Vibe Salesman, broadly speaking? Merely from reading the Sartre quote at the beginning of this note, most readers can likely bring examples to mind. The Vibe Salesman is an epistemic player who holds themselves responsible for the assessment of the correctness of their ideas--wrongly, I will argue (and so would Kant)--only to a feeling or to a claim so absurd that it cannot be explicitly stated.

The Vibe Salesman is peddling shadowy notions in the disguise of claims. The argumentation (if any) that the Vibe Salesman provides is never direct and often jumps from topic to topic, point to point, always converging on the same feeling or absurdity. When cornered, the Vibe Salesman does not seek to defend their specific claims further. Defending their claims rationally was never the goal. When it is pointed out that the world does not align with their descriptions, the Vibe Salesman will not amend them for a better fit. Describing the world truthfully was never the goal.

The Vibe Salesman is the contrarian conspiracist, the post-truth authoritarian, the closet racist/sexist/homophobe, the podcast host who "just asks questions" on only one side of a controversial issue time after time. In the age of Trumpism, it does not take a brilliant imagination to drum up real-world examples.

5

Now turning to the Kantian toolkit that we will look at the Vibe Salesman's epistemic behavior with. I will begin with the notion of autonomy. I used to flirt with the idea that the source of moral norms was, in some sense, natural. There was something that inhered to the world, so I thought, that we could anchor "good", "bad", "just" etc too. I have come to see that this is false. Morality is a normative matter through and through. This does not mean that these norms do not have natural explanations in the causal order, of course, but that understanding them was never solely a matter of describing the world. Rather, it is a mode of being in it, in short: a way of showing and prescribing. I believe now, following Kant, that ethics is an inherently norm governed matter, just as I believe, following Frege, that logic is. Neither is a matter of describing natural or extra-natural properties.

6

What binds us to do what is right or to believe what is true? How do these norms, as Christine Korsgaard says, "get a grip on us"? Surely, how we are bound to them is no causally deterministic matter. The very existence of the Vibe Salesman precludes this from being true. I believe the only correct answer to this question can be Kant's and Korsgaard's (I think a social element is required to complete this kind of account, but I will table that concern for the purpose of this note.). We are bound because we take ourselves to be bound by these norms. This does not mean that they are optional tout court. These norms can certainly be rejected, but on pain of irrationality. If we deny the validity of good inferences or we act in contradiction with maxims we endorse (implicitly or explicitly), we can correctly be called irrational.

Well then, the skeptic might press, why be rational? Ought we to be rational? (an annoyingly freshman-philosophy question) This move bumps up against a transcendental barrier. To ask for reasons to be rational (as if one were not) only demonstrates that one is rational. To be rational is to be open to the game of giving and asking for reasons.

7

Kant notes many problems with grounding reason and morality in heteronomous principles (from a source other than one's rational self), but the one most convincing to me is that it is difficult to make sense of heteronomous influence normatively in any non-mysterious way while in keeping with the conceptual properties of agenthood.

Any heteronomous account of normativity must explain how some non-normative facts, rights, natural or non-natural properties etc, get a normative grip on us. What is the power of the "ought" that compels us to respect them? We can propose some mysterious normative link between the non-normative and us, or we can try to bake normativity into the cake by saying things like natural rights are "normative properties" already. Neither route will do. Both render the relationship of normativity to us as rational agents unintelligible.

For example, throughout Scanlon's "Being Relistic About Reasons", I was consistently perplexed by what he could mean by "reasons". If we have "reasons" to act, as Scanlon thinks, that are heteronomous in origin, then we had better be able to give the following accounts:

• Phenomenological (what does it feel like to be normatively compelled by something external to our rationality?)

• Naturalistic (what's the causal story here as to how norms "get a grip on us"?)

• Metaphysical (what external to our rationality does the causing of these oughts?)

Scanlon delivers, perhaps, in deflating the last requirement, but his analysis seems to fall flat for the first two. Kantian autonomy gives us an easy explanation for all three without collapsing into a Humean picture where reason is decoupled from reasonableness. I will not pretend to fully defend that idea here, though. Suffice it to say for now, I find the autonomous view the best way out of these binds.

