Bullshit and Philosophy

by Reisch, George A. ; Hardcastle, Gary L.

  No universal answer to this question is available because the contexts in which these judgments must be made vary so widely. Whether the evidence available is sufficient depends in large measure on what the risks are of getting it wrong. These risks arise because of the uncertainty inherent in the enterprise of science, uncertainty that is endemic and unavoidable (although reducible). Even if uncertainty is similar in two cases, the risks of error vary with the claim being examined and the context of the claim. Consider a few everyday examples. Suppose I told you I thought it likely that your gas tank gauge was off, and that you would run out of gas on the way home. The risk of error in rejecting my claim is not terribly huge. It would be inconvenient for you to run out of gas, but probably not life-threatening. You would want to know exactly why I thought this about your as gauge, on the basis of what evidence, and decide whether it really was enough to get you to take the car directly to a mechanic rather than wait and see for yourself. On the other hand, if I told you I thought there was a bomb in your car, the slightest amount of evidence would suffice to get you to think twice about driving it, just as the mere presence of an unattended package at a major airport can cause terminals to be evacuated.

  Decisions at the interface of science and policy are no different. If you care deeply about climate stability and not much about the economic health of oil companies, less evidence will be needed to convince you that we have sufficient reason to act to curtail climate change—that the scientific underpinnings are strong enough. If, on the other hand, you care deeply about the health of oil companies and not much about climate stability, far more evidence will be needed to convince you that the we have sufficient evidence to act. Decisions about uncertainties are political (and ethical), and thus the decision that evidence is sufficient is a political decision.

  This is not to say that science can’t be politicized. It can. One can suppress evidence, by either refusing to record it because one doesn’t like it, or by refusing to allow it to be published. One can refuse to allow politically unpopular views to be pursued. One can ignore studies one doesn’t like, or fire people who produce the “wrong” results. One can surround oneself with pseudo-experts who only say what one wants to hear. Science can be detrimentally and catastrophically politicized. Yet, there is no standard for how much evidence is enough to settle a scientific dispute. The only standard we have is that we should consider all the available evidence. How much evidence we need before a claim is sufficiently well-supported to be scientific, to enter the canons of science, changes with the context. To appeal to a non-existent universal standard of proof in science is bullshit.

  Combatting the Two Kinds of Bullshit

  With the ever-increasing importance of scientific or technical expertise as a basis for policy-making, it’s not surprising that we are increasingly confronted with the problem of how to ensure quality in that advice. How do we make sure we are hearing all the available evidence? How do we ensure that the debates occurring among experts are not being distorted by political pressure to not say some things, or to say others, because it pleases certain powers? How do we know whom to trust?

  Isolated-fact bullshit plays upon our inherent intellectual limitations that keep us from being fully informed and up-to-date on all the important issues of our time. As long as political operators want to win debates no matter the cost, this kind of bullshit will occur. Those who refuse to acknowledge fair criticism of their claims, that they are ignoring key work, should be rejected as intellectually dishonest. While we can exclude dishonest operators from the academic forum, the public forum must remain open to all. Fred Singer can continue to write commentaries resting on the isolated fact, and some newspapers will publish them, spreading the bullshit. Only those who follow the particular issue closely are likely to notice the spreading of bullshit in these cases, bullshit that is borne of selective omission and emphasis. Even those who spread such bullshit may not realize the nature of their claims, as the claims often wear an apparent obviousness.

  But universal standards bullshit can be permanently undermined once we recognize that there are no such things. We should be asking about the strength of evidence and the risks of error for science-based policy, rather than waiting for something to become “scientific” or text-book science. With a more robust discussion on these terms, perhaps isolated-fact bullshit will lose some of its appeal as well. When we get used to expert disagreement, and understand better its causes, settling a debate on the basis of one expert raising one isolated fact might be recognized for the naive approach it is. We can only hope this would reduce the bullshit in the end.

