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    Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time
    Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time
    Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time
    Ebook438 pages4 hours

    Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time

    By Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch

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    About this ebook

    Popular interest in bullshit and its near relative, truthiness is at an all-time high, but the subject has a rich philosophical history, with Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Kant all weighing in on the matter. Here, contemporary philosophers reflect on bullshit from epistemological, ethical, metaphysical, historical, and political points of view. Tackling questions including what is bullshit, what does it do, is it a passing fad, and can it ever be eliminated, the book is a guide and resource for the many who find bullshit worth pondering.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Court
    Release dateSep 30, 2011
    ISBN9780812697841
    Bullshit and Philosophy: Guaranteed to Get Perfect Results Every Time

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      Bullshit and Philosophy - Gary L. Hardcastle

      I

      To Shoot the Bull?

      Rethinking and Responding to Bullshit

      1

      On Letting It Slide

      SCOTT KIMBROUGH

      I have a very frank six-year-old daughter. Recently, upon seeing our house painter puffing away his break, she shouted that smoking is unhealthy—loudly enough to be heard through the closed window. Mortified, my wife and I immediately shushed her. She doesn’t yet understand why anyone should be offended by an accurate point of information. But there are many offensive truths. William Ian Miller notes the danger of indiscreet truth-telling in his remarkable book, Faking It (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003):

      Truth is not accepted as a defense in such cases; in fact, one of the chief themes of this book is that truth is an offense, seldom, if ever, a defense. (p.142)

      Miller’s reminder that truth isn’t always welcomed can help solve a puzzle posed by Harry Frankfurt in On Bullshit:

      The problem of understanding why our attitude toward bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying is an important one, which I shall leave as an exercise for the reader. (p. 50)

      Frankfurt raises this issue because he worries about the damaging consequences of a declining respect for truth. Bullshitting, in his view, constitutes a greater threat to truth than lying. For unlike bullshitters, liars at least care what the truth is. Frankfurt defines bullshit as a lack of concern for truth, writing that indifference to how things really are . . . [is] the essence of bullshit (p.34). Consequently, if we really care about truth, Frankfurt reasons that we should condemn bullshitters even more than liars. But of course that’s not what happens: more often than not, we let bullshit slide. Frankfurt wonders why this is the case, though he doesn’t try to explain it himself. This essay takes up Frankfurt’s unanswered question.

      Tolerable Bullshit

      Assume Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit is correct: bullshit results from a lack of concern for truth. Now put that definition together with Miller’s insight that truth is not always our primary goal in conversation. It follows that much of what we say on a daily basis is bullshit. But does it also follow that we should change our ways? Not always. Far from merely tolerating bullshit, we often value it as an indispensable resource.

      For example, Miller offers a trenchant analysis of the social point of apology. We teach our children to apologize by forcing them to say things they don’t really mean. Truth, in this context, is the last thing we want. A true description of my son’s state of mind after hitting his sister would go something like this: I hurt her because I wanted to. In place of this accurate account, we teach him to say that he’s sorry. Perhaps someday he’ll mean it. In the meantime, he at least learns that hitting will not be tolerated. Plus, his sister gets to see him humbled for his wrongdoing. Miller explains the dynamic:

      Q: What is the substance of the satisfaction to the wronged person in an unfelt apology? A: The pain it costs the apologizer to give it.... Apology is a ritual, pure and simple, of humiliation. (Faking It, p. 88)

      In characterizing apology as a humiliation ritual, Miller by no means rejects or discourages it. Quite the contrary, he sees that injurers must pay for their wrongs or they will never learn to stop committing them. Like many other cases of moral instruction, the teaching of the art of apology sacrifices truth for more immediately worthy goals, including peace and character building.

