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Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it, yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves--and we lack a conscientious appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, he argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.… (more)
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In the current "He said, she said", "teach the controversy" and "Lets leave it at that" media environment, truth is the first casualty. Slain not by its old opponent, the lie but by bullshit. A lie takes some effort to craft and maintain. Bullshitters don't care about cleaning up the mess they create. They don't care about the truth or the lie. The only object they have is to bullshit themselves past their audience's expectations so that they accept the bullshitter's consequences. TARP and the debt ceiling debate are recent examples of the deployment of massive bullshit. Bullshit is the opposite of the Popperian falsifiability. The bullshitter gets away with his act because revealing the truth takes too much time and effort. As long as the bullshitter refrains from complying with a test ("Hic Rhodos, hic salta."), he can continue in his anti-Wittgensteinian path. Wittgenstein proclaimed: "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." The bullshitter answers: "How dare you!" The only solution is to reinstate the fairness doctrine on TV.
To increase the incendiary notion of this booklet, I wish the author had applied his concept to the fertile fields of bullshit. Religion, the revealed truth that is anything but the truth. The stories of the liar-Baron Münchhausen and Joseph Smith cry out for a profound bullshit analysis. Advertising with its mantra "if you have nothing to say, sing it" and politics would be prime candidates as well. Keeping the text to his short foundational essay is quite lazy.
Frankfurt claims to offer a "theoretical understanding" of bullshit, commencing with a study of "the structure of its concept." In practice, nearly the whole book -- everything up to the final seven or eight short pages -- consists of lexical comparisons and fussing over various denotative and connotative approaches to the term "bullshit." In the end, however, a couple of significant issues are raised, or at least implied. Is bullshitting an appropriate implementation of an antirealist intellectual agenda? Does the bullshitter affirm or degrade his self-worth by his disregard for verity? Under conditions of sufficient ignorance, can sincerity and honesty be completely non-intersecting?
The narrator read the book with a flat and boring voice. What struck me as odd was the fact that the narrator is known as
All I can say is: Humbug, don't bother......
But the book itself, whose most important argument might be that liars, despised though they are, have more respect for truth than mere bullshit artists, who tend to disregard the distinction between truth and falsehood more-or-less entirely, is both interesting and thought provoking. This one was written back in 2005, but you could say that it's really more relevant than ever now that you-know-who is leading the free world. A fun, recommendable read, but it might make you feel a bit nauseous for reasons that the author couldn't have foreseen.
I wanted to like it, but in truth: I really don't, much. But it's such a quick read that if the impulse to try it hits you: go for it! You can't lose much time to the endeavour.
While I like the concept (and the attempt to fill the vaccuum that I didn't even know existed), the book seemed a bit more pretentious than it needed to be.
Heck, it could've been boiled down to:
"Someone who shovels BS is
And an hour later, I finished Frankfurt's readable and insightful (albeit at times tedious) thesis on the definition and motivation for contemporary society's BS. I was especially drawn to his deconstruction of lying vs BS-ing (lying recognizes the truth -- and then ignores it; BS is sloppier). And the most useful revelation: "[BS] is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about."
I do regret that the author didn't adapt the essay to a general audience by including a preface and some background about the people he quotes. And the publisher could have assisted the reader by formatting the text with some space on the page, or a chapter break, in the several places where Frankfurt makes sudden transitions.
Overall, a recommended read on a growing aspect of communication.
As a user of bullshit, I am perfectly fine not having an exact definition to go by, it leaves more lee-way for its use how-ever and when-ever necessary.
It discusses truth and bullshit in ordinary talk, advertising, and politics. Bullshit is what we hear from people who don't care about the truth. Liars care about the truth. Liars say things they know aren't true. Bullshitters don't care about the truth. It's not that they are careless about their story - their presentation may be elaborate, beautiful, and even true in some measure. But the bullshitter isn't trying to tell the truth. The bullshitter is a story-teller. Bullshitters believe in themselves, sincerely. They want you to listen to them and like them, and they want you to believe them. The problem is that their stories aren't reliable.
It's a nice piece of work, which has inspired a lot of thought
The book doesn't go farther than that. I really missed some analysis on the implications of bullshitting or how to deal with it, for instance.
At the end of the assay, the author asks himself if there's more bullshitting nowadays than there used to be. It mostly leaves this question open, and just comments it briefly. He concludes it does and thinks this may be because our concept of truth is different, and there's an "skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality".
I think there's another important point the author doesn't consider. Frankfurt talks very much about the truth of facts. But most statements are made about the relationships about these facts. This different concept of truth Frankfurt mentions, has a lot of importance here. But, also, nowadays the analysis these relationships can get very complicated and only in the reach of specialists. Additionally, the discussion of a very particular subject can have many levels and registries (academic, media, public....). This environment is a breeding ground for bullshit.
(I try to review books in the same language I read them, but I lack the linguistic tools to write a nice review in English. Sorry for that)
(10/10)