Bullshit and Philosophy Part 14

The guru Sri Aurobindo, cited in Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), p. 444.

123.

Antony Flew, Thinking about Thinking: Or, Do I Sincerely Want to Be Right? (London: Fontana, 1975), p. 47.

124.

Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 23.

125.

R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 9.

126.

Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (London: Grafton, 1992), pp. 48, 129.

127.

See, for example, the discussion of 'nukespeak' in Edward Schiappa, Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), p. 131.

128.

Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: Farrar, Straus, 2002), p. 298.

129.

Steven Pinker, "The Game of the Name," New York Times (5th April, 1994), p. A6.

130.

Catharine A. MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, In Harm's Way: The p.o.r.nography Civil Rights Hearings (Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 269270.

131.

Tamsin Wilton, Finger-Licking Good: The Ins and Outs of Lesbian s.e.x (London: Ca.s.sell, 1996), p. 154.

132.

Adam Smith, cited by Stevenson, p. 215; Thorstein Veblen, cited in Flew, p. 77.

133.

Keith Burgess-Jackson, "Rape and Persuasive Definition," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1995), p. 444.

134.

Richard Robinson, Definition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1950), pp. 23.

135.

Precursors to this paper were delivered at St. Catherines, Ontario; St. Andrews, Scotland; and Oviedo, Asturias. I am grateful for the comments I received, and for conversations with Bruce Russell, Agnes van Rees, Douglas Walton, and the editors of this volume.

136.

Think of the little girl, who, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke, said: "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?" See Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (London: Watts, 1946).

137.

F. Pascal, "Wittgenstein: A Personal Memoir," in R. Rhees, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 29.

138.

K. Is.h.i.+guro, The Remains of the Day (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), pp. 25758.

139.

Conversely, Mr. Spock from Star Trek always appealed to what is "logical" or "a fact." And what a bore he was, as all the other characters were always rolling their eyes at his humorlessness.

140.

Thomas Nagel, "Concealment and Exposure," in Nagel, Concealment and Exposure and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 6.

141.

On Bulls.h.i.+t, pp. 3334. Specifically, Frankfurt would claim that the paradigmatic bulls.h.i.+tter doesn't care that he doesn't know in the sense that he is not interested in whether what he says is true or not.

142.

The tendency not properly to distinguish 'bulls.h.i.+tting' and 'lying' is evident in Laura Penny's discussion of politics in Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bulls.h.i.+t (New York: Crown, 2005), Chapter 5. See also p. 1: the fact that "never in the history of mankind have so many people uttered statements that they know to be untrue" is offered as a characterisation of "an era of unprecedented bulls.h.i.+t production." This example is particularly noteworthy as on page 5 Penny seems to embrace Frankfurt's definition.

143.

The resistance to these facts on the part of some who cling to the cynicism thesis itself exhibits a bulls.h.i.+tting approach to the 'understanding' of politics in their refusal to contemplate that politicians could be anything other than shameless liars.

144.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin, 1954), pp. 3940.

145.

Some might think it inappropriate to label the abhorrent discourse of totalitarianisms 'bulls.h.i.+t', because it might seem to be too frivolously dismissive, too lightweight in its condemnatory force, to capture its full repulsiveness. Certainly, in this regard to call something 'bulls.h.i.+t' often seems to be an expression of amused contempt. But even if that is its rhetorical effect, it is worth noting that some forms of humor can const.i.tute powerful strategies of attack against even the most appalling tyrants: see, for ill.u.s.trations, some of the political jokes compiled by Steven Lukes and Itzhak Galnoor, eds., No Laughing Matter (London: Penguin, 1987). The collection's t.i.tle gives the clue to the main point, however: such jokes only function as jokes when they, and their tellers and audiences, appreciate how profoundly non-funny their subject-matter actually is. Failure to appreciate this in jokes render them in bad taste, not funny-not jokes-at all.

146.

See 'The Power of the Powerless', in Vaclav Havel, Open Letters (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 132.

147.

The claim that bulls.h.i.+tting tactics were deployed in the attempt to justify the Iraq invasion, which I believe is incontrovertible, might not itself suffice to yield the conclusion that the invasion was therefore unjustified. Just because no non-bulls.h.i.+t justification was used does not mean none was available. However, though the present a.n.a.lysis rests on no specific view about that possibility, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the resort to bulls.h.i.+t is at least prima facie evidence that there was no genuine justification.

148.

Given this, it is perhaps no surprise to find, as the Princeton Review did, that in the 2004 presidential debates, Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level of competence, whilst Kerry just about made it to seventh-grade level. See www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2004101502020.

149.