Aside on the Basis of Normativity

I think there are some proprieties of claims and action that are not optional, if one wants to be a discursive agent at all. These "transcendental norms", as John McDowell calls them, are required for giving or asking for reasons to be intelligible at all. So one is autonomous in being able to reject these, though at the cost of rejecting discourse all together, which of course cannot reasonably be defended via discourse.

Scanlon's move here seems to be to reject autonomy, see that we need normativity, then throw his hands up and say that we simply must acknowledge normativity as heteronomous. But what is the nature of this "must"? How do norms interact with us? Why are we bound to these norms and not some others? His approach leaves these elements mysterious, making what should be clear to us about ourselves an enigma. I think a two layered story fosters better understanding. First, we see the autonomy thesis as the only non-mysterious way norms can "get a grip on us". Second, we recognize that discourse (in the Kantian sense of deployment of concepts) is unintelligible without some proprieties of performance that aren't just up to our attitudes (such as being obliged to offer reasons for a claim on has made, or to see incompatible commitments requiring rejection or revision ). These "transcendental norms" are implicit in our practices of speaking with each other, not "transcendental" in a metaphysical sense. In this way, we always adopt the norms via our attitudes towards them, but doing so correctly is not a matter of mere attitudes.

Without autonomy, we are left with a spooky gap to explain between the norms and why we follow them. Without transcendental norms (or a more full-fledged social account), we cannot explain why the norms of rationality are correct and why we need bind ourselves to those at all. The solution has been to see them as precursors to the intelligibility of any discourse at all. These proprieties of performance can be given a perfectly respectable naturalistic underpinning (we need not invoke any metaphysical stuff to explain them). This is not to be confused with the norms being reducible to naturalistic phenomena. That is certainly false, though I will not take the time here to defend that claim.

These moves remove the air of mystery and show how normativity can be “ours” yet still be genuinely binding (without opening the door to relativism at all). Much more could be said of course about the "transcendental" nature involved here, which I part with Kant on in taking to be inherently social (but still an unrejectable essential feature of discourse), but that is for another note.

8

We need to introduce two more pieces of Kantian machinery to complete our toolkit. Those are judgment and responsibility. For Kant, the principal unit of epistemic import is the judgment. Judgments for Kant are the minimal unit of what we can be held responsible for. What can hold us responsible to them? According to the thesis of autonomy, only ourselves.

My responsibility as a rational agent extends to that which I can hold myself accountable to as a normative source of correctness. Notably, only certain determinate things will do, that is, states of affairs and judgments.

I can be responsible to an object in the world for the assessment of judgments. Suppose I am trying to guess what chess piece I am holding while blindfolded. I will feel for the ridges and contours and adjust my judgment of which piece it is accordingly. Or I can be responsible to a claim that I have made or endorsed. If I claim that "the cat is on the mat", then I should be committed to its following that the cat is not floating or on the moon. If one is not normatively committed to the downstream consequences of discursive action, whether in describing the world or assessing another judgment, then that action was not a judgment. If I attempt to shift the meaning of "cat" or "mat" to wriggle out a certain conclusion, I have failed to hold myself accountable in a rationally consistent way.

9

Let us lay out the tools we have to work with and the question before us. The Kantian thesis of autonomy says that we are normatively responsible for what we take ourselves to be responsible for, qua rational agents. Given the transcendental boundaries of rationality, this bindingness is only optional in the sense that opting out means giving up our rationality. The Kantian concept of judgment says that, qua rational agents, we are responsible for the contents of our judgments. We are rationally bound to describe the world as we judge it to be and to adhere to the consequences of the claims that we make.

The question before us, then, is what can we make of the Vibe Salesman's actions with this toolkit? What states of affairs or claims do they hold themselves rationally responsible to in order to assess their judgments? Here I want to make a pragmatist move. The fact of the matter about what claims, objects, etc, are in the driver's seat, as far as what one holds themselves responsible to, are not merely a matter of what that agent claims they are. They are open to view in the larger interpretive picture of their behavior. An addict may claim again and again that they "never touch the stuff". What they claim is up to them. What is the case is not. The addiction is in the driver's seat; the claim of abstaining is merely a passenger.

