Bullshit and Philosophy Part 5
A second complaint of Cohen's cuts deeper. He claims that Frankfurt's account of bulls.h.i.t is incomplete. It misses out on an important, and different, kind of bulls.h.i.t. In focusing "on one kind of bulls.h.i.t only," writes Cohen, Frankfurt did not address another, equally interesting, and academically more significant, kind. Bulls.h.i.t as insincere talk or writing is indeed what it is because it is the product of something like bluffing, but talking nonsense is what it is because of the character of its output, and nonsense is not nonsense because of features of the nonsense-talker's mental state. (pp. 12122) On Frankfurt's concept of bulls.h.i.t, the bull, to borrow Cohen's expression, "wears the trousers"; bulls.h.i.t is whatever we get from the bull. What we need, according to Cohen, is a bulls.h.i.t- (rather than a bull-) centered account of bulls.h.i.t-an account of bulls.h.i.t or nonsense independent of facts about the person serving it up (such as, for example, her mental state). And Cohen delivers an admittedly preliminary account of bulls.h.i.t in this sense, one that emphasizes as a sufficient condition of bulls.h.i.t its "unclarifiable unclarity" (p. 131). Something, a sentence for example, is unclarifiable "if and only if it cannot be made clear." It's disappointing that Cohen declines to say what 'clear' means -and, indeed, he lets on that he doesn't think it's even "possible to [say what 'clear' means], in an illuminating way" (p. 131). But it's an ironic disappointment, so at least we have that.
Frankfurt and Cohen each have some ideas about bulls.h.i.t, then, and, not surprisingly, they are at odds. My own idea about bulls.h.i.t consists, I hesitate to divulge, in adding yet more ideas about bulls.h.i.t to the mix, in the hope of resolving what appear to be irresolvable differences between Frankfurt's idea and Cohen's. This strategy of simplifying the conceptual stew by adding more things to it strikes many (my students especially) as a bit perverse. But it is in fact a reliable (and, partly for that reason, quite popular) way to actually make progress in these sorts of matters, especially when the ideas added to the mix have garnered decent reviews on the intellectual stage; when they have, that is, a respectable intellectual ancestry. Determining this strategy's success in the particular instance of this paper I leave as an exercise for the reader.
The ideas I'll be bringing to bear on the schism between Cohen and Frankfurt are the ideas a.s.sociated with logical positivism-the premier, pa.s.sionate, remarkably successful, and altogether thoroughly entertaining anti-bulls.h.i.t philosophical program of the 1920s and 1930s (its end met, tragically but not surprisingly, at the hands of two of the twentieth century's premier bulls.h.i.t programs, European fascism and the Red Scare106). There are clear parallels between logical positivism and contemporary anti-bulls.h.i.t programs,107 and, in fact, I'm surprised that so far so few, Frankfurt included, have either noticed the parallel or drawn upon it to add to the current discussion.108 But no matter; perhaps this book, and even this essay, is a start.
The logical positivists were not shy about bringing the hammer down on bulls.h.i.t, but as often they described what they were up to in the appropriately positive terms of promoting unity among all the domains of genuine knowledge. Their idea was that the unity of science meant making clear the connections various domains of knowledge bore to one another, and that that led to eradication of the hidden depths and dark recesses that could serve as ma.s.sive underground bulls.h.i.t bunkers. "Unity of science!" they sang, warbling 'science' in its very general, distinctly German, sense. So using the logical positivist's own ideas about bulls.h.i.t, its source, and its eradication to unify Frankfurt and Cohen's accounts, as I intend, invokes, it seems to me, good anti-metaphysical karma.
No Bulls.h.i.t, Please, We're Austrian.
Now the logical positivists railed against metaphysics rather than bulls.h.i.t. If you happen to be worried that the positivist's metaphysics isn't Frankfurt's (or Cohen's) bulls.h.i.t, then I aim to allay your worries by showing how the logical positivist's metaphysics unites Frankfurt's, and Cohen's, bulls.h.i.t. The most famous instance of positivistic railing against metaphysics, I believe, is Rudolf Carnap's 1932 "Overcoming Metaphysics through the Logical a.n.a.lysis of Language."109 Philosophers know this essay as the one in which the young Rudolf Carnap takes the then far-better established German philosopher Martin Heidegger to task for writing, on p. 34 of his 1929 Was Ist Metaphysik?, "Das Nichts selbst nichtet," that is, 'The nothing noths'.110 Here was a choice bit of metaphysics, Carnap noted, and just the sort of thing that we ought to overcome (rather than ponder, examine, debate, or refute) by sober, and rather elementary, logical a.n.a.lysis of the sentence itself. Carnap's essay is hardly the only instance of a logical positivist a.s.sault upon metaphysics, but (recall my ridiculous deadline) it's the only one I'll consider here. There is on the ontological horizon a succession of interesting articles and books with t.i.tles like "Neurath on Bulls.h.i.t," "Reichenbach on Bulls.h.i.t," "Quine on Bulls.h.i.t," and so on, and someone (other than myself) ought to write them.
Carnap's target, and the target of the logical positivists generally, was meaningless utterances, but not just meaningless utterances. Carnap is interested in the much more interesting topic of meaningless utterances that can be, and often are, presented as and widely understood to be meaningful-their utter-ers might, for example, present them (falsely) as though they had a meaning, or the people who read or hear such utterances might believe (again, falsely) that they have a meaning. Such utterances are pseudo-sentences, and Carnap's claim is that metaphysics consists precisely of such pseudo-sentences. Spelling this out means, first, giving an account of what it is for an utterance to have meaning (thereby identifying what it is for it to be meaningless as well) and, second, explaining how it is that meaningless utterances could ever be confused with meaningful ones-how, we might say, metaphysics happens. Perhaps it's not hard, having said even just this little, to see how Carnap's approach to metaphysics might incorporate both Cohen's bulls.h.i.t-centered notion of "unclarifiable unclarity" and Frankfurt's idea that bulls.h.i.t is a certain intention, characterized by the disregard for the meaning of what one says (and, by that fact, for the truth). Both are afoot in the metaphysics Carnap begs us to overcome.
