Bullshit and Philosophy Read online

  What we need is a different definition of bullshit. I will offer one here that is quite different from Frankfurt’s, partly because it rests on a distinction between the semantic and the pragmatic analysis of language. Making that distinction clear will be worth the effort, however, because the definition of bullshit that results accounts for those examples of bullshit that Frankfurt points to and solves this puzzle. It provides some good reasons, that is, for why we are more tolerant of bullshit and bullshitters, properly understood, than we are of lies and liars.

  The Example of Intelligent Design

  Another reason my definition of bullshit is different from Frankfurt’s is that it is inspired by the Intelligent Design (ID) movement—an example of bullshit that Frankfurt could not have used when he wrote On Bullshit in the mid-1980s. ID was then merely a gleam in the eyes of its founders and leaders. By now, however, ID is well known for its criticisms of evolutionary theory and its claim that organisms are too complex to have evolved solely under the influence of natural evolutionary processes. Instead, ID’s supporters insist, science itself indicates that the history of life on earth involved intervention by some supernatural “intelligent designer.” When scientists finally accept this fact, they say, biology will be transformed and our understanding of life on earth will be greatly advanced.24

  Why should these claims be taken as a typical illustration of bullshit? On the face of it, they are similar to other species of well-recognized bullshit in politics, public relations, and advertising—what Frankfurt calls “the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept” p. 22). Like these, ID speaks to us insistently and urgently. Just as the advertiser needs us to buy her product, the politician needs our vote, and the public relations specialist needs us to accept his view of things, the ID movement needs us to support and approve its proposals for biology and high-school science teaching. Like politicians and advertisers, moreover, ID claims that it is in our interest to do so. Just as your laundry will be cleaner with the right detergent, your child’s education will benefit from bringing ID into the public school classroom and “teaching the controversy.”

  Another reason we should take ID to be a typical instance of bullshit is that bullshitters, as Frankfurt puts it, are usually “trying to get away with something” (p. 23). The recent history of the ID movement suggests what it might be trying to get away with. It descended from the explicitly religious program known as “creation science,” which claims that the Bible presents accurate scientific information about the world. But, in the 1980s, efforts to introduce creation science into public school classrooms were defeated in the courts on constitutional grounds. So, in the 1990s, largely inspired by Philip Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial, the ID movement arrived to rescue the creationist cause by presenting a new, strictly scientific and philosophical criticism of evolutionary theory. Accordingly, the literature of ID is filled with references to technical concepts from philosophy of science, theoretical debates in biology, and ID’s own, favorite concepts like “specified complexity,” “irreducible complexity,” and “black boxes.”25

  There is reason to suspect, however, that ID’s efforts to be scientific and theoretically sophisticated are primarily efforts to appear non-religious. There is no doubt that ID’s leaders have religious and evangelical beliefs and motivations, but they typically distinguish these from their claimed roles as scientists or philosophers of science. Philip Johnson, for instance, appears to put on and take off his vestments according to his audience. To scientists and philosophers, he speaks of technical matters involving evidence, logic, and theories of scientific progress. He argues that science has not actually discovered that the history of life is guided solely by naturalistic, evolutionary processes. Instead, Johnson insists, science has merely assumed the truth of naturalism and is now mentally straight-jacketed.

  When speaking to religious or evangelical audiences, however, this complaint about the controlling naturalistic “assumptions” of evolutionary theory sometimes appears alongside other, very different claims about the customs and values of modern culture:

  Our nation is undergoing an epidemic of illegitimate births, with rates of illegitimacy among whites now soaring to 28 percent while rates among inner city blacks in some areas are over 80 percent. The majority of these illegitimate births are to teenagers.

  The American version of modernism does not aspire to obliterate theism, as Soviet Marxism did, but to marginalize it and thus render it harmless. Modernism is established in the sense that the intellectual community, usually invoking the power of the federal judiciary and the mystique of the Constitution, vigorously and almost always successfully insists that law and public education must be based upon naturalistic assumptions.26

  In this article, titled “Is God Unconstitutional: The Established Religious Philosophy of America,” Johnson’s criticisms of “naturalistic assumptions” become part of a much larger campaign against cultural “modernism” and its tolerance of sexual promiscuity, materialism, atheism and other things—including Darwinian evolution—that evangelical Christian audiences tend to find repugnant.

  It appears, then, that the ID movement is trying to get away with promoting specific, Christian cultural beliefs and values in secular, public schools—just as the creation science movement attempted. Hoping to succeed where creation science failed, however, Johnson and others have created a disguise, a cover, for this promotion in the form of an elaborate intellectual critique of biological theory. Beneath its outward packaging, that is, ID is a kind of creationism, the promotion of which in public school classrooms is forbidden by the United States Constitution. Thus went the opinion of Judge John E. Jones, who wrote in his decision in the case of Dover, Pennsylvania vs. Kitzmiller, that “ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.”27 Since the Kitzmiller case was the first major legal hurdle that the ID movement faced, it would appear that, as the saying goes, this here bullshit won’t fly.

  A Definition of Bullshit—New and Improved!