  15

  Rhetoric Is Not Bullshit

  DAVID J. TIETGE

  I begin my discussion of the role of rhetoric in modern society with an aphorism: Rhetoric isn’t devious and untrustworthy; those are features reserved for language itself. This is a distinction, however, that is lost on the public at large, whose perception of the word ‘rhetoric’ renders it synonymous with ‘bullshit’.

  Several years ago, I conducted an admittedly unscientific, journalistic experiment for a course in rhetorical theory I was teaching at the time. Over the course of three-and-one-half months (the length of a typical university semester), I encountered some 156 occasions via print, radio, and television where the term ‘rhetoric’ occurred. Of these, only once did the user of the word seem to understand what rhetoric really was. In all other instances, the person employing the word used it only in the most unfavorable sense, for example, “John Kerry is attempting to use rhetoric to disguise his true agenda,” or “The rhetoric in the Senate was thick regarding the proposal of the new bill.”

  The one case in which the user understood the meaning of ‘rhetoric’ was an interview of the comedian, George Carlin, conducted by Jon Stewart. Stewart had asked Carlin why his comedy routines so often centered on language (a very good interview question, in my opinion), to which Carlin responded that he was, in essence, a rhetorician; it was his job to unpack the meaning behind words, and this process often had comic results. He said he was a performer, and as such, a focus on language was imperative to his success or failure. By reflecting on this practice, he had also demonstrated that he was equally cognizant of the theoretical process that drove his craft.

  The decline of rhetoric as a central humanistic discipline in both public and academic circles has been one of the great intellectual tragedies of the last couple of centuries. The common perception of rhetoric as a mode of discourse lacking substance, of being the epitome of empty embellishment, is prevalent in popular and political representations of it, as evidenced in its frequent appearance in phrases like “once one gets past the rhetoric” or “all rhetoric aside.”176 In the twentieth century, the privileged status of rhetoric in the Trivium of the Seven Liberal Arts came to be regarded as ancient history, to be supplanted by “purer,” more material intellectual pursuits in the sciences. Rhetoric, like its close disciplinary cousin, philosophy, has been relegated in the public mind to the ever-growing realm of “bullshit,” reflecting an error in understanding of what scholars do when they practice rhetoric, and even more profoundly, what they do when they use rhetoric as a tool for critically decoding discourse. At the same time, members within academe regularly challenge modern rhetorical studies as too broad and interdisciplinary—lacking the prestige of specialization. Academicians outside of rhetoric usually see rhetoric only as an archaic study of how to persuade through the instructional lenses of Aristotle or Cicero. Taken together, it is surprising that the popular and the academic perceptions of rhetoric have not managed to bury it altogether.

  In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Rather than fading quietly into the past as some academic anachronism like philology, rhetoric is fast becoming one of the more popular humanistic studies in many major American universities today. How can it be that, while the public at large claims to distrust rhetoric, and academics outside of fields like English or Communication see it only in reduct
ionistic or archaic terms, rhetoric is thriving as a field of study, especially at the graduate level?177 One answer may be that initiating students into the scholarly and professional activities that rhetoric enhances—just as they are exposed to its breadth of scope—reveals to them how unfair and inaccurate these popular impressions are. Many come to realize that rhetoric enables a command of language, and that if one controls language, one has power—that is, they come to realize that “bullshit” is a marketable talent, and an understanding of rhetoric allows one to more carefully cultivate one’s skills in this timeless human ability.

  We live, it would appear, in something like a societal paradox. Rhetoric—taken to be expertise in “bullshit”—is ethically suspect, yet we value it in practice. Judging from the salaries and prestige of lawyers, politicians, university presidents, and advertising executives, we value it quite highly. One must wonder, then, why rhetoric has inherited such a poor reputation. I will attempt to sort this out by explaining the value of and use of rhetoric in popular culture and society; and show that our own intellectual history and rhetorical activity supports a place for rhetoric in education, the professional world, and our daily lives. This two-pronged approach will help dispel a popular “truth-falsity” dichotomy, according to which we think of statements or beliefs as either true or false, regardless of the complexity and gray areas that rhetoric shows us are always involved.

