On bullshit

Harry G. Frankfurt's new book from Princton U. Press, On Bullshit, "explores why there is so much bullshit, what bullshit is exactly, and what functions bullshit serves," according to the introduction. In my field (educational publishing) these are salient questions with important consequences. That and a perverse curiosity about the subject piqued my interest when my sister sent me the book on CD.

"The phenomenon is so vast and amorphous," according to the author, and his treatment of it so refreshingly straightforward. It's a serious, but not TOO serious, analysis, and I had to laugh at times. You might find yourself thinking of people you know as he describes some of the types and traits of bullshitters. The quick little book doesn't disappoint. Thanks, Jo Jo.

Like the older and more genteel term humbug, which is explained by Max Black in his book The Prevalence of Humbug, bullshit misrepresents something but falls short of outright lying. Frankfurt cites public relations, advertising, and politics as realms of tireless and careful attention to bullshit. He uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussion of nonsense to shed light on the nature of bullshit as involving a kind of laxity toward what is true or can be know to be true. This leads to the conclusion that the essence of bullshit has to do not with a speaker's intent to deceive but with the speaker's lack of concern with the truth at all.

The OED, which apparently has plenty of material on the subject, cites a poem by Ezra Pound about using biblical passages to make a point, wherein Pound demands more from a speaker than empty talk, in effect calling their bluff. Frankfurt concludes that the bullshitter, like the fake and the phoney, engages in a relatively benign inauthenticity rather than the more offensive lie. The craft of lying is more specific and bound to truth-value than the wide-ranging art of bullshit. Liars and truth-tellers are playing on opposite sides in the same rule-bound game, while the bullshitter plays a different game altogether, free of those constraints.

Other synonyms (readers, please add more):

nonsense, bunkum, humbug, misrepresentation, insincerity, trivia, hot air, caca, quackery, balderdash, hocum, drivel, imposture, claptrap...

Why is there so much bullshit now? Maybe because there is more communication now, and the proportion of bullshit is unchanged. Frankfort goes into a short discussion of the corollary issues of skepticism and whether objective truths are knowable, ending with proposition that all a person can do is know and express how they feel. In that case, sincerity replaces truth as the standard of utterances, to which the author replies, "Sincerity is bullshit."