Examples work wonders for Carnap. He invites us to imagine an encounter with someone using the word 'teavy', a new word, or at least a word new to us: In order to learn the meaning of this word, we ask him about its criterion of application: how is one to ascertain in a concrete case whether a thing is teavy or not? Let us suppose to begin with that we get no answer from him: there are no empirical signs of teavy-ness, he says. In that case we would deny the legitimacy of using this word. If the person who uses the word says that all the same there are things which are teavy and there are things which are not teavy, only it remains for the weak, finite, intellect of man an eternal secret which things are teavy and which are not, we shall regard this as empty verbiage. (p. 64) The meaninglessness of 'teavy' stems, Carnap holds, from the fact that what Carnap calls the term's elementary sentences-sentences with the form "x is teavy" (such as 'This world is teavy' or 'My brother is teavy')-cannot be deduced from other sentences. At the time, this meant for Carnap that the elementary sentences could not be verified.111 Utterances, as opposed to terms, can be meaningless as well, even when all the terms they contain are meaningful. There are trivial cases (Carnap offers 'Caesar is and'), but also cases like 'Caesar is a prime number', which might at first glance be taken as meaningful. This latter category contains pseudo-statements, things that aren't statements but might initially be taken to be (in Carnap's world, margarine, which isn't b.u.t.ter but can be pa.s.sed off as b.u.t.ter, would be pseudo-b.u.t.ter). Meaningfulness for utter-ances, as for words, amounts to a certain disconnectedness to other claims: we cannot, in principle, bring evidence to bear on the meaningless expression, either for it or against it. Carnap offers as examples of these Heidegger's 'We find the nothing' and 'We know the nothing'; 'The nothing noths' wins special Carnapian exasperation points for being not just a meaningless arrangement of terms, but for having among its terms a meaningless one to boot, the pseudo-verb 'to nothing' (p. 71).
A Little Carnap in Everyone.
Carnap's notion of meaninglessness, his main diagnostic tool in his battle against metaphysics, is a much more precise rendering of "unclarifiable unclarity," Cohen's main diagnostic tool in his battle against bulls.h.i.t. This is why I am genuinely surprised that Cohen doesn't mention Carnap or, for that matter, any of the logical positivists. I believe the parallel is confirmed by a careful, sustained, reading of Cohen's paper alongside Carnap's; but, really, that's the sort of thing one ought to do in private.
But I will offer a consilience that bolsters my claim. Cohen offers nonsense as an example of bulls.h.i.t, and by 'nonsense' he means not merely unclear discourse but discourse that can't be made clear: the mark of such unclarity is that "any apparent success in rendering it un.o.bscure creates something that isn't recognizable as a version of what was said" (p. 130). This manner of identifying the unclarifiable by its disconnectedness to other statements or texts is just Carnap's strategy for isolating the meaningless. For Carnap, it is not as though there are antecedently meaningful sentences, and connecting a new sentence to one of these somehow infects the former with the latter's meaning. The idea, rather, is that something is meaningful just in bearing the right (presumably, logical) relation to other a.s.sertions or texts. And it's the same for Cohen: it's not as though there are clear sentences out there, the clarity of which seeps into other sentences if we position the latter correctly. Clarity is a matter of bearing the right relation to other claims. So it's a demonstration of profound unclarity if, in trying to show a sentence's connection to others, you inevitably mangle the claim with which you began into "something that isn't recognizable as a version of what was said." This shows that there was no such connection to begin with.
On Carnap's account, then, our language holds, for us, its users, a danger. For in allowing for the formulation of nonsense words and meaningless expressions it allows us to lapse into bulls.h.i.t. Carnap frequently mentions the possibility of being "misled," or "seduced," by our language, and he means misled or seduced into metaphysics. But that is not the only danger. Because our language allows for the formulation of pseudo-words and pseudosentences, it is a powerful and effective tool that can be exploited by those whose aims are served by misdirection or the obfuscation of truth short of lying, that is, by bulls.h.i.tters in the Frankfurtian sense. By the very fact that they present meaningless statements as meaningful they express their disregard for the truth, and by the fact that they utter meaningless statements they can't be lying; they are, after all, saying nothing.
In this regard, consider these two more pa.s.sages from Carnap's essay, each of which emphasizes the intention of the metaphysician-the bulls.h.i.tter, as I read it. The first invites us again to imagine a new term, 'toovy' this time, which, in contrast to 'teavy', is meaningful: Let the sentence "this thing is toovy" be true if and only if the thing is quadrangular.... Then we will say: the word "toovy" is synonymous with the word "quadrangular." And we will not allow its users to tell us that nevertheless they "intended" something else by it than "quadrangular"; that though every quadrangular thing is also toovy and conversely, this is only because quadrangularity is the visible manifestation of toovyness, but that the latter itself is a hidden, not itself observable property. We would reply that after the criterion of application had been fixed, the synonymy of "toovy" and "quadrangular" is likewise fixed, and that we are no further at liberty to "intend" this or that by the word. (p. 64) For Carnap, the example is intended to show that the meaning of a term is exhausted by the deductive relationships the term's elementary sentences bear to other sentences; anyone who claims for a term a meaning not captured by those deductive relationships cannot be offering us a meaning at all. But the example tells us as well about the intentions Carnap clearly thinks are tangled up with metaphysics. We too would dismiss anyone who continued to profess additional meaning for 'toovy' after its synonymy with 'quadrangular' had been laid bare. What's her problem?!? Absent appeals to absurdity, comedy, or idiocy (three well-known bulls.h.i.t-defeaters deserving of much more philosophical attention), such flagrant disregard for meaning can be explained only by concluding that it was never the toovy-talker's intention to convey information to us in the first place, or even steer us away from some information (to, that is, lie). She must have wanted to accomplish some other end for which uttering such pseudostatements would be of use. 'Toovy' was a meaningful term all along, but in her disregard for the term's meaning the toovy-talker was engaged in metaphysics . . . that is, bulls.h.i.tting.112 The second pa.s.sage I have in mind, in which Carnap comments on the intentions behind metaphysics, comes, interestingly enough, in the context of Carnap's answer to the question of why there is so much metaphysics, and why we seem to put up with it-confirmation, incidentally, of my view that Carnap and Frankfurt are talking about the same thing. "How could it be," Carnap asks, "that so many men in all ages and nations, among them eminent minds, spent so much energy, nay veritable fervor, on metaphysics if the latter consisted of nothing but mere words, nonsensically juxtaposed?" (p. 78). How, indeed? What's with all this metaphysics?
Carnap's answer is that metaphysics is a consequence of a desire to express some "general att.i.tude towards life" (Lebenseinstellung) combined with a mistaken impression that an att.i.tude (towards life or anything else) is a state of affairs, that is, the kind of thing that can be expressed by a declarative sentence. An att.i.tude towards life can be expressed, but only in art, poetry, or music; to attempt its expression in a.s.sertions, as though the att.i.tude were not an att.i.tude but a state of affairs, is futile.113 "Thus in the case of metaphysics," Carnap writes, "we find this situation:"
Through the form of its works it pretends to be something that it is not. The form in question is that of a system of statements which are apparently related as premises and conclusions, that is, the form of a theory. In this way the fiction of theoretical content is generated, whereas, as we have seen, there is no such content. It is not only the reader, but the metaphysician himself who suffers from the illusion that the metaphysical statements say something, describe states of affairs. The metaphysician believes that he travels in territory in which truth and falsehood are at stake. In reality, however, he has not a.s.serted anything, but only expressed something, like an artist. (p. 79) On its face, this diagnosis renders metaphysics rather benign. That is a strength, of course, if the question is why we tolerate it. And as far as the parallel with bulls.h.i.t goes, it gives us another answer to the question of why bulls.h.i.t is both ubiquitous and tolerated. To wit: bulls.h.i.t arises when people have something they want to get across and are confused, perhaps but not always culpably so, about what tools are appropriate to that task.
