Bullshit and Philosophy Part 12
69.
William G. Perry, Jr., "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts: A Study in Educational Epistemology," Harvard College: A Collection of Essays by Members of the Harvard Faculty (Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts: Harvard University, 1967), pp. 754765; my conception of bulls.h.i.tting differs from Perry's "bull," however, in that the intention isn't quite the same.
70.
Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts: Harvard University Press, 193158), 1:44 (referenced by volume and paragraph number).
71.
Collected Papers, 5.407.
72.
See for example Susan Haack, Manifesto of a Pa.s.sionate Moderate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 189191.
73.
On Bulls.h.i.t, pp. 3336.
74.
Though not in the present volume.-Eds.
75.
This chapter appeared originally in Sarah Buss and Lee Overton, eds., Contours of Agency: Themes from the Philosophy of Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 321339. For comments on an earlier draft, I thank Malcolm Anderson, Annette Barnes, Jerry Barnes, Sarah Buss, Paula Casal, John Davis, Jon Elster, Cecile Fabre, Diego Gambetta, Grahame Lock, Ian Maclean, David Miller, Alan Montefiore, Michael Otsuka, Lee Overton, Derek Parfit, Rodney Peffer, Mark Philp, Saul Smilansky, Alan Sokal, Hillel Steiner, Tracy Strong, and Arnold Zuboff.
76.
As Diego Gambetta has pointed out to me, a mechanism merits mention that is different from the "sunk cost" one that figures above. You can be so happy that you've got something (after whatever amount of labour, or lack of it, you've expended) from someone who is reputed to be terrific that you overvalue it. In both mechanisms you misat-tribute the pleasure of getting something to the quality of the text you got it from.
77.
His essay begins as follows: "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bulls.h.i.t. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share" (p. 1).
78.
Frankfurt himself cites the OED, but mainly with respect to meanings and uses of the word 'bull': he touches on its definition of "bulls.h.i.t" only in its use as a verb. I disagree with his discussion of the entries he cites, but it would be an imposition on the reader's capacity to endure tedium to explain why.
79.
Four differences between the kinds of bulls.h.i.t that exercise Frankfurt and me are listed in footnote 26 below. The import of those differences will emerge in due course, but the reader will probably follow me better if he or she glances ahead now to footnote 26.
80.
'Trivial' is very different from 'insincere', partly because it has weaker implications for the state of mind of the speaker or writer. I shall take 2 with the accent on 'insincere'.
81.
Frankfurt certainly believes that a person bulls.h.i.ts if he produces bulls.h.i.t, since he thinks it a necessary condition of bulls.h.i.t that it was produced with a bulls.h.i.tting intention. He (in effect) raises the question whether that intention is also sufficient for bulls.h.i.t at p. 9. But, although he doesn't expressly pursue that question, his definition of 'bulls.h.i.t' (pp. 3334), and its elaboration (pp. 54ff), show that he holds the sufficiency view as well. It is because Frankfurt a.s.serts sufficiency that he can say (pp. 4748) that a piece of bulls.h.i.t can be true.
82.
See, further, the last two paragraphs of Section 4 below.
83.
See, once again, the last two paragraphs of Section 4 below.
84.
Does Frankfurt think that the phenomenon of "indifference to how things really are" is "vast and amorphous"? Surely not. Then what, again, is he a.s.serting to be "vast and amorphous," in his second preliminary remark, which I criticized two paragraphs back?
85.
I suppose all lying is insincere talk, and I do not think all lying is bulls.h.i.tting: at least to that extent, the OED-2 definition is too wide. But some lying is undoubtedly also bulls.h.i.tting, so Frankfurt's definition of activity-centred bulls.h.i.t is too narrow.
86.
Few liars care about nothing more than inducing false beliefs: that is the ultimate goal of only one of the eight types of liar distinguished by St. Augustine: see Frankfurt, p. 55.
87.
See Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New York: Modern Library, 1965).
88.
It is not, of course, the ultimate goal of that advertising, which is to cause (some of) its audience to buy what's advertised.