  If the ID movement counts as bullshit, then Frankfurt’s definition is in error. For advocates of ID are plainly not indifferent to truth, as Frankfurt’s definition requires. We can leave open the question of whether and to what extent Johnson and his followers are sincerely concerned about the truths of biological science and natural history. But there is little doubt that they take themselves to be deeply concerned with other truths—rotten truths, they believe—about modern culture and “modernism.” Johnson, in fact, is concerned not only to address these particular truths but to elevate regard for truth itself in popular culture. One of the problems with “modernism,” Johnson says, is this:

  What modernism may lead to is a growing doubt that there is any such thing as objective truth, with a consequent fragmenting of the body politic into separate groups with no common frame of reference . . . The great need of the 21st century may turn out to be a unifying vision, and I do not think that science will be able to provide it.

  Frankfurt and Johnson, it turns out, both care about the status of truth in our culture and share the view that we are becoming dangerously indifferent to it.

  Now, this comparison may seem idiotic. What a Christian, evangelical reformer like Johnson and an Ivy League philosopher like Frankfurt mean by “truth” may be quite different. Precisely so—and this tells us what is wrong with Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit. Frankfurt himself failed to take into account the fact that our collective beliefs about what is true—about the world, about how it works, about our place in it—are extremely diverse and often contradictory. Instead, he writes of the truth to which bullshitters are allegedly indifferent as if it were a single, comprehensive, or unitary truth. Throughout On Bullshit he mentions “the truth” (pp. 30, 33, 40, 47, 51, 56), “the true” (p. 56), and the idea of an “accurate representation of reality” (p. 32) as if everyone—bullshitters excepted—not only cares about truth but further agrees about what “the truth”
is, about “how things really are” (pp. 30, 34).

  In fact, we often disagree about how things really are, and this can make it difficult to determine whether this or that example of bullshit that we may encounter comes from someone who does not care about truth (as Frankfurt claims is the case) or from someone who does indeed care about truth, albeit truths that we simply do not recognize. In fact, as the example of ID illustrates prominently, bullshitters conceal not some indifference to truth but instead a commitment to other truths and, usually, an agenda or enterprise that they take to be inspired or justified by those other truths. For many possible reasons, however, they do not want us to see these truths to which they are committed. Our knowledge of these other truths, the bullshitter may fear, will prove embarrassing or damaging to them or their cause. Or it may render their claims less persuasive and less effective. In some cases, revealing these truths would show that their project is in fact illegal or, as in ID’s case, unconstitutional.

  This pluralism about truth is crucial for understanding bullshit. An effective bullshitter will make use of the diverse beliefs and convictions that populate our world. She will be quite aware that a person or group does not share the truths that undergird her agenda, so she will configure her program within or alongside an altogether different kind of program that, she believes, her audience will applaud and embrace—just as the ID movement places its specific evangelical goals inside what appears to be a crusade to improve science education. If all goes well, her targets will find that outer, visible project so appealing, they will agree to it and unwittingly go along with what has been cloaked inside, as well. Only later—after, for example, the new textbooks have come in and talk in the biology lab increasingly turns to topics in the Bible—will some of these targets recognize that they have been duped.

  The Truth in Bullshit

  Even stock examples of bullshit show that bullshitters are not indifferent to truth. Consider Frankfurt’s example of college “bull sessions.” Here, he says, “the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes . . . without it being assumed that they are committed to what they say” (p. 36). The statements made “are like bullshit by virtue of the fact that they are in some degree unconstrained by a concern with truth” (p. 38). Language’s grip on truth may be relaxed here, but that relaxation actually serves other truths and ideals that are very important to the average undergrad. These include truths about one’s self image, one’s social reputation, and to what degree the apple of one’s eye is actually impressed by the very real possibility (as immortalized in the film Animal House) that a complete, self-contained universe exists within a single atom of someone else’s fingernail. What makes such conversations bullshit-like is not their casual regard for “the truth” but rather the use of casual, hyperbolic, or inconsequential claims to unobtrusively probe or promote other truths or concerns.

  The same holds for advertisers and politicians who draw our attention ostensibly to one set of truths and purposes while in fact quietly engaging us about different matters. The person who writes the slogan used to advertise a laundry detergent, or who designs the packaging to display that slogan, probably does not care about how well that detergent cleans your clothes, even though that is what the words on the package would appear to be about. But that does not mean that those words and phrases are truth-indifferent bullshit. Effective advertising and product packaging rests on truths embraced within the advertising industry about how graphic design, word associations, celebrity endorsement and other devices speak to consumers’ thoughts about themselves—their self-image, social aspirations, and feelings of belonging and group identity. Politicians are also adept at conducting two (or more) conversations at once with their constituencies. One involves policy and issues, but another, as any professional campaign manager will tell you, involves clothes, postures, hairstyles, rolled-up sleeves and gestures, all of which are carefully orchestrated in an attempt to make voting groups find a candidate personally likeable.