But alongside these somewhat contented observations about metaphysics, and bulls.h.i.t, in our life, there is of course a critical current in Carnap, and Frankfurt, and we can't afford to miss it. Carnap describes the case in which the metaphysician as well as his audience is under the illusion that his utterances make sense, but there are, as Carnap was more than aware, cases in which the metaphysician, but not the audience, is under no such illusion. After all, metaphysics can only "pretend to be something that it is not" if behind the metaphysical utterance is a metaphysician pretending to say something, knowing at the same time that he is not. This is bulls.h.i.t, Frankfurt-style, pure and simple. It's more egregious, of course, to the extent that the metaphysician-bulls.h.i.tter propagates the illusion in his followers even after we've called him on his insolence regarding the meaninglessness of his utterances or, in Frankfurt's phrase, regarding the truth-value of his claims. Heidegger was a metaphysician before Carnap penned "Overcoming of Metaphysics through Logical a.n.a.lysis of Language," but his metaphysical bulls.h.i.t was more offensive after Carnap called him on it. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for modern-day Frankfurt bulls.h.i.tters. On Bulls.h.i.t's placement on the New York Times bestseller list not only sold a pile of books; it raised the moral stakes on people who don't care about the truth of what they say.
The Unity of Bulls.h.i.t.
Recall that Cohen employed a rather useful metaphor to distinguish his view from Frankfurt's: Frankfurt's account of bulls.h.i.t focuses upon the bull, and his, Cohen's, starts from the bulls.h.i.t. In light of our discussion of Carnap's anti-metaphysical program and my promise to unify Frankfurt's and Cohen's account, it will pay to return to the metaphor.
There is a certainly a distinction to be drawn between a bull and bulls.h.i.t, and between bulls.h.i.t and the bulls.h.i.tter. But, my local veterinarians a.s.sure me, a bull that doesn't s.h.i.t is no bull, at least not for long. And it takes, as David Hume might put it, no nice metaphysical head to realize that we get bulls.h.i.t from a bull, not necessarily of course, but in fact, in this world and all the close possible ones. Cohen's metaphor not only serves his purpose, but it ought to remind us that the two sides of bulls.h.i.t, Frankfurt's and Cohen's, are two sides of one thing. There are in this world those whose have ends that are served by a misuse of language, and whose desires trump or even eradicate any concern they might have had for the meaning or the truth of what they say. These are Frankfurtian bulls.h.i.tters, and so be it. But we also have a tool, a language, that is amenable, perhaps even suited for, just the sort of misdeeds bulls.h.i.tters have in mind. All of us have, or can, fashion Cohen-style bulls.h.i.t on demand, and so be that. Combine the two and you have fodder for books like this one and Laura Penny's, and for that matter for the many, many, conversations held today that included the phrase "This is such bulls.h.i.t." Carnap, of course, didn't know from Frankfurt and Cohen in 1932, but he knew bulls.h.i.t. His approach to it gave us the intellectual goods on offer today from Frankfurt and Cohen, and then some.
Ah, but what to do? Is it any solace to have one account of bulls.h.i.t over two, if our aim at the start was, implicitly at least, to get rid of the bulls.h.i.t? The question of how to respond to bulls.h.i.t is more pressing, and depressing, when we realize not just that the bulls.h.i.t tide is rising, with no recess in sight, but that all those enthusiastic bulls.h.i.t-eradication programs of yore, logical positivism included, have that rather embarra.s.sing odor of ambition-c.u.m-failure. In this context, the very end of Laura Penny's book might look at a first glance like the quintessential twenty-first century post-whatever reply to bulls.h.i.t: a none-too-hearty "Oh, well."
But that's just a first glance. Here's a suggestion that may sound less antique and more plausible the more our intolerance for bulls.h.i.t and its perpetrators grows. Our a.n.a.lysis of bulls.h.i.t as one part tool (a language amenable to misuse) and one part intention (to put something over by means of that tool) invites a strategy oddly familiar to advocates of gun control: control the gun. In this case, of course, it's control the language, the tool that bulls.h.i.tter's employ. No one, not Frankfurt, Carnap, Cohen, or Penny, suggests that we will eradicate from our midst those with intent to bulls.h.i.t; indeed, sometimes that very enemy is us. Bulls.h.i.tters are inevitable. But we can take in hand the tool the Frankfurtian bulls.h.i.tter turns to, and needs: our language. This taking in hand need not be the fashioning of the ideal language that Carnap and many (though, notably, not all) of the Vienna Circle imagined, or even the conceptual clean up Cohen calls for.
Again, I'm moved by the last line of Penny's book, and I don't mean the choice verb. The language we use, English or whatever, is ours, together, and each of us bears responsibility for its misuse and abuse in our presence. When one of us misuses it, placing it in the employ of bulls.h.i.t, it is no prissy matter of grammar or style that is at stake but a common temple being defaced. Your task, gentle reader, is to stand at the door of the temple. This can mean writing a book, or an essay, or a letter, or a blog, but it will also and more often mean holding a sign, raising a hand, casting a vote, or interrupting a conversation.
It's a daily, mundane, thankless, and unending task, but it will be the way out when the alternative becomes too much bulls.h.i.t to bear. Take some heart that you will be joined, in spirit if not in corpus, with Carnap's robust colleague, Otto Neurath, who impressed upon his wide audience that the shape of the world around is the result not of reasons beyond our control-pseudorationalism, Neurath called this idea-but of our own choices.114 It really is up to us.
10.
Raising the Tone: Definition, Bulls.h.i.t, and the Definition of Bulls.h.i.t.
ANDREW ABERDEIN.
I always love that kind of argument. The contrary of a thing isn't the contrary; oh, dear me, no! It's the thing itself, but as it truly is. Ask any die-hard what conservatism is; he'll tell you that it's true socialism. And the brewers' trade papers: they're full of articles about the beauty of true temperance. Ordinary temperance is just gross refusal to drink; but true temperance, true temperance is something much more refined. True temperance is a bottle of claret with each meal and three double whiskies after dinner.115 Bulls.h.i.t is not the only sort of deceptive talk. Spurious definitions, such as those quoted above, are another important variety of bad reasoning. This paper will describe some of these problematic tactics, and show how Harry Frankfurt's treatment of bulls.h.i.t may be extended to a.n.a.lyze their underlying causes. Finally, I will deploy this new account of definition to a.s.sess whether Frankfurt's definition of bulls.h.i.t is itself legitimate.