      Miller doesn’t mention what coerced recitations he visits upon the child who receives the apology, but in my house the victim is forced to say she accepts the apology. She doesn’t mean it, either. But the message of the exchange is clear: hostilities are at an end, and further escalation will not be tolerated. Hopefully someday they will learn to settle their differences civilly, even sincerely. As Miller notes, however, it’s foolish to hold out for sincerity in the short term. If you have any doubts about that, consider the mother who told me that she does not make her son apologize unless he means it. I think it’s fair to anticipate that he will not learn to mean it on his own whenever proper manners dictate. Nor will he learn the importance of faking it when necessary, as remains indispensable well into adulthood. Marital spats would more frequently escalate to divorce if it weren’t for faked apologies. Public figures who make offensive remarks must master the form of apology as a way of acknowledging, if not fully embracing, the legitimacy of the offended parties’ perspective.

      Learning when and how to apologize is one chapter in the book of good manners. Like apology, politeness in general sacrifices truth for peace and comfort. Miller again astutely points out both the fakeness and the virtue of politeness:

      Politeness doesn’t need an excuse; fakery is openly admitted to lie at the structural core of the virtue. Politeness is immune to many forms of hypocrisy because a certain benign form of hypocrisy is precisely its virtue . . . at relatively little cost, it saves people from unnecessary pain in social encounters. (Faking It, p. 35)

      Saving people pain often deserves more importance than a concern for truth. If we strictly apply Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit, according to which bullshit manifests an indifference to truth, it follows that bullshit constitutes the greater part of civility.

      Not all bullshit is motivated by delicate manners, however. Take advertising. We tend to tolerate bullshit advertising, and it isn’t out of politeness. One reason for our acceptance is entertainment value. For example, the advertisements during the Super Bowl famously receive as much attention as the game itself. And it’s not just bullshit advertising that pleases. The student newspaper at my university ran an editorial decrying communist professors on campus. The piece could hardly have been more silly, despite the serious intentions of the author. As I discovered in class discussions, many of the students were delighted by the piece because it was bullshit. They thought it was funny, and accordingly preferred it to a soberly argued treatment of a relevant topic.

      Like politeness, however, entertainment cannot be the full explanation of our tolerance of bullshit. Public relations draws on many of the same tricks as advertising, but frequently without the entertainment value. A deeper explanation of our tolerance for bullshit in advertising and public relations is our respect for the ends they serve. We understand the importance of making a buck, and don’t begrudge the professional the most effective means to do so. When a public relations consultant presents Exxon as a leader in protecting the environment, or a political hack spins a legislative failure as a successful compromise, they’re just doing their jobs. Were we in their place, we would want the same dispensation.

      And it turns out many of us are in their place. A huge proportion of the professions involve selling or representing something. It’s not always about greed and power, either. Even those whose efforts serve loftier goals than bare profit—like teachers, fund-raisers for charity, and military recruiters—would be hobbled if they eschewed bullshitting in favor of unembellished truth-telling. Furthermore, when faced with competition, to insist on truth when it doesn’t sell is not just naïve, it’s a losing strategy. To forego the use of bullshit is thus to settle for being a loser. We prefer winners to losers. And we don’t want to be losers ourselves by forbidding ourselves a winning gameplan.

      However much we respect effectiveness, we don’t allow any and all means to an end, even when the end is agreed on all sides to be a valuable one. We outlaw outright lying, even in advertising. How do we draw the line? Why do we sympathize with the liar’s victim, but not the bullshitter’s? Look at it this way: we can either sympathize with bullshitters or their victims. The bullshitters have a job to do and skillfully apply the most effective means to do so. The victims, in contrast, allow themselves to be mentally lazy and blinded by desire. They’re suckers. We may pity suckers, but we certainly don’t respect them. Our contempt for suckers reflects the judgment that anyone taken in by a line of bullshit deserves their fate.

      Intolerable Bullshit

      Bullshit doesn’t always get a warm reception. That’s because indifference to truth frequently causes trouble. Think of the last time you called bullshit. It probably wasn’t about something you were prepared to tolerate. In ordinary use, the charge of bullshit most commonly comes up when we can’t be bothered to take something seriously, or when we’re treated unfairly.

