Bullshit and Philosophy

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

  103

  The evidence assembled in Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures proves, so I think, the truth of those beliefs.

  104

  We may hope that success in discrediting the product will contribute to extinguishing the process. I try to contribute to the project of discrediting the product in an unpublished and unpublishable discussion of “Why One Kind of Bullshit Flourishes in France,” a draft of which will be supplied upon application to me.

  105

  Laura Penny, Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit (New York: Crown, 2005), p. 223.

  106

  The good single-volume intellectual history of logical positivism before World War II is still to be written, but see V. Kraft, The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism: A Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy (New York: Greenwood, 1953); Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open Court, 2000); and A. Richardson and R. Giere, eds., Origins of Logical Empiricism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). For the period after World War II see G. Hardcastle and A. Richardson, eds., Logical Empiricism in North America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), and George A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  107

  Ayer was logical positivism’s Laura Penny. Whether Frankfurt is Rudolf Carnap and Cohen Hans Reichenbach (or vice versa) I leave as an extra credit exercise for Alan Richardson, subject to his agreement that we are all waiting for Gödel.

  108

  Although Cohen, in the last pages of an unpublished addition to his “Deeper Into Bullshit” devoted to the prevalence of bullshit in French intellectual culture, alludes offhandedly to logical positivism’s alleged failure to attract French adherents. For that matter, it has been suggested that Rudolf Carnap’s 1932 “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache,” (Erkenntnis 2 (1932): pp. 219–241) (“Overcoming Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language”), an essay famously representative of logical positivism and one to which I will turn to below, ought to have been titled “Overcoming Bullshit through the Logical Analysis of Language,” (presumably: “Überwindung der Mist durch Logische Analyse der Sprache”). Carnap’s essay was reprinted as “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language” in A.J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 60–81; I follow recent practice in preferring ‘overcoming’ for ‘Überwindung’.

  109

  In Ayer, Logical Positivism, pp. 60–81.

  110

  Martin Heidegger, Was Ist Metaphysik? (Frankfurt A.M.: Klostermann, 1929).

  111

  Few would raise an eyebrow at an allegation of meaningless leveled at the made-up ‘teavy’, but Carnap is happy to note some other terms that are “in the same boat” as ‘teavy’ as far as meaninglessness goes. These include, ‘principle’, ‘essence’, ‘the Ego’, ‘the Infinite’, and (in one common use, at least) ‘God’ (p. 67).

  112

  The reader can construct her own contemporary version of this example by replacing ‘toovy’ with ‘terrorist’, another term the meaning of which has, I suggest, been toovied.

  113

  Hence Carnap’s otherwise puzzling yet stinging intellectual assessment of metaphysicians (especially Heidegger) as “musicians without musical ability” and his (otherwise equally puzzling but) laudatory endorsement of Friedrich Nietzsche for writing Thus Spake Zarathustra as poetry (quality, apparently, notwithstanding), p. 80.

  114

  See Otto Neurath, “The Lost Wanderers of Descartes and the Auxiliary Motive (On the Psychology of Decision),” in Neurath, Philosophical Papers 1913–1946 (Boston: Reidel, 1983), pp. 1–12.

  115

  Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza (London: Chatto and Windus, 1936) pp. 122–23.

  116

  Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (London: Corgi, 2005) pp. 280–81.

  117

  Gottlob Frege “On Sinn and Bedeutung” (1892) in Michael Beaney, ed., The Frege Reader (London: Blackwell, 1997), p. 156.

  118

  Gottlob Frege, “Logic” (1897) in The Frege Reader, p. 239.

  119

  Robert Thouless, Straight and Crooked Thinking (London: Pan, 1965), p. 15.

  120

  Charles Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), p. 210.

  121

  Douglas Walton, “Deceptive Arguments Containing Persuasive Language and Persuasive Definitions” Argumentation 19 (2005), p. 173.

  122

  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 Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 269–270.

  131

  Tamsin Wilton, Finger-Licking Good: The Ins and Outs of Lesbian Sex (London: Cassell, 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. 2–3.

  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, Agnès 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. Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), pp. 257–58.

  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 Bullshit, pp. 33–34. Specifically, Frankfurt would claim that the paradigmatic bullshitter 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 ‘bullshitting’ and ‘lying’ is evident in Laura Penny’s discussion o
f politics in Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit (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 bullshit 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 bullshitting 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. 39–40.

  145

  Some might think it inappropriate to label the abhorrent discourse of totalitarianisms ‘bullshit’, 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 ‘bullshit’ 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 constitute powerful strategies of attack against even the most appalling tyrants: see, for illustrations, some of the political jokes compiled by Steven Lukes and Itzhak Galnoor, eds., No Laughing Matter (London: Penguin, 1987). The collection’s title 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 Vàclav Havel, Open Letters (New York: Knopf, 1991), p. 132.

  147

  The claim that bullshitting 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-bullshit justification was used does not mean none was available. However, though the present analysis rests on no specific view about that possibility, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the resort to bullshit 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 bullshitting 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 advertisements without caring what the truth is. Therefore, what they say in their advertisements is bullshit”; Harry Frankfurt, “Reply to G.A. Cohen,” in Sarah Buss, Lee Overton, eds., Contours of Agency (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002), p. 341.

  151

  Frankfurt is keen to stress that relativism yields much bullshit; On Bullshit, pp. 64–65.

  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 bullshit.

  154

  Along with Bullshit (2), Bullshits (4) and (5) are identified by Cohen in Chapter 8 of this volume.

  155

  I have in mind here something analogous 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. 3–6.

  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 Bullshit Flourishes in France,” manuscript, 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 bullshit and other errors from the final version; those remaining are my own responsibility.

  159

  On Bullshit, 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. Haass, 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, “Principal-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. 347–357.

  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. 48–57.

  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,” Washington 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

  R.A. Kerr, “Getting Warmer, However You Measure It,” Science 304 (2004), pp. 805–07; see also B.D. Santer et al., “Influence of Satellite Data Uncertainties on the Detection of Externally Forced Climate Change,” Science 300 (2003), pp. 1280–84; and
National Research Council, Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000).

  173

  Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science (2004). Available at www.ucsusa.org.

  174

  M. Gough, “Science, Risks, and Politics,” in M. Gough, ed., Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking (Washington, D.C.: Marshall Institute, 2003), pp. 1–25.

  175

  Ironically, Gough lampoons philosophers at the end of his chapter, quoting Feynman: “Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.” Gough seems completely unaware that he has undermined a key point made earlier in his chapter when he was relying upon philosopher Karl Popper.

  176

  A salient example of this attitude is a review of Frankfurt’s On Bullshit on Amazon.com that complains it “is filled with obvious rhetoric that makes the book sound scientific, when it is actually drivel.”

  177

  Rhetoric and writing topped the list of programs experiencing growth during the late 1980s, besting programs in creative writing, technical writing, and literature and interdisciplinary studies. See Bettina J. Huber, “Recent and Anticipated Growth in English Doctoral Programs: Findings from the MLA’s 1990 Survey,” ADE Bulletin 106 (Winter, 1993), pp. 45–60.

  178

  Jesse Holland, “Senate to Open Alito Nomination Hearings.” Associated Press. Online 9th January, 2006.

  179

  “Bush Urges Senate to Give Alito Fair, Quick, Unanimous Confirmation,” The Onion (17th January, 2006). (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44467)

  180

  Jeremy Campbell, The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood (New York: Norton, 2001).

  181

  George A. Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 25.

  182