The Architecture of Closure How a claim decides who may correct it

Sources

Annotated bibliography

Every quotation on this site is meant to carry a date, a venue, and a link toward a primary source; every mechanism cites its literature; contested findings are cited as pairs. Where a specimen still carries a verification-pending flag, the link is a lead, not a completed check.

Core theory

  • Deetz, S. (1992). Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. SUNY Press. — Source of the title concept; ch. 7 defines discursive closure and the canonical strategies. Cited prominently and throughout.
  • Habermas, J. (1970/1984). Systematically distorted communication; Theory of Communicative Action. — Deetz’s root.
  • Toulmin, S. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge. — Warrants — the unstated inference licenses where closure lives.
  • Stalnaker, R. (1973; 2002). Presupposition; common ground. — Journal of Philosophical Logic; Linguistics & Philosophy.
  • Lewis, D. (1979). “Scorekeeping in a Language Game.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 8. — Accommodation.
  • von Fintel, K. (2008). “What is presupposition accommodation, again?” Philosophical Perspectives 22. — Accessible technical survey for depth blocks.

Trump rhetoric, directly

  • Mercieca, J. (2020). Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. Texas A&M UP. — The closest cousin project: catalogs devices of appeal (ad populum, ad hominem, ad baculum, reification, paralipsis) with chapter-length case studies. This site maps the closure architecture her devices serve, and cites her per-device.
  • Rosenblum, N. & Muirhead, R. (2019). A Lot of People Are Saying. Princeton UP. — The new conspiracism — D3’s definitive treatment.
  • Trump, D. with Schwartz, T. (1987). The Art of the Deal. Random House. — “Truthful hyperbole,” ch. 2 (M4); Schwartz’s 2016 New Yorker interview (Mayer) as secondary.
  • Paul, C. & Matthews, M. (2016). The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model. RAND PE-198. — M3’s model.

Propaganda, populism, history

  • Stanley, J. (2015). How Propaganda Works; (2018) How Fascism Works. — Undermining reasonableness.
  • Müller, J-W. (2016). What Is Populism? Penn Press. — Moral-monopoly representation (D4, D8).
  • Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso. — Empty signifiers (D8 depth block).
  • Wodak, R. (2015). The Politics of Fear. Sage.
  • Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. — The ideal subject’s relation to fact and fiction; paraphrased, not quoted at length.
  • Klemperer, V. (1947). LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen. — Repeated language reshaping thought (M1 lineage).
  • Orwell, G. (1946). “Politics and the English Language.”
  • Pomerantsev, P. (2014). Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible. PublicAffairs. — The epistemic-surrender endpoint (M3).
  • Frankfurt, H. (2005). On Bullshit. Princeton UP. — Truth-indifference vs. lying.
  • Hochschild, A. (2016). Strangers in Their Own Land. New Press. — The “deep story” (D8; tone-setting for Objections 6–7).
  • Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. — Demarcation lens for D5 — and for this site’s self-application.
  • Sanchez, J. (2010). “Epistemic closure” essays. — Disambiguation entry on the Glossary page.

Old names: the fallacies and their history

  • Aristotle. Prior Analytics II.16 (64b28–65a37); Topics VIII.13. — Assuming the original point — petitio principii. Primary text for the Old names page.
  • Oxford English Dictionary, “beg, v.,” sense 6. — First English use, 1581 (printed 1584): William Charke against Campion, “I say this is still to begge the question.”
  • Whately, R. (1826). Elements of Logic, Book III; Mill, J. S. (1843). A System of Logic, Book V. — Fallacies as general education in the nineteenth century.
  • Fowler, H. W. (1926). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage; Gowers, E. (ed.) (1965), 2nd ed. — Fowler: “the English version of petitio principii,” fox-hunting example, no other sense. Gowers: “to avoid giving a straight answer” listed under Misapprehensions.
  • American Heritage Dictionary, usage note at “beg”; Garner, B. (2009). Garner’s Modern American Usage, 3rd ed., 93–94; Merriam-Webster, “beg the question,” entry and usage note. — The drift documented by the dictionaries themselves: Usage Panel percentages, Language-Change Index stage, current sense order.
  • Newman, J. H. (1864). Apologia Pro Vita Sua. — “To poison by anticipation the public mind against me” — poisoning the well.
  • Flew, A. (1966). God and Philosophy; (1975) Thinking About Thinking. — No true Scotsman.
  • Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams, ch. II; Derrida, J., Dissemination (1972) and Resistances of Psychoanalysis (1996). — The borrowed kettle; the label “kettle logic.”
  • Locke, J. (1690). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.xvii.19–22. — Argumentum ad hominem, reported as a name already in use.
  • McGuire, W. J. (1961). Sociometry 24, 184–197. — Inoculation: refutational pre-exposure outperforms supportive defense.
  • Roozenbeek, J. & van der Linden, S. (2019). Palgrave Communications 5, 65; Roozenbeek, J. et al. (2022). Science Advances 8(34), eabo6254. — Naming manipulation techniques improves their recognition; five videos, seven preregistered studies, a YouTube field test.
  • Quote Investigator (2014). “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.” — The line’s trail: 1879 Chicago gambling report, 1885 “Hungry Joe” Lewis, Barnum’s name attached in 1892.