      We often call bullshit when faced with something we regard as ridiculous, irrelevant, or misguided. We thereby declare an intention to ignore the speaker—to refuse to take his efforts at justification seriously. I can sadly provide an example in which I was the target of such an accusation. I presented a talk entitled The Structure and Function of Bullshit at a philosophy slam, which is an open discussion guided by a speaker who defends a controversial position against the crowd. These events take place in the back room of a coffeehouse and bar popular with the counter-cultural set. One of the attendees told me afterwards of a brief conversation he had with a few of the regulars who were outside for a smoke. They asked him what was going on inside. Without mentioning the topic, he told them it was a philosophy slam. Their response: That’s bullshit. Such uses of the term indicate an unwillingness to listen based on a disdainful expectation that nothing is to be gained from doing so.

      Disdain gives way to indignation when bad reasons affect more than just our patience. Because of its tenuous connection to truth, bullshit makes a poor justification for important decisions. Bullshit reasons are bad reasons, and we feel indignant when mistreated for bad reasons. Consider the song Shut up by The Black Eyed Peas. After a verse describing a typical happy courtship, the male singer recounts the decline of the relationship while the female singer provides the commentary:

      But then something got out of hand.

      You started yelling when I was with friends,

      Even though I had legitimate reasons.

      Bullshit!

      You know I have to make them dividends.

      Bullshit!

      The girlfriend has a point. Her man is full of shit and she knows it. (Incidentally, the terms bullshit and full of shit correlate: to say that someone is full of shit is an informal (albeit circular) way to explain why what they say is bullshit, and a warning to expect more of the same.) The problem, from her perspective, is that he’s hiding his true motivations. If he truly loves her, she feels, he should want her to be with him. Even if there is some truth to his legitimate reasons, he’s ditching her when he could include her. She feels indignant because her boyfriend’s effort to explain adds insult—the contemptuous judgment that he can manipulate her—to the injury of leaving her behind. She calls bullshit to express her indignation, and to warn him that she won’t stick around if such treatment continues.

      Now imagine you get passed over for a promotion at work. The boss tells you that your candidacy was given careful consideration, but they were looking for more of a proactive team-builder—someone to bring fresh ideas into the organization. But you can’t help noticing that the less qualified person hired for the job came over from the company where the boss used to work. The boss’s rationalization of the decision is bullshit. The reasons she provided are not completely irrelevant to the task of justifying her decision, but they miss the mark badly both because they are not the real reasons for the decision and because, even if they were, you judge that they shouldn’t be given as much weight as your more extensive experience and qualifications. Her reasoning has the form of rational argument, but it falls badly short of genuine justification. The case fits Frankfurt’s definition because the boss’s rationalization shows a lack of concern for the truth, in that the boss fails to communicate the true reasons for the decision. But the deeper problem here is that, even if the boss has sincerely convinced herself of the truth of her argument, the reasons given don’t justify the decision. Maddeningly, however, there is nothing you can do about it. Except to say that it’s bullshit.

      Political speech deals with issues that affect our lives in ways we have even less control over than our own promotion at work. George Orwell’s work makes this problem a central theme. His novel Nineteen Eighty-Four imaginatively illustrates the danger of unchecked bullshit from government authority. He also addressed the problem in a non-fiction essay, Politics and the English Language.⁹ In that essay, Orwell decries the decline of the English language, and blames politics for it. Political writing must be bad writing, he argues, because only bad writing could justify the actions of government:

      In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. (p. 136)

      Orwell was referring to mid-twentieth-century times, but the situation has not improved. Our taste for euphemism continues to be fed with terms like smart bomb, collateral damage, surgical strike, and friendly fire, which are all euphemistic ways to talk about killing. A recent cable news segment entitled Fighting Terror showed an American fighter jet pulverizing an Iraqi hut. It struck me that terror was an odd description of a hut, and that nothing could be more terrifying than a dive-bombing fighter jet.

      Why do we tolerate this kind of bullshit? The reasons scouted in the previous section continue to have their weight: politeness makes us hesitant to puncture the poses of authority, inflated rhetoric makes for more entertaining news programming, and effective waging of war requires rhetorical posturing. History shows that these reasons often fall short of justifying our toleration. There are also less respectable reasons at work. Orwell offers one of them:

      [Modern writing] consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. (p. 134)

      The same attraction underlies widespread acceptance of such writing. Absorbing and repeating what we hear is much easier than thinking about it. It’s easier for media outlets to repeat government spin than to seek a more direct description of the kind Orwell favors. Plus, in a media market, consumers would probably not sustain a news program following Orwell’s principles. Finally, if bullshit is the language of power, as Orwell’s analysis suggests, then to go along with bullshit is to go along with power. Power can be very persuasive.