A term which itself often features in bulls.h.i.+tting conceptions of politics.

150.

At its extreme, this fact-indifference parallels how Frankfurt views a lot of advertising: "My presumption is that advertisers generally decide what they are going to say in their advertis.e.m.e.nts without caring what the truth is. Therefore, what they say in their advertis.e.m.e.nts is bulls.h.i.+t"; Harry Frankfurt, "Reply to G.A. Cohen," in Sarah Buss, Lee Overton, eds., Contours of Agency (Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts: MIT Press, 2002), p. 341.

151.

Frankfurt is keen to stress that relativism yields much bulls.h.i.+t; On Bulls.h.i.+t, pp. 6465.

152.

This uncritical sanctification of personal opinion may well partly explain the heightened prominence of 'personality' issues and the ad hominem argument in political life: if you can't attack the argument, then attack the arguer.

153.

Criticising Cohen's castigation of a sentence by Etienne Balibar as unclarifiable unclarity, Frankfurt plausibly clarifies it: Frankfurt, "Reply to G.A. Cohen," p. 342. But if it is clarifiably unclear, then it may still qualify as a different form of bulls.h.i.+t.

154.

Along with Bulls.h.i.+t (2), Bulls.h.i.+ts (4) and (5) are identified by Cohen in Chapter 8 of this volume.

155.

I have in mind here something a.n.a.logous to Peter Singer's conception of the 'moral expert': see "Moral Experts," in Peter Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), pp. 36.

156.

Some of this is identified (in the field of philosophy of science) and criticised in Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (London: Profile, 1998).

157.

G.A. Cohen, "Why One Kind of Bulls.h.i.+t Flourishes in France," ma.n.u.script, p. 33. I'm very grateful to Jerry Cohen for permission to cite from this unpublished paper.

158.

These thoughts were first expressed at the political theory workshop in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales, Swansea. The session marked the visit of my ex-student Christine Stender, and I am grateful to Christine not only for appreciating that there was nothing personal to the choice of theme but also for subsequent discussion. I'm also grateful for comments to James Beard, Heidi Brown, Scott Bruning, Maria Paz Calvo Felton, Alan Finlayson, James Hill, Sarah Moran, Richard Murphy and Richard Van Der Watt. I am deeply indebted to George Reisch for excellent criticism of the penultimate draft of this chapter. As always, Anne Evans's scrupulous reading removed some of the inadvertent bulls.h.i.+t and other errors from the final version; those remaining are my own responsibility.

159.

On Bulls.h.i.+t, p. 33.

160.

I thank Thomas Pogge for this insight.

161.

P. Goldie, Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 5.

162.

Martha Nussbaum, "Emotions as Judgments of Value and Importance," in Robert C. Solomon, ed., Thinking about Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 184.

163.

R.N. Haa.s.s, The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).

164.

And having a more complete mechanistic account may not reduce all the concern. For a real case with such complexity (regarding saccharin and bladder cancers in rats) see D. Guston, "Princ.i.p.al-Agent Theory and the Structure of Science Policy Revisited: 'Science in Policy' and the US Report on Carcinogens," Science and Public Policy 30:5 (2003), pp. 347357.

165.

Although carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, we should also remember chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, methane, and of course, water. Each has a different capacity to trap heat, and a different average lifespan in the atmosphere, ranging from a few years to centuries.

166.

R.A. Kerr, (1993), "Pinatubo Global Cooling on Target," Science 259 (1993), p. 594.

167.

See, for example, Volumes 255, 256, 258, 259, and 260.

168.

R.J. Charlson and T.M.L. Wigley, "Sulfate Aerosol and Climate Change," Scientific American (February 1994), pp. 4857.

169.

Robert C. Balling Jr. (1995), "Global Warming: Messy Models, Decent Data, Pointless Policy," in R. Bailey, ed., The True State of the Planet (New York: Free Press), p. 91.

170.

"A More Sensible Approach to the Environment," Wall Street Journal Europe (28th January, 1994), p. 10; "Climate Claims Wither Under Luminous Lights of Science," Was.h.i.+ngton Times (29th November, 1994), p. A18; "Is Man-Made Global Warming a Proven Environmental Threat? No: Doomsayers Are Just Trying to Scare Money out of Government," Insight 11 (1995), p. 19; "The Global Warming Debate: ... Not Scientific Consensus," Wall Street Journal (25th July, 1997), p. A14; and "Global Warming Is Not Happening," Natural Science (29th January, 1998).

171.

Guy Crittenden, "The Day the Earth Warmed Up," The Globe and Mail (22nd November, 1997), p. D1.

172.