Bullshit and Philosophy Read online

  Part of the phenomenon I have in mind is exemplified by the peculiarly ‘in-your-face’ form of ‘respect’ that many wish to command today (sometimes ironically at the expense of any respect they might show for others). But I wish to highlight another aspect to it, which is much more responsible for bullshit. As societies become ever more complex it is only to be expected that types of knowledge multiply and the division of labor becomes ever deeper. Old hierarchies of knowledge and expertise are bound to be displaced: but there is an underlying but striking resistance to the idea that what arises in their place is a new hierarchy of expertise, in the following sense. Almost every field of human endeavor, almost every profession, no matter how humdrum, increasingly indulges in its own forms of discourse and ‘knowledge’, its own professions of ‘expertise’. This is exhibited by the pseudo-intellectual jargon so many of them increasingly spout. In other words, expertise has in a sense become ‘democratized’, and in a way that threatens to hollow out the very notion of ‘expertise’: everyone is an expert in something. We know that some types of bullshitter pretend to an expertise or experience that they do not in fact possess. But in the democratization of expertise we encounter others who are pretending to be experts in something that is not in fact a matter of ‘expertise’ at all. To posit any causal link between this and democratic equality of respect is probably to oversimplify quite seriously its provenance. But this phenomenon comports well with the relativizing understanding of such respect and, I suspect, it provides a powerful cultural bolster to the insulation of ordinary citizens’ political views from expert critique, and more widely to the toleration of bullshit in politics and, indeed in many other spheres of life.

  My example of this phenomenon is the ‘management-speak’ that the growth of the ‘American business model’ of economic organisation has fostered; it has particular pertinence here insofar as its paradigms have been used radically to redesign not just direct economic activity but much modern governance and indeed many other social institutions and practices more generally (who, to take just one small example of it, can get away without a ‘mission statement’ nowadays?) Much of it—as I’m sure readers who are not utterly complicit with it will readily agree—is fatuously pretentious and overblown. But it provides succor for those who are complicit with it: they can show off their ‘expert’ familiarity with a putatively privileged set of discursive terms that masquerade as referents for supposedly complex matters which mimic genuine intellectual complexity and profundity but which are not, in truth, complex at all. Some of it is undoubtedly bullshit in something like Frankfurt’s sense. The word ‘downsizing’, for example, is, I suspect, deliberately chosen to overlook the facts about the human cost of the policies it denotes. But here is an area which requires other conceptions of bullshit to get its full measure as a dissembling discourse.

  So, to identify more fully the targets in the struggle against bullshit, we need to expand on the typologies of bullshit provided by Frankfurt and Cohen. For future elaboration and analysis, then, I would suggest the following. In addition to (1) ‘Frankfurt-bullshit’, indifference to truth, and that proposed by Cohen (2): unclarifiable unclarity, discourse which is not only unclear, but whose meaning cannot be rendered clear even on analysis, we have:

  (3): clarifiable unclarity: discourse which over-complicates the expression of claims that can be much more straightforwardly expressed.153

  Bullshit (4) might be plain, straightforward rubbish: discourse that is plainly deficient in logic, coherence or factual grounding.

  Bullshit (5) is irretrievable speculation: discourse that may be perfectly clear, and might not be rubbish but is crucially lacking in any plausible means of verification.

  Bullshit (6) is pretension or over-portentousness: discourse which may or may not be superficially complex but which over-intellectualises the straightforward, the obvious, sometimes even the trivial and banal.

  Bullshit (7) includes evasion, elision, insincerity, procrastination and other forms of dissembling in discourse that fall short of lying, which is very common in, though hardly exclusive to, politics.154

  Philosophy versus Bullshit

  The various forms of bullshit that have dumbed-up democratic culture and paradoxically drowned out the voice of genuine expertise in political conversation have sources and effects that lie well beyond politics as well, of course. The battle against them will have to be fought on many fronts, and with a variety of weapons. My own small contribution to the struggle includes a call to restore objective standards to our political arguments, and a respect for such standards in evaluating their quality. This has elements of an intellectual elitism in that such respect will incorporate greater acknowledgment of the authority of certain people to lead certain debates, not only with their greater factual knowledge but also their greater acumen in critically analysing the interpretations and arguments made in politics than we find in, say, partisan media commentary.155 But this implies no extra social or political advantages for them. When I say that they are to ‘lead’ debates, I signify the intention that these should continue to be democratically inclusive; I am not advocating a political discourse in which the elite only talks to itself and hence effectively monopolises input into the political process.

  If one suspects that such an arrangement would still be very much ‘us-and-them’—the handful of experts versus the mass of distinctly inexpert citizens—then we should consider how such a gap might be narrowed. For even if citizens will never all have high levels of political expertise, that is no reason to rest content with the low levels of critical political understanding many of them currently possess. Certainly, liberal democracies should think about how they ‘train’ the citizens of tomorrow in their ‘citizenship’, or ‘civics’, school education to see how political knowledge might be deepened and critical acumen sharpened. In order to develop thus as citizens, people have to learn more of the Socratic skills of self-examination: to recognise how their own views may be imperfect, and how one may go about refining them.