  The Problem (and Politics) of Rhetoric

  This may seem to fall outside the purview of rhetoric as it is traditionally understood by most academics, what is known as rhetorica utens. But the contemporary study of rhetoric is more than what most academics understand as the Aristotelian “art of persuasion”; it is rhetorica docens, the theoretical treatment of words used to discover how language means among different agents, motives, cultural and social idiosyncrasies, and external events. While some might argue that Aristotle was as philosophically interested in the nature of language as he was in instructing how it could best be used, his most influential work on the subject, On Rhetoric, is ultimately a “how-to” primer on the use of rhetoric as a civic tool. He identifies many principles and constructs many definitions, but there is no real effort to view rhetoric as anything but a practical mechanism for effective speaking. Aristotle himself coined the distinction between utens and docens, but he was far more concerned with the former.

  Aristotle’s prejudice has survived him. We are mostly ignorant of rhetoric as a tool for communication, and entirely ignorant of it as a set of methods for textual analysis. The most likely explanation for this cites the mass media and the political pundits who carelessly toss around the word in only its most uncomplimentary form. The pundits who display their contempt for rhetoric may in fact be using the word ‘rhetoric’ in a rhetorical way. That is, they may well understand that the public’s erroneous understanding of the word is occasion to use it to reinforce the associations the public already has for it. Rather than correct this error, it is easier to perpetuate it, taking advantage of the fashionable preference for “plain” language. In this regard politicians are among the most adroit insofar as they criticize rhetoric while relying upon it heavily for their own advancement. Everyone else uses “mere rhetoric,” the pundit of the moment tells us, as if effective use and understanding of language were something to “get beyond” or “overcome.”

  For a good example of how one can both disdain rhetoric and utilize it for political gain, consider a statement by George W. Bush regarding Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito: “My hope of course is that the Senate bring dignity to the process and give this man a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.” 178 Bush, long a proponent of what he considers “plain speech,” would perhaps not recognize the rhetorical layers of this statement, but they exist. The first is his “hope” that the Senate will “bring dignity to the process,” the suggestion being that any attempt to extend debate (by filibuster, for instance) would be undignified. The statement is odd for it implies that democracy itself, which relies on open discussion of important decisions, is undignified. Such an unpatriotic sentiment cannot be what Bush intended his listeners to hear, so we have to consider more layers to figure out what’s going on.

  Bush also appeals to the notion of a “fair hearing.” But this is a subjective term, depending upon individual beliefs and tolerances. Edward Kennedy’s and Samuel Alito’s definitions of fair, for instance, surely differ considerably depending on who may be getting the criticism at the moment. What about this “up-or-down vote”? It’s an interesting requirement and is no doubt related to the issue of “fairness” as well as to the public image that helped bring Bush two presidential elections. Bush is widely seen, that is, as a man of few words—a man of action who does not wish to waste time sallying the pros and cons back and forth all day. Either vote with the confirmation or against it, the statement suggests, but do not, above all, be indecisive or contemplative about it. For careful, thorough debate, after all, would effectively delay and possibly derail his nomination. The real thrust of Bush’s statement, then, is something more like the reading of it suggested by the faux newspaper, The Onion, which headlined “Bush Urges Senate to Give Alito Fair, Quick, Unanimous Confirmation,” as if any outcome besides the one Bush hoped for would be unfortunate and undignified.179

  In this way, rhetorical scrutiny of language allows us to see past the glittering generalities in language and get to an authentic meaning, both in regard to what is being analyzed and to the analyst in question. It should be clear, for example, that I do not like Bush and do not agree with his politics. I assure you that I deliberately made no attempt to obscure this (much less with “mere rhetoric”), because I want to emphasize that subjectivity need not compromise the integrity of the reading. Subjectivity is part of language, especially language that reflects beliefs and strongly guarded convictions. All language reflects both personal and collective orientations—some are just more obvious than others. In the case of science, the ethos of scientific objectivity can, in fact, aid the rhetor in achieving the necessary persuasion or identification, since people are less likely to question the integrity of a system of knowledge with a reputation for objectivity. Yet even science, like every discursive instrument, relies on words that are imprecise and ambiguous.