10

What is in the driver's seat for the Vibe Salesman? We can test what claims or things are really in the driver's seat by seeing what has to change for the judgments to change. For the Vibe Salesman, it cannot be things in the world, for their descriptions are slippery and change to suit the task at hand. When the parts of the world change that the Vibe Salesman does not want to countenance, they do not change their corresponding judgments. Neither can the consistency and consequences of their openly contrarian judgments claims be in the driver's seat because when those claims are brought under question, the topic is rapidly changed, or as Sartre says, "...they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." If states of affairs in the world or the consistency and consequences of their explicit judgments are not in the driver's seat, what is?

11

Note that what’s in the drivers seat (what one holds on self responsible to) is not equivalent to what ought to be in the drivers seat. This follows from the idea that the interpretation of rules one is bound by is not up to one’s attitudes and the idea that not all norms one is bound by are optional (even though what does the binding is one’s rational self). These are norms implicit in our thinking and acting which are not rejectable while maintaining rationality.

12

It is not merely talking or using certain words that constitutes the act of "providing reasons". To see what one is doing by saying certain things in certain contexts, a broader picture of action and motivation has to be taken into account. Imagine that I am at a sworn rival's award ceremony and I continually bring up doubts about the usefulness of his life-long vocation for which he is receiving an award. Is there any doubt about my motives here? If I am a Wyoming cattle rancher and I am also a devout wildlife conservationist, but my principles seem to shift when it comes to conserving the wolf population that preys on my cattle, is there any mystery as to why?

When I argue against the usefulness of my rival's vocation or against conserving the wolf population, am I primarily providing reasons or looking out for my own interests? I can certainly be doing both, but we want to know which is in the driver's seat. Which am I really responsible to? If I were primarily concerned with the rational task of providing reasons, consistency and consequence would not be backseat passengers.

13

The Vibe Salesman is a manipulator at heart. Why? Because they exploit established norms of epistemic justification to advance claims or spread feelings that would be rejected outright if presented honestly as determinate judgments rather than disguised as hard-to-pin-down argumentation. The Vibe Salesman will always claim they are "just asking questions" or "just want good science". We always have a potentially infinite set of abductions to make. Why make this one? What does the greater pattern of questions one asks show?

14

At this point, one might object: why is the Vibe Salesman wrong to hold themselves accountable only to a feeling or an unvoiced claim? Surely, we are all driven by emotion to some degree? Is all argumentation at heart "selling vibes"? No. Unless we adopt a foolish psychological egoism (the idea that I only ever do what I desire to do), we must acknowledge that there is such a thing as being responsible for things other than emotions for our claims and actions.

The Vibe Salesman is acting in an epistemically defective way by putting vibes in the driver's seat for several reasons.

First and foremost, while feelings (vibes) can be voiced as judgments, it is not clear that they straightforwardly are judgments. "Squirrels on my bird feeder can go to hell!" is not a truth-bearing claim about the world that other reasons can stand for/against. Vibes/feelings are almost always defective as a unit of reasoning unless the unit of reasoning is about vibes. If we are wondering whether/why/how I hate squirrels, then we can reason to and from my hatred of squirrels, but, ceteris paribus, nothing about squirrels, the world, or other factive claims I have made follows merely from the fact that I hate them. If our goal is to talk about my squirrel-dispositions, though I suspect no one cares about them, then there are all kinds of inferences we can draw. If we want to talk about anything more, which the Vibe Salesman invariably does, then vibes won't do. We need to introduce talk about claims and states of affairs in the real world to do the overwhelming majority of rational argumentation.

Second, putting vibes (silently) in the driver's seat is deceitful. The Vibe Salesman's real reasons are usually instantly open to refutation if disclosed. It is for that reason that they refuse to disclose what is really in the driver's seat of Kantian responsibility. If they did, their actions would be seen as morally and/or epistemically bankrupt in an instant. No one will come out and say: "Climate change implies that some collective good exists, and so I want to deny its importance no matter what the argument." They may never even admit as much to themselves, but they will twist and wriggle to deny the importance or existence of climate change for ever-evolving and post-hoc reasons. No one will say: "I think women across the board should assume the gender roles they used to way back when because them not doing so makes me insecure", but they will endlessly probe the issue, point out red-herring research, and criticize women in positions of wealth and authority.

