ABSTRACT
At various junctures and especially in chapter 8, reference has been made to reasons why human beings might accept, hold, and/or disseminate false beliefs and treat inadequate arguments likewise. It is now apposite to decide how these are to be organized and applied to particular cases. The traditional division of the psychological into the cognitive and the motivational-affective will be treated as analytically useful, even though these aspects are articulated in reality. The situation is rendered more complex by the fact that speakers act as agents who can induce false beliefs in others or use inadequate arguments to persuade others of certain beliefs unwittingly or deliberately. If such agents are acting deliberately in these respects, they may be doing so with a view to exploiting their listeners. How to identify whether such attempts at deliberate manipulation are exploitative or not is problematic, but the particular consequences and any inconsistencies among these may serve to be indicative of the motivation.