Semantic Negligence.
Frankfurt's princ.i.p.al contribution to the study of bulls.h.i.t is the distinction he draws between the bulls.h.i.tter and the liar. Whereas the liar represents as true something he believes to be false, the bulls.h.i.tter represents something as true when he neither knows nor cares whether it is true or false (On Bulls.h.i.t, p. 55). As Frankfurt amply demonstrates, this indifference is much of what we find most objectionable about bulls.h.i.t. The liar has a vested interest in the inst.i.tution of truth-telling, albeit a parasitical one: he hopes that his falsehoods will be accepted as true. The bulls.h.i.tter may also hope to be believed, but he himself is not much bothered whether what he says is true, hence his disregard for the truth is of a deeper and potentially more pernicious character.
Our outrage is conditioned on our being the objects of a deception. When we know what the bulls.h.i.tter is up to we can be much more indulgent. As the comic novelist Terry Pratchett observes of two of his characters, "they believed in bulls.h.i.t and were the type to admire it when it was delivered with panache. There's a kind of big, outdoor sort of man who's got no patience at all with prevaricators and fibbers, but will applaud any man who can tell an outrageous whopper with a gleam in his eye."116 The gleam in the eye is essential here: it is this complicity between bulls.h.i.tter and audience which const.i.tutes the "bull session" (On Bulls.h.i.t, p. 34). Only when it escapes from the bull session and masquerades as regular a.s.sertion is bulls.h.i.t deceptive; however, the insidious nature of this deception degrades the commitment to truth upon which public discourse depends.
One way of characterizing Frankfurt's innovation is as the introduction of a new category of linguistic misbehaviour, which we might call 'semantic negligence'. It is this concept which enables him to distinguish the bulls.h.i.tter from the liar. In British and American common law, a civil claim for negligence arises when the defendant has a duty of care to the plaintiff which he neglects to exercise, thereby harming the plaintiff. Here the deceptive bulls.h.i.tter has a duty to tell the truth; neglecting this duty harms his audience if they come to believe his false statements. His indifference as to the truth value of his statements, that is whether they are true or false, a meaning-related or semantic property, may thus be termed semantic negligence. Lying involves a higher degree of culpability, since the liar convinces his audience of falsehoods intentionally, not just foresee-ably. Frankfurt's insight is that conventional accounts of deception provide no middle ground between this higher level of culpability and complete innocence, and therefore no room for many familiar forms of deceit, such as bulls.h.i.t. My contention is that semantic negligence may arise with respect to features of meaning other than truth value, and as such may be used to disentangle a wide variety of deceptive dialectical practices. Furthermore, semantic negligence is itself a matter of degree. The legal understanding of negligence acknowledges that the a.s.sociated culpability can range from inadvertence to willful blindness. We may generalize Frankfurt's position further by recognizing that some instances of semantic negligence are worse than others. In a.s.sessing the gravity of semantic negligence we should ask questions such as 'How foreseeable was it that deception would arise?' and 'How much at fault is the speaker in not foreseeing this?'.
A Caricature History of Semantics.
My argument will draw on themes from the philosophy of language, chiefly the pioneering German logician Gottlob Frege's disambiguation of the naive understanding of 'meaning'. In what may be considered the primal moment of a.n.a.lytic philosophy, Frege drew a threefold distinction between Sinn, Bedeutung, and Farbung, or sense, reference and tone. The sense of a term is what we understand if we understand what the word means. The reference, however, is the thing which the word picks out. Hence, as Frege explains, "a proper name (word, sign, combination of signs, expression) expresses its sense, [but] stands for or designates its reference. By employing a sign we express its sense and designate its reference."117 For example, the sense of 'the longest river in the world' is just what we understand by the words in this phrase. Clearly, having that understanding does not depend on knowing what the reference is (the River Nile, all four thousand miles of it), let alone on having seen the river in question. The last of Frege's three divisions, tone, is the least familiar: it may be defined as that aspect of the meaning of an expression that is irrelevant to the truth value of any sentence in which it may occur. In languages with large vocabularies, like English, it is often possible to restate a phrase using different words, but preserving both sense and reference. Continuing with the earlier example, consider 'Earth's lengthiest natural watercourse.' The change here is one of tone.
Frege's distinction between sense and reference was not entirely original. Many earlier philosophers, perhaps as early as Aristotle, drew similar distinctions between these aspects of the meaning of a word or expression. In this context the terminology 'intension' and 'extension' is often used instead of sense and reference respectively. With proper nouns, and definite descriptions, like the example in the last paragraph, the terminology coincides exactly. With other sorts of noun, "concept nouns" as Frege calls them, sense and intension have the same meaning, but the reference is to the concept under which the members of the extension fall. The value of distinguishing between the reference and extension of a concept noun is most apparent when talking about short-lived or rapidly propagating things. Expressions such as 'snowflake', 'mayfly', or 'web page' have constantly changing extensions, but more or less fixed references. By concentrating on reference rather than extension, we can disregard superficial changes of this kind. Frege's approach was innovative in several respects, most of which go beyond the scope of this article, and has had a profound influence on subsequent philosophy. A crucial insight of Frege's is that sense cannot be reduced to reference: different terms can have the same reference, but different senses. In his well-known example, 'the evening star' and 'the morning star' both refer to the same object, the planet Venus, although the senses of these phrases are clearly distinct. Indeed, it was a genuine scientific discovery in the ancient world when it was realized that these two familiar sights were one and the same. Without the distinction between sense and reference we would be unable to describe this discovery.
Frege's formalizing project required the suppression of tone: "separating a thought from its trappings" as he puts it.118 Tone is the part of meaning from which we must abstract before logical a.n.a.lysis can begin. This abstraction is essential to the representation of inference in terms of logical form-that is, formal logic. For example, 'and' and 'but' are formalized in the same way, despite their difference in tone. (Consider 'He is a patriot and supports the government' versus 'He is a patriot but supports the government'.) This is entirely appropriate for the logic of mathematics, which was Frege's primary concern, since tone is seldom of significance in mathematical reasoning.
What is nuanced in the master can become dogmatic in the pupils. Many of Frege's successors sought to extend tone-free logical a.n.a.lysis to natural language. Amongst more popular writers this idealism could become extremism. Consider, for example, the psychologist Robert Thouless's claim that "We must look forward to the day when the thinking about political and international affairs will be as unemotional and as scientific as that about the properties of numbers or the atomic weights of elements." Whereas many logicians attempt to treat the terms of natural language as though they were tonally neutral, Thouless hopes to eliminate altogether "Such words as 'progress', 'liberty', 'democratic', 'totalitarian', 'reactionary', 'liberal', 'freedom', . . . ."119 This Orwellian scenario exhibits the limitations of Frege's program. Although enormously successful in the formalization of technical language, and an inescapable foundation for any study of natural usage, it has little to say about tonal properties which play a substantial part in ordinary discourse. Thouless's procrustean fantasy of excising from our language what our logic cannot a.n.a.lyze is a desperate remedy diametrically opposed to the real solution: taking tone seriously. Further progress in the study of natural argumentation will require us to rehabilitate this repressed element. We shall see that this project is foreshadowed in the Yale ethicist Charles Stevenson's account of what he called persuasive definition.