Third, others cannot themselves become responsible for the Vibe Salesman's unspoken feelings or buried claims. In Kant's terms, they are not universalizable. They are mere accidents and not the consequence of reasons. When one effectively lies about the criteria for assessment one is using, one thereby obfuscates the very process of correcting the bad inferences. When the Vibe Salesman markets their ideas falsely, they will end up selling to the gullible many. The bad ideas persist and spread because they are never challenged openly.

The epistemically healthy approach is to hold oneself accountable to objective reality, one's own stated positions, the consequences and consistency of those positions, and the reasoned arguments of others. The good-faith epistemic player openly acknowledges when a judgment stems merely from a feeling, hunch, or bias. The good-faith epistemic player openly acknowledges what is in their driver's seat of Kantian responsibility so that their interlocutors can evaluate it.

15

Emotions for Kant are heteronomous. To be guided by emotion is to cede one's rationality. I do not fully follow Kant here, and the relationship between emotions and rationality generally is a conceptual thicket I'd like to avoid for now. It will be sufficient for this note to say that I consider most cases of putting emotions in the "Kantian driver's seat" to be epistemically defective for the reasons above.

16

When the evidence changes, we ought to reapportion our claims, not move the goalpost, try to explain the evidence away, or claim we were talking about something else all along. When our claims yield inconsistencies, we ought to reevaluate them, not change our past meanings or try to shift focus away from them.

For Kant, and I think it is true generally, failure to adhere to these epistemic norms is to give up our rationality. For most Vibe Salesmen, failure to adhere to these epistemic norms is not a failure to know how to act rationally. It is a failure of impulse control and self-criticality.

17

Patterns of behavior develop gradually, and it is inherently difficult to definitively prove that one narrative runs through them. When confronted with the claims that their patterns of behavior evince, the Vibe Salesman will reject the attempt to hold them accountable for the implications of their cumulative statements and actions, denying that such a pattern exists at all. This move is a familiar one: plausible deniability.

Hiding here is an assumption, which is one of the Vibe Salesman's handiest tricks. Namely, that we have to "definitively prove" that their broader pattern of behavior supports dubious ends. Are the motives of the decades-long climate skeptics really so hard to put into words? When certain political actors time and time again bias their moves to support foreign oligarchs, is anyone unable to predict which side of the next issue they will land on?

18

One can imagine the slipperiness of Sartre's anti-semite. If the only thing preventing us from identifying him as an open anti-semite is his careful avoidance of explicitly anti-semitic statements, then to the reasonable eye, his actual position is just as evident as if he had declared it outright.

19

Remember, as the Vibe Salesman hopes you forget, that the explicitness of a commitment is not a measure of its truth at all. We can be as certain in dismissing the addict's denial of their problem as we are in recognizing that the anti-semite's pattern of behavior reveals what's really in the driver's seat.

20

But why are there so many successful Vibe Salesmen out there? And by the metric of audience capture, there certainly are. I believe it is for two simple reasons. The first is that the Vibe Salesman's business is putting on a good face at the expense of epistemic responsibility, and the second is that cheap emotional appeals spread faster than good reasoning.

21

Regarding putting on a good face, to the uncritical eye, the Vibe Salesman always wins. He always has the best moves and the best arguments. When we lower the standard for practical epistemic victory to "reinforces the feelings I have", victory is dirt cheap. Sadly, these are the kind of audiences the Vibe Salesman appeals to. By virtue of not being rationally consistent or forthcoming, the Vibe Salesman always leaves an escape route for any potential loss. He can always kick the can of justification a little further down the road. When one is not playing by the rules of rational discourse in the first place, it's easy to stage a win to the uncritical eye.