      The problem is that the powerful do not always use their force of persuasion in ways that serve one’s own values and interests. Thus the need for vigilance against bullshit: to be effective in pursuing your own goals, you have to avoid being taken in by a line of bull that, upon examination, works against those goals. The danger here is the same whether you fall for the bullshit of others or start believing your own. Consider the advertising case. An effective advertiser rigorously gathers demographic and psychographic data about potential customers, as well as studying competitors’ products and tactics. If bullshit works in a given ad, it’s because of its effect on the customer, not on the advertiser. The advertiser should know why and how the ad works rather than buying the pitch himself or herself. The most effective bullshitters know the truth, including the truth about when to bullshit and when to give the straight shit. The instrumental effectiveness of bullshit thus presupposes and exploits the instrumental effectiveness of truth: to enjoy the benefits of bullshitting without succumbing to the dangers of being bullshitted, a lively concern for the truth must be constantly maintained.

      Indeed, one of the biggest dangers of bullshit in politics is that politicians will come to believe their own bullshit. When they do, their policies often fail because public support alone does not make a policy work when implemented. The same is true at the individual level. Convincing yourself of the excellence of your plans does not suffice for success (notwithstanding the advice of motivational speakers). At this point, however, it’s necessary to consider how it’s even possible to believe one’s own bullshit. For bullshit, as Frankfurt understands it, requires both a bullshitter, who intentionally disregards the truth, and a potential dupe. How can a single person play both roles?

      Bullshit and Self-Deception

      The paradox of believing your own bullshit parallels the paradox of self-deception. If a deceiver by definition knows that the belief he induces is false, it’s hard to see how he can convince himself that the selfsame belief is true. Reflection on the parallel between self-deception and believing your own bullshit sheds light on the debate between Cohen and Frankfurt about the nature of bullshit. Indeed, one man’s self-deception is another man’s bullshit.

      In his book Self Deception Unmasked (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), Alfred Mele argues that self deception should not be understood on the model of interpersonal deception. In interpersonal deception, the deceiver does not believe the claim that he hopes his victim will accept as true. If self deception were to fit the interpersonal model, then the self-deceived person would have to play both roles, both affirming and denying the same belief. Mele takes this consequence to show that the interpersonal model fails. For self deception happens quite frequently, and belief in outright logical contradictions rarely seems involved.

      A husband may self-deceptively maintain the belief that his wife is faithful, despite contrary evidence that would cause an unbiased person to be suspicious (p. 57ff). It makes little sense to suggest that his self-deception consists in his first believing that his wife is unfaithful, followed by an unconscious effort to suppress this belief in favor of the (simultaneously held?) belief that she is faithful. No: his problem is that he masks the evidence of her infidelity from himself, not that he manipulates himself after having accepted it. Mele maintains that psychological processes such as motivated misinterpretation of evidence and selective evidence gathering explain self-deception much more plausibly than the interpersonal model.

      One of the most common forms of self-deception is an inflated self-image. Mele opens his book by citing the statistic that ninety-four percent of university professors believe that they are better at their jobs than their average colleague (p. 3). In the face of a statistic like this, I think it’s fair to guess that most people also overestimate how thoroughly justified their beliefs are. Our cuckolded husband may sincerely believe he has reviewed the data objectively. Similarly, half-baked prejudices often come along with the demonstrably false conviction that the evidence has been duly considered. For example, I was recently informed that smart boys are smarter than smart girls. Although Frankfurt tends to suggest that bullshitting is the sort of thing that must be done on purpose, examples like these show that a lack of concern for truth can be present unintentionally because we deceive ourselves about the adequacy of our reasons. Particularly when it comes to entrenched prejudices, it can be difficult for a person to see that what he believes bears little if any connection to the

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