  More generally, I propose that an anti-bullshit discursive culture may develop if there is greater practice of, and respect for, the techniques of a good old-fashioned analytic-philosophical style, which prizes clarity of exposition and rigor of analysis in pursuit of truth and the ‘best argument’ objectively understood. A tutor of mine at Oxford, one of analytic philosophy’s spiritual homes, once told me that analytic philosophy was “a very good bullshit detector.”

  The expertise I have in mind, then, will exemplify this style and will aspire not only to command respect and acquire intellectual (‘opinion-leading’) authority in its competent execution of analytic-philosophical critique but also to provide models of, and standards for, analysis and argument that others should want to try to share. It’s a small tragedy for democracy when the taste and aptitude for this kind of philosophical discourse is confined to the ivory towers of academia. For such philosophy would seem to be a prime tool in tackling, in its variegated forms, bullshit not just in politics but in all other spheres of life.

  It is thus highly regrettable that the analytic-philosophical style has very many critics in philosophy itself, nowadays; many philosophies overtly want to eschew truth, objectivity and clarity. For this reason, as Cohen points out, in the struggle against bullshit it is not enough to have an enthusiastic mass or ‘lay’ audience for philosophy per se in order to increase people’s bullshit-spotting capabilities. Too much philosophy nowadays exhibits one or more of the forms of bullshit,156 and this may be partly due to the desire to produce interesting, arresting, ‘fashionable’ ideas for an impressionable lay audience to consume: ‘being lay, that audience will read philosophy only if it is interesting’, he suggests, and this does not necessarily mean ‘being interested in truth.’157

  When for whatever reason “truth is not even aimed at, false, or rather, untrue theses abound’ and typically ‘they are protected against exposure by obscure statement and/or by obscure defense whe
n they are challenged: so bullshit, too abounds” (p. 39). So a philosophical culture has to have the right kind of philosophy in order to be disposed against bullshit.

  When we consider just how important truth is in politics (as indeed it is in most other areas of our lives), and how the forms of bullshit degrade our political and social life, it seems simply absurd to embrace styles of philosophy which disparage truth (whether in aim-bullshitting manner or not) and end up contributing to the clogging of our discourse and ‘understanding’ with bullshit. Apprehension of hard and uncomfortable truths, and clear and rigorously sophisticated thinking about their resolution, are absolutely vital as we confront the huge, and hugely perplexing, problems in the world today.

  But the presence of bullshit in our political discourse severely problematizes our efforts to grasp them. Much of this bullshit is the product of the politicians, but the political bullshit of the citizens themselves also significantly obscures accurate perception of these tough challenges. The Frankfurt thesis helps us to focus on its source and hence to ponder its resolution. As such, it deserves much greater attention; for certainly one thing it would be potentially catastrophic to do is to use the ubiquity of bullshit as an excuse to adopt instead the crippling inertia which can so easily become the natural upshot of the cynicism thesis.158

  13

  Political Bullshit and the Stoic Story of Self

  VANESSA NEUMANN

  Bullshit is not, as it is popularly misconstrued, hot air—the remaining exhalation after speech is done. Far from it. Bullshit is a certain kind of speech, intended to distract or obfuscate in a general way, in order to achieve a desired effect—often one that is nonrational and emotional, where emotions become reasons for a course of action.

  Bullshit is fertile ground for philosophical investigation because it is intentional and identity-forming. Either of these conditions would suffice to make it a subject of philosophical interest; both together make it an important matter for investigation.

  Bullshit is particularly useful and interesting in the arena of political discourse, where it is most often recognized by the general public. Its familiarity and pervasiveness in politics are good reasons to examine bullshit in the political context. However, political bullshit has important consequences that it would be a mistake to overlook.

  How to Analyze Bullshit

  Two major strategies have emerged in the definition of bullshit, and each has its proponents. Mine is neither of these. The first strategy is to discuss the agent-relative action of bullshitting, addressing the question of what it is to bullshit—or, the related question of how one knows when someone is bullshitting. The second strategy is to identify bullshit by its content: what is bullshit or the related (but not equivalent) question of how one can spot bullshit. Harry Frankfurt is the main proponent of the first strategy and G.A. Cohen of the second.

  As Cohen demonstrates (“Deeper into Bullshit”), Frankfurt defines bullshit in reference to the agent producing the bullshit—namely, the bullshitter. Bullshit is defined in reference to the speaker’s intent to conceal the fact that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him.159 As Cohen rightly points out, in Frankfurt’s theory the bull wears the trousers. Cohen offers a different definition of bullshit that makes reference solely to its content. In essence, he tries to make the shit wear the trousers.

