Bullshit and Philosophy Read online

  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 beli
ef. 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 truth.

  G.A. Cohen actually notices that self-deception can cause acceptance of bullshit, but doesn’t make it central to his definition. In attempting to explain why people like his younger self put up with unclarifiable texts by Althusserian Marxists, Cohen postulates “a blend, perhaps, of ‘cognitive dissonance reduction’ and ‘adaptive preference formation’ . . . [that is] at work quite widely.”10 Because these psychological processes make it possible to produce bullshit unintentionally, Cohen criticizes Frankfurt for focusing too much on the state of mind of the bullshitter:

  [It] is neither necessary nor sufficient for every kind of bullshit that it be produced by one who is informed by indifference to the truth, or indeed, by any other distinctive intentional state. (p. 130)

  Cohen concludes that Frankfurt’s “process-centered” definition of bullshit, which focuses attention on the state of mind of the bullshitter, must be replaced by an “out-put centered” definition that attends to features of the bullshit itself. Cohen fastens upon unclarifiability as the distinctive trait of bullshit.

  While Cohen is right that it’s a mistake to require that bullshit be produced by a person who is aware of her own lack of concern for truth, his attempt to focus on the product rather than the process cannot work. For example, consider the case of an avid fan of conservative talk radio. He “learns” many things on his program, including that the French are an irrational and ungrateful people, and that liberals have an anti-Christmas agenda. There is nothing unclarifiable about these claims, but they are most assuredly bullshit.

  To avoid admitting that bullshit can be produced unintentionally, Frankfurt reasons that repeating second-hand bullshit can’t make you a bullshitter any more than repeating second hand lies makes you a liar.11 So in Frankfurt’s view the radio fan’s pronouncements are only warmed over bullshit, deriving their status from the radio host’s intentional indifference to truth. However, the typical student of talk radio does not restrict himself to repeating what he hears. He will go beyond the conclusions of his on-air mentors, arguing for conclusions of his own. Perhaps he favors nuking the French, or punishing by law anyone who refers to Christmas trees as Holiday trees. If anyone were to challenge his commitment to truth, he would (as his mentors have trained him to do) take offense and write off the challenger as a dupe of the liberal media. He’s not in the same league as the radio host, who knowingly dissembles. But his intellectual sloppiness can’t shield him from the accusation of bullshit. Rather, as a result of self-deception, he believes his own bullshit.

  Blameless Bullshit

  Frankfurt probably doesn’t care to defend self-deceived talk radio fans. But he has a deeper reason to object to the idea of unintentional bullshit. Even in the absence of self-deception, some people fail badly to get at the truth. We now reject whole conceptual systems, like alchemy, that no one at the time suspected of incoherence. For example, Isaac Newton studied alchemy, and he was no intellectual slouch. Frankfurt refuses to classify hopeless theories like alchemy as bullshit to protect serious theorists like Newton from being called bullshitters:

  It seems inappropriate to insist that those statements were always bullshit. Characterizing something as bullshit is naturally construed as seriously pejorative, and in the kind of case I have imagined, the opprobrium is not warranted. (“Reply to G.A. Cohen,” p. 343)

  Frankfurt is right that we shouldn’t condemn Newton as a bullshitter, but we now know that alchemy is bullshit. The point of calling alchemy bullshit is not to slam men like Newton, but to excuse us from taking it seriously. In fact, that’s the same reason we dismiss the rants of both the talk radio fan and his on-air mentor as bullshit—so we don’t have to pay attention to them. The charge, to be justified, requires that the methods involved are so unpromising they can be safely ignored. Otherwise, the person who calls bullshit is unjustified in adopting an attitude of disdain and, ultimately, disinterest. To call something bullshit in the pejorative sense is thus to marginalize it, to exclude it from the status of serious discussion.