Another common way this manifests itself is the Vibe Salesman failing to treat bad ideas as bad. By attempting to confuse the relationship between bad outcomes and bad ideas, the Vibe Salesman can take credit for only the "wins". Consider the following example to illustrate this point. Drunk driving is a bad idea, uncontroversially. Merely making it home one night does not change the fact that it was a bad idea. In fact, if all is normal with the world, making it home eighty times safely still does not change the fact that drunk driving is a bad idea. However, the Vibe Salesman (in this case, in favor of justifying drunk driving) will seize on this opportunity to point out that the drunk driver made it home safe and therefore it was not a bad idea after all. Notice, though, that no one reasons like this in the real world. There is a wild inconsistency in the Vibe Salesman's judgments. We do not evaluate the goodness or badness of an idea solely based on the outcome. If I spend my life savings on a one-in-a-trillion $50x$ payout and win, it was still just as bad an idea as if I had lost one trillion times.

22

Regarding the rapid spread of the Vibe Salesman's ideas, our modern information ecosystem amplifies any discrepancies in the spreadability of an idea to an extreme degree. Billions of views a day dictate the zeitgeist in a way that humanity has never faced before. The notion of a "free market of ideas" in which the best ideas win is extremely naive to begin with, but downright dangerous in our modern information-dense world. The best ideas will (and do not) not win. Not unless they spread faster than the bad ones. The "free market of ideas" argument for hearing every view point is simply false, unless we resort to making it unfalsifiable ("The best ideas just haven't won yet..."), redefine "best ideas" in a self-serving way, or propose some implausible mechanism by which good ideas would eventually triumph if we only waited long enough. Even if the argument did go through, using it to justify hearing bad arguments now would be predicated on the assumption that we didn't already know they were unreasonable.

In fact, I think the "free market of ideas" line of thought is another favored trick of the Vibe Salesman. Why? Because it gets them in the room so they can sell. He will say: "Wait! Don't discard this common-sense defying preposterous conspiracy theory, we need to give ALL ideas a chance!" We emphatically don't have to, and in fact, on pain of rational inconsistency, we should not give all ideas a chance. Perhaps instead of writing this note, I should be composing a 10-volume treatise on why I shouldn't shoot myself in the foot. Surely I must examine it from all angles, leaving no stone unturned! Perhaps I missed the most important argument out there for shooting myself in the foot! Absolutely not. I do not consider such an idea anywhere near reasonable in the first place. Therefore, there had better be some pretty excellent reasons to consider it. This kind of controversial-issue-focused questionable abduction is a tell-tale sign that one has vibes smack dab in the driver's seat. There are always infinitely many more hypotheses not to entertain than there are to entertain

23

Notice that the incentives for making fast-spreading memes are often orthogonal to the incentives of being a good epistemic actor. Market incentives (in an attention economy) do not invariably maximize for truth-telling. Skepticism about experts and "do your own research" are memes riding this train as well.

The marks of the Vibe Salesman are obvious in these moves too. Don't trust experts! But do take pharmaceuticals, get surgery, make plans based on the weather forecast, and take a close friend's advice in the area of their profession. Do your own research, find the truth for yourself! But exercise deep skepticism about institutes of knowledge (research as well?), or widely held consensus among experts. We should see the pattern here. If the claims and their consequences were really in the driver's seat, we'd have to be skeptical of experts generally and think we ought to do our own research about how to set up the electrical wiring and plumbing in our homes. The fact is, even the most devout "expertise skeptics" and "do your own research"-ers plainly don't. "Experts are probably right" is true in the same way that "Fish eggs hatch" is true, that is: as the rule, not the exception. The "expert", properly called, who is wrong as the rule is not conceivable. Then they would not be experts. Of course, I am not saying to never find things out for yourself or to never be skeptical of experts, but merely to exercise rational consistency. Put the claims in the driver's seat, not the feelings, and not the skepticism.

24

There is an objection that could be leveled against this note. Is the argument here circular? Am I being the very Vibe Salesman I am accusing of being epistemically corrupt? That would mean that in defining and criticizing the Vibe Salesman, I have allowed my disdain for him to take up the wheel. It would mean I have implicitly declared myself responsible only to the idea that the Vibe Salesman must be taken down, jettisoning all other rational commitments.