  Bullshit, then, consists in the orchestration of at least two different concerns and corresponding types of engagement between bullshitter and bullshitee, one concealed within or downplayed alongside the other. The two may appear to be unrelated and unconnected—as different as Philip Johnson’s claims about evolutionary theory and his hoped-for dismantling of cultural “modernism.” But the bullshitter has co-ordinated them in an effort to maximize his or her chances of accomplishing certain practical goals. The politician who hopes to gain your vote may reason that even if you don’t agree with what he says about the issues, you may nonetheless vote for him because his clothes and mannerisms appeal to you. The auto advertiser hopes that even if you don’t understand the engineering innovations spelled out in her advertising copy, you will want to appear successful, attractive, and happy, just like the models driving the car in the ad.

  Whatever configuration these two engagements take, however, the phenomenon that Frankfurt takes to be essential to identifying bullshit—its indifference to truth—is either absent or only partly in play. In some cases, bullshit’s overt message may be some kind of nonsensical smokescreen or a display of bluster and bluff that, indeed, even the bullshitter would regard as unconnected to truth. But even in those cases, such smokescreens typically serve to hide the motivations and truths that the bullshitter genuinely cares about. In other cases, the bullshitter’s overt message may be a small, selected piece of the larger project he is trying to get away with, much as ID’s attempts to criticize Darwinian evolutionary theory on strictly intellectual, scientific grounds can be understood (as Philip Johnson’s comments suggest) as one small part of a more general effort to promote a supernatural, religious world view in public culture.

  The Truth about Semantics

  Why does Frankfurt propose a definition of bullshit which focuses on the properties of the bullshitter’s speech and stops short of inquiring into these larger, ulterior goals that bullshit usually serves? Part of the answer, I suspect, involves the difference between semantic and pragmatic analyses of language. Semantics concerns properties of language such as meaning, truth or falsity—relations, that is, between words and sentences, on the one hand, and the things or states of affairs they describe or refer to, on the other. Much of modern analytic philosophy is dedicated to the semantic analysis of language and difficult questions about meaning, reference, and truth.

  Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit crucially involves semantics insofar as bullshitters, as he defines them, don’t care whether or not their utterances are true. But some of his examples of bullshit also point to the pragmatic aspects of language. To see these, we must expand our picture of language to include not just meaning and truth but also the uses and purposes to which language may be put. Frankfurt’s example of a politician extolling the virtues of a nation on some national holiday, for instance, takes specifically into account the politician’s hope to use lofty, feel-good words and phrases for a specific purpose that has nothing to do with those things he’s speaking about, such as liberty and the founding of a great nation. Rather, he hopes to use this language to make his audience like him (pp. 16–18).

  Decades ago, pragmatics was taken to be just as important as semantics for a philosophical understanding of language. Even philosophers who specialized in semantic analysis of language, such as Rudolf Carnap, took it for granted that any “complete theory of language” must take into account pragmatic studies of how language can be used by persons in specific contexts.28 Though few philosophers would object to Carnap’s remark, philosophy itself evolved to favor semantic studies of language to the exclusion of pragmatics. There are many plausible causes for this—ranging from the sheer complexity of how language can be used, for example, to the vogue for academic specialization throughout intellectual life in the twentieth century. Whatever the causes, this neglect of philosophical pragmatics is obvious. Thumb through The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi, for example, and you will find twenty-six entri
es beginning with the word ‘semantics’, but only seven beginning with ‘pragmatic’ or ‘pragmatism’.

  If any complete theory of language must take pragmatics into account, so too must any viable theory of bullshit. The distinctive mark of bullshit that I have been describing is an essentially pragmatic, and not semantic, feature of language. It lay in the use of language to achieve certain goals or create certain effects which remain hidden from the person or persons to which the bullshit in question is directed. This is not to say that semantic aspects of language are not involved in producing or understanding bullshit. We can easily imagine our patriotic orator caring very much about the truth of certain things—like whether or not his audience is eating up his declarations as much as he hopes they will. But if we seek to understand the heart of bullshit we need to turn to pragmatics and not semantics.

  Once we do, the definition of bullshit that results is quite different from both Frankfurt’s and Cohen’s.29 And it shows that the difference between their definitions of bullshit—Frankfurt’s concerning truth and Cohen’s concerning meaning—is narrow. Both seek the defining characteristics of bullshit in semantics. But we learn more about bullshit by defining it as an essentially pragmatic phenomenon.

  From the bullshitter’s point of view, it springs from a pragmatic aim to co-ordinate two (or more) distinct concerns or conversations and to use one as a cover or container for the other. From the recipient’s point of view, it is pragmatic insofar as its chances for success depend upon its being received and recognized as a pragmatic, goal-seeking enterprise. Bullshit will be more effective to the extent that the two concerns it joins together would otherwise be regarded by the target audience as independent, unconnected, and having very different aims and purposes. The more different those two concerns seem to be, the less likely it will seem that, for example, a science-education advocate could turn out to be a soul-saving evangelical in disguise, a news report on television could turn out to be a government-produced segment distributed to promote some initiative, or your neighbor the dentist who recommends some particular brand of lawn fertilizer could turn out to be a “word-of-mouth” advertising agent for the fertilizer company in question.