Persuasive Definition.
As introduced by Stevenson, a persuasive definition (PD) of a term "purport[s] . . . to alter the descriptive meaning of the term . . . but . . . not make any substantial change in the term's emotive meaning." 120 Although he coined the terminology, Stevenson was not the first person to spot this phenomenon. Indeed he quotes the memorable attack on PD from Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza with which we began. Stevenson also introduced the converse stratagem, persuasive quasi-definition (PQD), in which the emotive meaning of a term is altered without changing the descriptive meaning. When PD is discussed in logic textbooks it is usually treated as though it were invariably fallacious.121 However, this betrays the hostility to tone we diagnosed in the last section. As Stevenson recognized, many cases of PD are much less objectionable: the difficulty is in drawing a principled distinction between harmless and malign instances of PD. Stevenson's account of PD is couched in unfamiliar terms: 'descriptive' and 'emotive' meaning. These reflect his understanding of the meaning of an expression as a dispositional property of that expression, representing its potential to cause a psychological response in its hearer or utterer (p. 54). Descriptive and emotive meanings are then distinguished as provoking cognitive or emotive psychological responses respectively. Few if any modern philosophers would find this account even remotely congenial. Detailed criticism would be out of place here, although we can observe that the account is closely related to the emotivist theory of ethics, sometimes called the Boo-Hurrah Theory, on which ethical terms, such as 'good', are merely expressions of an emotional att.i.tude. That Stevenson's ethical and semantic theories have fallen out of fashion may explain the comparative neglect of PD. However, we shall see that this concept is independent of the theoretical context in which Stevenson articulated it.
Specifically, Stevenson's definition of PD may be restated in Fregean terms as changing the sense or reference of a term, while representing the tone as unchanged. Replacing the slippery distinction between emotive and descriptive meaning with that between sense, reference and tone has several advantages, besides the rescue of PD from its theoretically suspect origins. Firstly, tone is not just emotive. It can also, for example, be jargon-laden (with any number of different jargons), bureaucratic, politically correct, affectionate, poetic, boorish, metropolitan, circ.u.mspect, dated, or many other things. Secondly, a threefold distinction provides for a more fine-grained a.n.a.lysis of dubious definition-like activity than the simple binary of PD and PQD. Table 1 distinguishes the sixteen different possibilities that can arise from changing () or keeping fixed (-) the sense, reference and tone of a term, as well as the term itself.
Table 1 Options for Change.
We can also begin to see how the concept of semantic negligence which we derived from Frankfurt's discussion of bulls.h.i.t may be used to distinguish good from bad PD. The persuasive definer represents the tone of his redefined term as unchanged: this may or may not be negligent of him. He might be justified in believing the tone will not change, making his usage un.o.bjectionable. He might realize that the tone will be dramatically affected by the redefinition, in which case he is unlikely to expect his move to be accepted. Or he may be negligent as to whether the tone is faithfully preserved. This strategy is not overtly deceptive, since the tone could be unchanged. Rather, the speaker's lack of control over the tone, and indifference as to its eventual disposition, makes his utterance semantically negligent. In this respect it is a.n.a.logous to bulls.h.i.t, not lying.
In our discussion of semantic negligence we suggested that different degrees of negligence are possible, depending on the risk of deception occurring and how much at fault the speaker is in not foreseeing that deception would result. Aphoristic definitions, such as "By 'work' I mean action done for the divine"122 and perhaps Huxley's "Conservatism is true socialism," are usually so surprising or paradoxical that they are unlikely to be truly deceptive. Many other definitions are inseparable from the theories which produce them: as Stevenson observes, "To chose a definition is to plead a cause" (p. 210). There's no reason to accept such definitions unless one is convinced by the arguments with which the theory is defended. This situation is common in scientific contexts, where it is typically unproblematic: good practice requires the definer to make the theoretical indebtedness of his definitions explicit. Definers in natural language are likely to be less scrupulous, hence their interlocutors may be misled into endorsing the conclusions of arguments they would not judge sound, were they to be given a fair opportunity to appraise them. The resulting deception may be deliberate, but is just as likely to be inadvertent: it is easy to confuse oneself as well as others with this sort of definition. Such behaviour is less culpable than outright deceit, just as bulls.h.i.t is less blameworthy than lying, but as with bulls.h.i.t, it is also peculiarly pernicious since it degrades the standards of discourse.
Broadening the a.n.a.lysis.
In the previous section I introduced and clarified the definition of PD and suggested how it may be related to bulls.h.i.t. I shall develop this account further below, but first I will explore the relationship between PD and a variety of allied phenomena, all of which may be included within the same a.n.a.lysis, thereby broadening our understanding of semantic negligence.
Low and High Redefinition.
As commonly used, these terms describe the redefinition of an expression so as to include extra cases (low redefinition) or exclude existing cases (high redefinition). Hence they are defined solely in terms of what would happen to the reference of the expression if the redefinition were successful. However, the change in reference will typically be effected by a change of sense, since that is the princ.i.p.al means of redefining a term. Moves of this kind partially coincide with PD, although the two should not be confused: PD can occur without a change of reference, as we shall see, and not every change of reference is PD. Strictly speaking, only one of low and high redefinition need be addressed, as each can be defined in terms of the other. A low redefinition of a term is a high redefinition of the complement of that term, and vice versa. (The complement of a term is the term under which everything not falling under that term falls.) For example, consider the motorist who, upon conviction for drunk driving, argues that he is not a real drunk driver, but had just been caught out after a miscalculated drink. (One too many double whiskies, perhaps.) His argument could be understood as a high redefinition of 'drunk driver,' or a low redefinition of 'non drunk driver,' so as to include the driver in question. This example could also be understood as PD, since the motorist wishes to avoid the stigma, that is the pejorative tone, of 'drunk driver,' which he hopes will remain fixed as he effects his self-serving redefinition. The motorist may have convinced himself that his redefinition is just, but only by a wilfull blindness to its departure from conventional usage.
The No-True-Scotsman Move.