Cognitive mechanisms

  • Loftus, E. (1975). “Leading questions and the eyewitness report.” Cognitive Psychology 7. — Loaded questions measurably alter memory reports.
  • Loftus, E. & Zanni, G. (1975). “Eyewitness testimony: The influence of the wording of a question.” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 5. — “The” vs. “a”: the definite article raises false “yes” answers and suppresses “don’t know.”
  • Loftus, E. & Palmer, J. (1974). JVLVB 13. — “Smashed” vs. “hit”: speed estimates and false memory of broken glass (32% vs. 14%).
  • Halpern, S. et al. (2013). Health Affairs 32(2). — Default options in advance directives: 77% vs. 43% under opposing defaults, ~61% with none.
  • Hasher, Goldstein & Toppino (1977). JVLVB 16. — Frequency and validity — illusory truth.
  • Fazio, Brashier, Payne & Marsh (2015). JEP: General 144. — Illusory truth vs. knowledge.
  • Alter & Oppenheimer (2009). PSPR 13. — Fluency review.
  • Kunda, Z. (1990). Psychological Bulletin 108. — Motivated reasoning.
  • Kahan, D. et al. (2012; 2017). Nature Climate Change 2; Behavioural Public Policy 1. — Identity-protective cognition; motivated numeracy.
  • Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz & Cook (2012). PSPI 13; The Debunking Handbook 2020. — Misinformation and its correction; continued influence.
  • Nyhan & Reifler (2010). Political Behavior 32 — with Wood & Porter (2019), Political Behavior 41. — The backfire effect and its non-replication. Presented as a pair, always.
  • Gilbert, D. (1991). “How mental systems believe.” American Psychologist 46. — Belief by default.
  • Swann, W. et al. (2012). Psychological Review 119. — Identity fusion.
  • Tetlock, P. (2003). TiCS 7. — Sacred values and taboo cognition.
  • Cialdini, R. (1984/2006). Influence. — Social proof, cited at trade-book confidence level.
  • Vosoughi, Roy & Aral (2018). Science 359. — The spread of true and false news online — ambient context for M3.
  • Burke, K. (1950). A Rhetoric of Motives. — Identification (D8).

Language models and false premises

  • Lin, S., Hilton, J. & Evans, O. (2022). “TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods.” ACL 2022. — Imitative falsehoods.
  • Kim, N. et al. (2023). “(QA)²: Question Answering with Questionable Assumptions.” ACL 2023. — Questions with false presuppositions as a benchmark.
  • Yu, X. et al. (2023). “CREPE: Open-Domain Question Answering with False Presuppositions.” ACL 2023. — Corpus of false-presupposition questions with corrections.
  • Sieker, J., Lachenmaier, S. & Zarrieß, S. (2025). Proc. CogSci 2025. — Presupposition strength and model accommodation.
  • Sharma, M. et al. (2023). “Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Models.” — Answers shift toward a user’s stated view.

Primary-source archives

  • The American Presidency Project (UCSB) — Official remarks, convention speeches. presidency.ucsb.edu
  • C-SPAN video library — Rallies, CPAC, briefings — timestamped links. c-span.org
  • Trump Twitter Archive V2 — The tweet corpus, including Feb 17, 2017. thetrumparchive.com
  • Roll Call / Factba.se — Rally transcripts and searchable corpus — the intended source for any future frequency counts (none published yet).
  • Washington Post Fact Checker database — M3 tallies, attributed with methodology per the contested-fact protocol.
  • CourtListener / PACER — Post-2020 litigation outcomes.
  • Wheeling speech (McCarthy, Feb 9, 1950) — Wheeling Intelligencer report; McCarthy’s Feb 20, 1950 floor speech (96 Cong. Rec. 1952–81, govinfo) for the 81 numbered cases; the Tydings subcommittee report (S. Rep. 81-2108, 1950) for “a fraud and a hoax,” via the Senate Historical Office.

What these sources do and do not establish →