  As Cohen sees it, the main difference between his approach and Frankfurt’s is that Frankfurt’s bullshit is concerned with utterances in everyday life. This sort of bullshit corresponds to the second definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (“trivial or insincere talk or writing”) and, for Frankfurt, its primary locus is the activity and its essence indifference to truth. Cohen, in contrast, argues that his bullshit is concerned with utterances in the academic setting, and corresponds to the first definition in the Oxford English Dictionary (“nonsense, rubbish”). Cohen takes bullshit’s primary locus to be output and its essence to be unclarifiability. Producers of Cohen bullshit may not be bullshitters, as they may not have the intent Frankfurt’s requires—they may not be insincere, though their product is nonsense. Frankfurtian bullshitters, likewise, may or may not produce Cohen bullshit: they may be insincere but succeed only in producing “nonsense, rubbish.” Still, their intent to deceive makes them bullshitters.

  Cohen makes no secret of the fact that there is a reason for these divergent approaches: they are concerned with different contexts. While Cohen is concerned to identify and eradicate bullshit in the academic context, Frankfurt is concerned to identify bullshit and bullshitters in ordinary life. Cohen wants to examine bullshit in the academic setting, and he deems the identification of content a more promising strategy on two counts. First, it is more diplomatic or courteous—and less agent-relative. Second, it is more practical, since content is more easily identified than intention, although, as Cohen grants, identification of content may indeed lead to an identification of strategy. “For reasons of courtesy, strategy and good evidence,” he writes, “we should criticize the product, which is visible, and not the process, which is not. We may hope that success in discrediting the product will contribute to extinguishing the process” (p. 135n).

  Frankfurt and Cohen do not exhaust the intellectual landscape of bullshit. My concern is a third, largely unnoticed, context: the mechanism of bullshit—how it works and what its effects are, irrespective of whether we are confronted with Cohen bullshit or Frankfurt bullshit. Cohen grants that “the word ‘bullshit’ characteristically denotes structurally different things that correspond to those different interests” (p. 119, italics in original). The setting or context therefore affects the form of bullshit. There is a relation that is critical to this third strategy: the relation between speaker and listener—between bullshitter and bullshittee.

  This alternative way of looking at bullshit helps us see how bullshit typically works in political discourse. What makes a speaker or writer (I’ll here use ‘speaker’, for short) initiate or spread bullshit? How does it work on the listener or reader (I’ll here use ‘listener’, for short)? We will see that bullshit plays a significant role in political discourse, and that, as such, it is difficult to extricate.

  In politics, bullshit distracts or obfuscates, in order to create an impression that may or may not be true. I follow Frankfurt in the contention that bullshit may or may not be true, and that bullshit’s truth-value is irrelevant. It is not by virtue of its falsity that a statement can be considered bullshit. Even a true (or partly-true) statement may be bullshit. Even if true, a statement may be non-germane, irrelevant, or obfuscatory—thereby making it a prime candidate for bullshit. Bullshit therefore differs from lying and resembles bluffing, though it is not bluffing. Often, bullshit is a mix of true and false statements, the mixture determined to suit the purpose of the bullshit in question.

  In politics, purpose is crucial for analyzing bullshit. The better it fulfills its purpose, the better the bullshit. There are several possible purposes, but they fall into two broad categories. The first typical purpose of political bullshit is to depict the speaker as someone different (‘better,’ given the circumstances) than she is. It is usually intended to identify the speaker as someone desirable to the listener. This is familiar from the personal and the political arena: “I’m one of you,” or “I am what you need or want.” This is familiar from electoral campaigns, but also from political commentary. The second purpose is to identify groups of people, usually to specify a target or justify a political course of action—as in the Orientalist or structuralist approach: “They are different from us, so we should treat them like this.” From slavery to the war on terrorism to the racially-underpinned left turn in South American politics, this second purpose is pervasive—and dangerous.

  Bullshit is difficult to extricate from political discourse because it is so useful: it serves the interests of so many different groups. Both sides of a debate resort to bullshit, and bullshit gives them power over the parameters of t
he debate. A prominent example of this is the pervasive use of moral language, without the attendant commitment to moral constraints. Moral language is used to praise and condemn actions, and those who perform them, as just and unjust, virtuous or vicious, or just plain right or wrong. The speaker (a politician especially) seeks to score points with her constituency by putting forth the narrowest judgments without providing the underpinning normative commitments that might constrain her future actions. Such talk, rather than illuminating a framework for morally acceptable behavior, is designed to make the speaker appear superior to some competitor, while giving the speaker wiggle room for the future.

  Take the common example of one politician condemning another for accepting a free trip or other favor from a corporate entity. The second politician is condemned as bad or corrupt, without any further explanation of why accepting such a favor is bad, or of what it is that is morally compromising. Avoiding such an analysis or fundamental discussion then allows the speaker to “wiggle out” of future accusations of a similar sort by citing various alleged differences: “Well, my case is different, because the corporation in question is different, the type of favor is different,” and so forth. So, the speaker can appear morally concerned and, even, to speak for morality itself (not unlike speaking on behalf of God, espousing what is surely “God’s will”), although she does not say anything that would constrain her from accepting a different sort of bribery. Here, moral language is used solely to advance personal or group interests—not to illuminate ethics in politics. Moral language is reduced to a tool in the competitive struggle for political advantage.