Suppose that some traditionally minded Scot averred that 'No Scotsman takes sugar with his porridge'. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence that one Hamish MacTavish of Inverness does exactly that, he may retreat to the qualified statement 'No true Scotsman takes sugar with his porridge'. A shift of this sort, christened the No-True-Scotsman Move by the British philosopher Antony Flew, is a special case of low or high redefinition. 123 What makes it special is that, since the reference of 'Scotsman' has been redefined specifically to exclude Scotsmen who take sugar with their porridge, the new statement is not only true, it is true of necessity. Whereas the original claim said something bold and potentially false about the world, the new claim is equivalent to 'No Scotsman who does not take sugar with his porridge takes sugar with his porridge', which must be true, but says nothing at all. Since the speaker's motivation is presumably to preserve the positive tone he a.s.sociates with 'Scotsman', his move may be seen as PD. However, the real danger is that the two statements look and sound much alike, and may be confused, giving the impression that the original contentious statement is true, even though it has been clearly falsified. This is as likely to result from carelessness as from outright deceit, making this another instance of semantic negligence, here with respect to either the reference of 'Scotsman' or the truth value of the original statement. Thus, if the speaker continues to behave as though his original statement were true, he is exhibiting cla.s.sic Frankfurt bulls.h.i.t.
Monster Barring.
The Hungarian philosopher of mathematics Imre Lakatos distinguished several colorfully labeled possible responses that may be made to a counterexample which seems to refute a cherished conjecture. One of the least helpful of these, 'monster barring', consists in the "sometimes deft but always ad hoc redefinition" of crucial terms, by which means any counterexample can be eliminated.124 We can see that this technique, gerrymandering a term to protect a claim from any possible refutation, is comparable to Flew's No-True-Scotsman Move. However, Lakatos's account situates monster barring within a family of related techniques, some of which are more productive. For example, 'exception barring' addresses counterexamples by restricting the scope of the conjecture so that it is no longer falsified. Explicit restatement of this kind, as in 'No Lowland Scotsman takes sugar with his porridge' perhaps avoids the pitfalls of the No-True-Scotsman Move by making explicit the theoretical commitments of the speaker.
Dissociation.
This is a very wide-ranging category under which much of the above may be subsumed. It may be defined as the splitting of a concept into two, thereby replacing the term with two qualified terms which divide the reference of the original term between them (New Rhetoric, p. 411). Many different pairs of qualifiers can arise, although the most influential is that of 'real' versus 'apparent'. In the 'Scotsman' example the use of 'true Scotsman' may be understood in this way, as may Huxley's explicit dissociation of 'ordinary' from 'true' temperance. Indeed, the Belgian rhetoricians Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, in whose work dissociation originates, observe that PD is characteristically a special case of the dissociation of reality from appearance (New Rhetoric, p. 447). Dissociation can be explicit and well-motivated, in which case it is not only legitimate but indispensable to complex thought. However, it can also be deployed in pursuit of an unearned advantage in argument. In such cases the dissociating arguer talks as though the tone must remain attached to the part of the concept he has designated as real, but he has no way of ensuring this, making his behaviour semantically negligent.
Courtesy Meaning.
This phrase was coined by the cla.s.sicist and philosopher R.G. Collingwood to describe the use of an expression chosen for its "emotional colouring" rather than its "descriptive function."125 Collingwood's specific concern was the use of 'art' to describe what might better be called 'entertainment'. He sees this usage as motivated princ.i.p.ally by the positive a.s.sociations, or tone, the word possesses. This may be understood as a special case of PD, since the reference of the term is adjusted while the tone remains fixed, although the usage which Collingwood describes is unlikely to be expressed as a definition. The choice of terms for their courtesy meaning is clearly semantically negligent, since the chooser gives no thought to the sense of the term.
Euphemism.
Replacing a word which is perceived as malign in tone with a new expression intended to preserve the sense and reference while resetting the tone to neutral or benign a.s.sociations is a tactic of some antiquity. The ancient Greeks thought it politic to refer to the Furies as the 'Eumenides' or 'Kindly Ones', lest the notoriously short tempers of these vengeance demons be provoked. Of course, 'bulls.h.i.t' itself has had many euphemisms, including 'humbug', 'balderdash', 'poppyc.o.c.k', or 'bunk' (On Bulls.h.i.t, p. 5). In modern times, euphemism is familiar from politically correct usage, such as 's.e.x workers' or indeed 'persons presenting themselves as commodity allotments within a business doctrine' for 'prost.i.tutes', as well as government or military language, such as 'superprompt critical power excursion' for 'nuclear meltdown'.126 The proliferation of both these categories of euphemism has been a source of much concern.127 However, as the feminist critic Germaine Greer observes, "It is the fate of euphemisms to lose their function rapidly by a.s.sociation with the actuality of what they designate, so that they must be regularly replaced with euphemisms for themselves."128 This phenomenon, which has been termed the "euphemism treadmill" 129 is a common one-consider the sequence of terms which have been used to refer to minorities of race or s.e.xual orientation. The process can only be arrested when underlying att.i.tudes towards the individuals under discussion improve: the comparative stability of 'gay' and 'black' suggest some recent progress. In most PC and nukespeak usage, however, the underlying att.i.tudes are unchanged, and the euphemism tends to backfire just as Greer describes.
Backfire.
To see how a definition can backfire, we must first distinguish the various ways in which it may be attempted. We can see from Table 1 that each of PD and PQD now corresponds to three distinct options, and that there are several other possibilities. We shall discuss each of them in turn.
The null case a, in which nothing changes, represents the ideal of pure description which dictionary definitions purport to offer. PD corresponds to the cases b, c and d. In most of the examples of PD discussed above a change of sense is used to bring about a change of reference, making such cases instances of d. However, in b only the reference changes. It might be argued that this cannot happen. When we (re)define a term the aspect of its meaning which we can most easily affect is its sense, so the simplest way of changing the reference of a term is to change its sense. If this were the only way of changing the reference, then b, as well as f, j and n, would never occur. However, as we saw in the drunk driver example, arguers can attempt to exclude an individual from the scope of the reference of a term while ostensibly preserving the sense. Such attempts may fail, and certainly exhibit semantic negligence, but the intent is to change the reference alone.
Conversely, in c only the sense is changed. This may be less typical than d, but real world cases exist. One such is the so-called Model Law definition of 'p.o.r.nography', stated by the radical feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin as "the s.e.xually explicit subordination of women, graphically depicted, whether in pictures or in words."130 The aim of the proposed law was to criminalize existing p.o.r.nography. So, although the definition changes the conventional sense of 'p.o.r.nography', it was not intended to alter the reference. Presumably the tone was also intended to remain the same, or perhaps to become even more condemnatory. This definition also provides an insight into the propensity of PD to backfire. Sceptics of MacKinnon and Dworkin's theory of p.o.r.nography may wonder whether women are ever 'subordinated' by pictures or words, or more generally whether all the material conventionally identified as p.o.r.nography has this effect. The concern is that MacKinnon and Dworkin were negligent in not sufficiently securing the reference of the term they sought to redefine: their definition relies on an argument about the effect of p.o.r.nography which not everyone finds convincing. This is borne out by the subsequent fortunes of the Model Law. Although ruled unconst.i.tutional in the United States, a similar definition has entered Canadian law, where it has led to raids on gay bookshops but has had limited effect on mainstream p.o.r.nography.131 Hence the effect of the new definition, although intended as c, ended up as d: the reference drifted to include materials to which it was not intended to apply, while excluding much of what it was supposed to cover.