This is clearly not true, as I have admitted several times that the claims of the Vibe Salesman can be true and that they are not bankrupt in all contexts or on all topics. Rather, I have attempted to hold myself accountable to rational standards throughout this analysis - namely, consistency, evidence, and intellectual honesty about what is actually driving one's arguments. I can definitely say what would have to change about the world or the claims of others for me to dismiss the charge of "Vibe Salesman" or to consider the concept uninteresting. If I were guilty of the same epistemic sins, I would evade counterarguments, shift my position when challenged, and refuse to acknowledge that my perspective could be mistaken etc.

25

Is there a difference between being a Vibe Salesman and merely emotionally motivated reasoning and abduction? The Vibe Salesman, in some sense, knows what they are doing. The emotionally motivated reasoner is possibly ignorant, lazy, traumatized, lied to, sold-to themselves by a Vibe Salesman etc. But they do not willingly play the tricks that the Vibe Salesman does. The reality here is that there is not a bright line between knowing one is acting wrongly and being emotionally motivated, ignorant etc. The absence of a bright line doesn't preclude clear recognition of paradigm cases, just as the spectrum of color does not prevent us from distinguishing seen-as-red from seen-as-blue.

26

I would like to conclude by showing how the Kantian context I have provided here can help us detect and dismiss Vibe Salesmen. We can detect a Vibe Salesman quite reliably by looking to what is in their "driver's seat" as I have said above. As the greater pattern of their behavior emerges through acts and argumentation, what are they really holding themselves responsible to? Which changes seem to matter for their judgments and which don't? If the pattern convincingly shows only feelings or hidden claims are driving then we know we are dealing with a Vibe Salesman and we can simply choose not to hear the sales pitch.

The reader might despair at the use of the word "dismiss" rather than "refute" or "defeat". The reality is, though, that the skeptic or the relativist has no knock-down arguments against them. Not because their arguments are good (they aren't) but because the skeptic holds themself responsible in the Kantian sense to one thing: skepticism. Boundless doubt is foremost at the wheel. Since this doubt is not grounded in actual theoretical or practical judgments the skeptic makes, they can always move the doubt a little further down the line. In practice, however, they do not "doubt" the existence of tables and chairs in the same way that they "doubt" that their plane will be on time, and thus there is a rational inconsistency. These are "Paper doubts", as Peirce called them. Refutation should not be the goal when confronting the Vibe Salesman. They must be side-stepped and dismissed. After all, as rational agents, all we are rationally compelled by is reason (that which our rational constitution commits us to). That is not what the Vibe Salesman is selling by definition.

No string of words will compel bad-faith actors and reasoners to change. If some such incantation (for that is what it would be) exists, I would sure like to know it. The normative world of logic and ethics is not a causal one with deterministic powers. No one is forced to believe what is true or to do what is right, and, the Kantian line goes, it is that which also constitutes our radical freedom. All we can rely on to change people's minds is our collective (mutually recognized) rationality. If someone is determined to put unspeakables or vibes in the Kantian driver's seat, we cannot compel them by force to stop. As an uncontroversial psychological fact, contrarians and skeptics alike are not best confronted head-on. What we can do when toe-to-toe with them is carefully probe at their rational inconsistencies. We can ask seemingly unrelated questions that reveal an undefended flank. We can offer examples of other arenas where the Vibe Salesman is not so skeptical of science or common sense that are otherwise analogous. The Vibe Salesman as foe will always have such an undefended flank by virtue of what they put in the driver's seat. Remember, they are not looking to defend a claim--which would entail battling off objections from all angles--they are looking to keep a feeling alive, and so are invariably just charging blindly in one direction.

Ironically, my final remark will be one of restraint. Alberto Brandolini coined the term "the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle", also known as Brandolini's Law. It states simply that bullshit will always take more effort to debunk than to create. For this reason, there will always be Vibe Salesman, even more so in the age of the unprecedented flow of information. For those of us who crave understanding of the world to keep us sane, we must carefully meter our effort spent debunking bullshit. The bad-faith epistemic player will never run out of terrible reasons to sling, but you will run out of patience. Look to spot the Vibe Salesman and merely dismiss him. Do not deeply engage. Shrug him off. Our part as beings of individual and collective rationality is better served by being good-faith rational agents to the best of our abilities than by attempting to refute or discredit bad-faith ones.