  The Truth about Postmodernism

  One issue that helps obscure the universality of rhetoric, and thus promotes the pejorative use of ‘rhetoric’, is the popular tendency to oversimplify the “truth-lie” dichotomy. In The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood, Jeremy Campbell reminds us that the reductionistic binary that separates truth from falsity is not only in error, but also that the thoroughly unclear and inconsistent distinction between the true and the false has a long, rich cultural history.180 Those doing much of the speaking in our own era, however, assume that the dividing line between truth and untruth is clear and, more significantly, internalized by the average human. Truth, however, is an elusive concept. While we can cite many examples of truths (that the sky is blue today, that the spoon will fall if dropped, and so forth), these depend on definitions of the words used. The sky is blue because ‘blue’ is the word we use to describe the hue that we have collectively agreed is bluish. We may, however, disagree about what shade of blue the sky is. Is it powder blue? Blue-green? Royal Blue? Interpretive responses to external realities that rely on definition (and language generally) always complicate the true-false binary, especially when we begin to discuss the nature of abstractions involved in, say, religion or metaphysics. The truth of ‘God is good’ depends very heavily upon the speaker’s understanding of God and the nature of goodness, both of which depend upon the speaker’s conceptualization, which may be unique to him, his group, or his cultural environment, and thus neither clear nor truthful to other parties.

  Is this rampant relativism? Some might think so, but it is perhaps more useful to suggest that the Absolute Truths that we usually embrace are unattainable because of these complexities of l
anguage. Some cultures have seen the linguistic limitations of specifying the Truth. Hinduism has long recognized that language is incapable of revealing Truth; to utter the Truth, it holds, is simultaneously to make it no longer the Truth.

  Note here the distinction between capital ‘T’ truth and lower-case ‘t’ truth. Lower-case truths are situational, even personal. They often reflect more the state of mind of the agent making the utterance than the immutable nature of the truth. They are also temporally situated; what may be true now may not be in the future. Truth in this sense is predicated on both perception and stability, and, pragmatically speaking, such truths are tran-sitional and, often, relative. Capital ‘T’ Truths can be traced back at least as far as Plato, and are immutable, pure, and incorruptible. They do not exist in our worldly realm, at least so far as Plato was concerned. This is why Plato was so scornful of rhetoric: he felt that rhetoricians (in particular, the Sophists) were opportunists who taught people how to disguise the Truth with language and persuasion. Whereas Plato imagined a realm in which the worldly flaws and corruption of a physical existence were supplanted by perfect forms, the corporeal domain of human activity was saturated with language, and therefore, could not be trusted to reveal Truth with any certainty.

  Contemporary, postmodern interest in truth and meaning turns the tables on Plato and studies meaning and truth in this shifting, less certain domain of human activity. Campbell cites many thinkers from our philosophical past who helped inaugurate this development, but none is more important than Friedrich Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, humans have no “organ” for discerning Truth, but we do have a natural instinct for falsehood. “Truth,” as an abstraction taken from the subjectivity of normal human activities, was a manufactured fiction that we are not equipped to actually find. On the other hand, a natural aptitude for falsehood is an important survival mechanism for many species. Human beings have simply cultivated it in innovative, sophisticated, ways. As the rhetorician George A. Kennedy has noted, “in daily life, many human speech acts are not consciously intentional; they are automatic reactions to situations, culturally (rather than genetically) imprinted in the brain or rising from the subconscious.”181 Our propensity for appropriate (if not truthful) responses to situations is something nourished by an instinct to survive, interact, protect, and socialize. Civilization gives us as many new ways to do this as there are situations that require response.