Persuasive quasi-definition (PQD) is dual to PD: as we have defined it, it occurs when the tone changes but either the sense or reference remains the same, that is cases e, f and g. As observed above, the easiest aspect of meaning to change directly is the sense. Changing the tone is more difficult. It may be attempted without changing the other components of meaning: an instance of e, as in the rehabilitation of abusive terms such as 'queer'. Note that redefinitions of this kind must proceed indirectly, by using the term in contexts liable to encourage an a.s.sociation with the desired tone, or "by gestures, tones of voice, or rhetorical devices such as similes and metaphors" (Stevenson, p. 278), since the tone of a term cannot just be stipulated. It is also possible, as in cases f and g, to bring about a change in tone through a change in sense or reference. This may be deliberate, but can also happen inadvertently when a would-be persuasive definer loses control of the tone he is hoping to keep fixed. This sort of backfire can also result in case h, which we may call 'degenerate definition', since it does not preserve any aspect of the term's meaning.
Even degenerate definition can be deliberately pursued. For example, consider the technical meanings attributed by economists and sociologists to expressions such as 'unproductive labour' or 'conspicuous waste'.132 In each case the definer not only departs from the standard sense and reference, he also professes to use the terms without their conventional pejorative tone. In practice, that tone swiftly creeps back, even in the works of the definers, making this usage PD, a backfire from h to d.
An example which shows both how PD can be used legitimately and successfully, and how it can backfire into PQD, or degenerate definition, occurs with the definition of 'rape'. The crime of rape has been recognized for many centuries. Over the course of this history both its sense and its reference have evolved substantially: a process which some modern commentators see as not yet satisfactorily concluded. We cannot hope to recount this narrative in full detail, and will concentrate on three major theories of rape, each of which produces a distinct definition. On the traditional theory, rape is a property crime. In societies where women were seen as belonging to men, rape was understood as an injury one man does to another by interfering with the reproductive activity of his women.133 On the liberal theory, rape is s.e.x without consent. This is the definition which is most familiar in the modern world. However the traditional theory cast a long shadow: it lies behind the marital rape exemption clause which was to be found in the rape laws of the United Kingdom and most U.S. states as recently as the 1980s (Defining Reality, p. 53). On the radical theory, rape is a "terrorist inst.i.tution" by which the male s.e.x subordinates the female ("Rape and Persuasive Definition," p. 449). The radical feminists who defend this theory seek to "redraw the line between so-called normal (heteros.e.xual) intercourse and rape" by replacing or substantially redefining the criterion of consent (p. 450).
There are two changes of definition here: one historical, from the traditional to the liberal definition, and one hypothetical, from the liberal to the radical. The tone has remained largely intact throughout: always negative, although perhaps increasingly so, as societal att.i.tudes change. The adoption of the liberal definition seems to have begun as case c: a change of sense which preserved the traditional reference-at some theoretical cost, since the required marital exemption clause is unjustifiable on the liberal theory. Over time this theoretical tension was resolved with the abolition of that clause, thereby changing the reference of 'rape,' and making the c.u.mulative change an instance of d. Each step was stable, and did not backfire, because not only was the new definition backed by a coherent theory, but that theory was argued for successfully by the proponents of the definition.
The proponents of the radical definition are also aiming for d, albeit in one step, as they propose not only a new sense, but also a much wider reference. They hope that this can be accomplished without any reduction in the negative force of the tone. However, one recurring criticism of their move is that such reduction is inevitable, and thereby "trivialize[s] legitimate rape, and mocks those women who have been truly brutalized" ("Rape and Persuasive Definition," p. 438). The sometime radical feminist Keith Burgess-Jackson dismisses this concern as question-begging, since it presumes that the new cases falling under the redefined reference of 'rape' are not as bad as the original cases, which he says the radical theory denies. However, this response is itself question-begging: it a.s.sumes that the whole theory will be adopted, not just the definition of one word: 'rape'. But, as the rhetorician Edward Schiappa reminds us, "Putting new laws on the books does not ensure that all individuals responsible for enforcing those laws will immediately a.s.similate the new definitions and categories" (Defining Reality, p. 60). The effect on society as a whole is likely to be even more diffuse, especially for a theory as sharply at odds with conventional wisdom as the radical feminists'. Thus it is predictable that, even if a radical feminist definition of 'rape' was enacted into law, the conventional moral weighting of the new cases would persist, thereby diluting the tone. Thus the definition would backfire from d to h.
The remaining lines in Table 1 correspond to cases where the term itself has changed. There are several ways of bringing this about. Euphemism, if successful, exemplifies case m: the new term has a new tone, but preserves sense and reference. The sort of backfire characteristic of the 'euphemism treadmill' is a shift to case i: the tone reverts to that of the old term. Euphemism, as conventionally understood, involves a very specific change in tone, from pejorative to neutral or laudatory. However, case m covers all shifts of tone, including those that go in the opposite direction ('dysphemisms') and those which are oriented on an entirely different basis. Euphemism (and dysphemism, and other such changes) can be accompanied by other shifts in meaning. For example, 'visually impaired,' although used as a euphemism for 'blind' has a somewhat different sense and reference, taking it in the direction of case p.
The results of dissociation, understood as producing two new terms from one old term, can be found amongst the same cases as euphemism. Characteristically, the two new terms will correspond to a pair of distinct cases, where one of the terms is intended to preserve the original tone, while the other covers circ.u.mstances incompatible with that tone. Thus one of the pair will be drawn from lines i through l and the other from lines m through p. For example, 'ordinary temperance' and 'true temperance', understood as a dissociation, would correspond to lines m and l respectively. 'Ordinary temperance' preserves the sense and reference of 'temperance,' but by implication lacks its positive tone; 'true temperance' keeps the tone, but on Huxley's account, nothing else.
Good Definitions.
How can backfire be avoided? Can PD ever be used safely, and if so, when? We have seen that a proper account of definition should have regard to the sense, reference and tone of the term at issue. Semantic negligence with respect to any of these components of the meaning of a term can lead to backfire, and the pernicious consequences outlined in the last section. Bad practice is, however, easier to describe than good practice, which we might term 'semantic diligence'. Describing the due diligence required for a satisfactory definition is a topic with a long and inglorious history.134 The emphasis is often on the pursuit of an 'essence' of the concept being defined: so-called 'real' definitions accurately track the essence, whereas other definitions are merely 'nominal'. This talk of essences made some sense for Plato and Aristotle, in whose works it was first deployed, as it reflects their broader metaphysical commitments. However, for modern thinkers who do not share those commitments, and even for those who do, it is very hard to defend: the most that can be made of essence is that it "is just the human choice of what to mean by a name, misinterpreted as being a metaphysical reality" (Definition, p. 155).