  Cohen’s attack on the Althusserians illustrates this marginalizing function. He recognizes that they do not intentionally disregard the truth in the way Frankfurt condemns, and he doesn’t want to base his objection on the contentious and insulting claim that all Althusserians are self-deceived. But he regards their methods as hopelessly obscure. So he shifts the focus from their moral character to their theories:

  . . . these moral faults should not be our primary focus. For reasons of courtesy, strategy, and good evidence, we should criticize the product, which is visible, and not the process, which is not. (p. 336)

  Pace Cohen, it’s just not possible to call bullshit courteously. In rejecting the product, one necessarily rejects the process that led to it and the persons using the process. The process in question at this point, however, is not psychological, but methodological. Adopting a hopeless method justifies marginalization whether one’s adoption results from self-deception or, as in the case of Newton, blameless ignorance of future science.

  Return now to the talk radio fan. Exposing his self-deception is one good way to back up the accusation of bullshit. Another way to justify dismissing his claims is to criticize his methods directly. Taking views on testimony is a method. It’s a respectable method to the extent that one’s sources are respectable. When those sources adopt poor methods, such as the “method” of cherry-picking facts to support a political agenda, the result is bullshit. And it’s bullshit to repeat the results not only because what is repeated is bullshit, but because the method of arriving at the opinion in question is not to be trusted. Warmed over bullshit is not merely a stale imitation of the original, but a fresh deposit that compounds the methodological faults of the original.

  Shifting the focus from psychological processes to methodology allows us to recognize Cohen’s insight that bullshit can be produced unintentionally, without giving up on Frankfurt’s point that the way bullshit is produced matters most. Adopting this shift has its costs, however: the concept of bullshit becomes more contentious to apply because evaluating a methodology is a difficult matter, even in principle. For example, the Althus
serians can be counted on to respond to Cohen by arguing that their methods clarify rather than obscure the study of politics. Calling names cannot settle this dispute. For one thing, sometimes the inadequacy of a method can only be revealed by providing a new and better alternative, like modern chemistry stands to alchemy. Even in more immediately tractable cases, the method as a whole, rather than a discrete variable like intentional indifference to truth, must be evaluated. Sometimes this is easy to do, as with the talk radio fan. In other cases, however, the jury is likely to remain out indefinitely. Consider the status of philosophy.

  Given the difficulty of settling on reliable methods, we must admit that avoiding self-deception does not suffice for avoiding bullshit. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we unintentionally end up with bullshit beliefs. Frankfurt’s ear cannot tolerate this conclusion because he finds the accusation of bullshit necessarily pejorative. However, his reservations can be met by considering a parallel example: the term “killer.” It verges on oxymoron to talk of blameless killers. We typically reserve the term “killer” for murderers because terms like “killer” connote intention. Indeed, the suffix “-er” is the staple device for forming the name of occupations, like “lawyer,” “gambler,” “dancer,” and so forth. Similarly, we use the same suffix and its cognates to classify sinners by their sins, as in “liar,” “cheater,” and “adulterer.” However, even if it’s true to say that only murderers count as killers, plenty of people kill without murdering.

  Consider the difference between two drivers who each kill a pedestrian: the first driver runs up on the sidewalk while reading a book; the second driver drives safely but the doomed pedestrian darts out between parked cars. The first driver’s negligence makes him criminally liable despite the fact that we find it awkward to call him a killer. Calling the second driver a killer is worse than awkward: it would be positively cruel under the circumstances because he is completely blameless and, indeed, to be pitied. However, the impropriety of calling either driver a killer sadly does not change the fact that the pedestrians were killed. The term “bullshitter” is similar. Frankfurt’s intentional bullshitter is paradigmatic because of his conscious disregard for truth. The self-deceived talk radio fan is similar to the negligent driver. He doesn’t mean to spread bullshit, but he negligently adopts the method of embellishing radio propaganda. Finally, people like Newton are similar to the blameless driver: their theories may have proven over time to be bullshit, but they cannot be accused of self-deception or any other serious intellectual fault. The term “bullshit” remains pejorative, but the opprobrium rests with the theory, not the people who propound it.