On the Irrationality of False Pretence

To claim in words at will that one “doubts” something about which he does not feel doubtful at heart, is just pretending to doubt, which has been called by C. S. Peirce “the most irrational thing” in human inquiry. In addition to this, there have been in contemporary philosophy other phenomena of false pretence, such as pretending to do a reasoning, pretending to have logical validity, pretending to be inevitable, and pretending to adopt a philosophical term. Whereas some of false pretences have to do with the application of logical rules, most of them do happen just before or after the right use of logical rules and so cannot be classified among logical fallacies in the proper sense. However, to stick to genuine inquiry free of false pretence, lies at the deep roots of becoming a rational, not just logical, philosopher