Aristotle is also the source of a conventional list of rules for good definitions which has recurred with surprisingly little variation in generation after generation of logic textbooks right up to the most recent editions. Although some of these rules, such as 'avoid circularity,' may have a modest but valuable role to play in an account of the semantic diligence necessary for good definition, others are either couched in metaphysically discredited terms: 'state the essential attributes,' or incompatible with proper consideration of tone: 'avoid figurative language'.
The crucial point is that practices such as PD, which seek to stipulate some aspect of the meaning of an expression, are disguised arguments. It is common in all branches of knowledge for an initially contentious identification to be transformed into a definition. For example, consider the definition of 'planet' as 'satellite of the sun'. However, this is the hard-won result of protracted consensus building. We saw above how this was essential to the widespread acceptance of the liberal definition of 'rape'. Semantically negligent definitions are parasitical on this process: they foreclose argument about doubtful ident.i.ties by disguising them as definitions. Hidden arguments are difficult to criticize-but also easy to ignore. Thus the semantically negligent definer may gain short-term rhetorical advantage by disguising his arguments as definitions, but risks the backfire effect, which is a direct consequence of his neglect of the full meaning of his redefined expression. For a definition to be semantically diligent any concealed arguments must be made explicit to all parties. Moreover, if the proposers hope for their definition to prevail, these arguments must be won. Conversely, this explication must be absent for an accusation of malign PD, or similar semantic negligence, to be just.
Is Frankfurt's Definition of 'Bulls.h.i.t' Itself PD?
Having employed an insight derived from Frankfurt's definition of bulls.h.i.t to clarify our understanding of definition in general, and PD in particular, we are now in a position to close the circle by asking whether this definition is PD, and if so whether it is malign. 'Bulls.h.i.t' clearly has a strongly pejorative tone, which Frankfurt intends to preserve. By offering a new, stipulative definition of 'bulls.h.i.t,' Frankfurt changes the sense of the term. This in turn affects its reference: some cases that qualify as Frankfurt-bulls.h.i.t would not meet the demotic definition of the term. For example, one might tell a critically injured person that "Help is on its way," despite having no idea whether this was true, because one was hoping for the best, and did not wish to needlessly demoralize someone clinging to life. There are also common uses of 'bulls.h.i.t' which are outside the scope of reference of Frankfurt-bulls.h.i.t, as discussed by Cohen ("Deeper Into Bulls.h.i.t," pp. 119120). So, as an instance of case d from Table 1, Frankfurt's definition of 'bulls.h.i.t' is clearly PD.
For Frankfurt's definition to be semantically diligent it needs to be defended by an explicit argument, as it clearly is, with particular attention to the points at which it departs from conventional usage. As regards the first of these, the 'Help is on its way' cases, an argument could be made on the grounds of theoretical simplicity for including them within the scope of reference of 'bulls.h.i.t,' but suitably qualified to indicate their good intentions. Something similar already applies to lying: we distinguish 'white lies' as lies to which the generally pejorative tone of 'lie' should not apply. As Frankfurt observes, bulls.h.i.t is a "vast and amorphous" phenomenon upon which "very little work has been done" (On Bulls.h.i.t, p. 3), so we should not be surprised that fresh distinctions such as this still need to be drawn. The omissions identified by Cohen are harder to defend. If Cohen's dissociation of the "bulls.h.i.t of ordinary life" from the "bulls.h.i.t that appears in academic works" is defensible ("Deeper into Bulls.h.i.t," p. 119), then Frankfurt has a hard case to answer. However, that does not make his definition semantically negligent, but rather indicates that the last word on bulls.h.i.t will not be written for some time yet.135
11.
Different Kinds and Aspects of Bulls.h.i.t.
HANS MAES and KATRIEN SCHAUBROECK.
The publication and subsequent popularity of Harry Frankfurt's On Bulls.h.i.t has inserted a rather conspicuous and somewhat comical point of discontinuity in the philosophy sections of many bookstores. For here we have a small, una.s.suming book with 'Bulls.h.i.t' printed on the outside but lacking the quality of bulls.h.i.t on the inside.
The exact opposite, one cannot fail to notice, is true of so many other books sold under the heading of 'philosophy' today. Books like Chakra Balancing Kit: A Guide to Healing and Awakening Your Energy Body, The Hidden Messages in Water Crystals, Numerology Helps You to Master Your Relationship and to Find the Right Career, or Astrology: A Cosmic Science appear in the same bestseller lists and sometimes even on the same bookshelf as On Bulls.h.i.t-almost as if they are put there on purpose to ill.u.s.trate the unusual topic of Frankfurt's philosophical study and his claim that bulls.h.i.t is indeed "the most salient feature of our culture."
When Frankfurt's a.n.a.lysis of bulls.h.i.t was first published as an essay in 1986, no one could have predicted the philosophical sensation (and hilarious situation) it would cause in twenty-first-century bookstores. The original essay was received in much the same way as most academic articles are received, that is, without attention from press or public. The essay did, however, provoke discussion among fellow philosophers; one admiring but critical response is especially worth mentioning since it puts some of Frankfurt's claims in a new perspective.
In "Deeper Into Bulls.h.i.t" G.A. Cohen gives credit to Frankfurt's "pioneering and brilliant discussion of a widespread but largely unexamined cultural phenomenon," but he also raises some doubts about the scope of Frankfurt's account (Chapter 8 in this volume). Frankfurt's definition, says Cohen, does not cover all types of bulls.h.i.t. On the contrary, "the explicandum that attracted [Frankfurt's] interest is just one flower in the lush garden of bulls.h.i.t" (p. 120). So, "On Bulls.h.i.t" is really only about one kind of bulls.h.i.t. Other flowers in the "lush garden of bulls.h.i.t" remain unexamined, and Cohen's princ.i.p.al aim in "Deeper into Bulls.h.i.t" is to identify and define a very specific kind of stercore tauri, to be found in academic circles, but altogether ignored by Frankfurt.
Harry Frankfurt on Bulls.h.i.t.
People who produce, package, or sell bulls.h.i.t, says Frankfurt, are in some way comparable to slovenly craftsmen. They are not really paying attention to the quality of their product. There's some kind of laxity in their work, though this laxity cannot be equated with inattention to detail or carelessness in general. What is lacking in the prime examples of bulls.h.i.t, to be found in "the realms of advertising and of public relations, and