This small treatise is illuminating and humorous. The author here examines the concept of " Bullshit “ and tries to differentiate bullshit from lies, where the former’s essence being indifference to what things really are and, the latter is concerned with the truth-values of the utterance he makes to deliberately promulgate falsehood. He also explores the concept and definition of humbug, bull session, buff, hot air and so on and compares them to bullshit. To pick out one example, the resemblance being the disconnection of a person’s beliefs from his statement in bull session and of a person’s statement which is unconnected to a concern with truth, not concerned with the truth-value of what one says, in bullshit.

To be more specific, telling a lie involves a deliberate attitude to produce falsehoods to deceive us or to conceal us from truth. In such attitude one is dealing or concerned with the truth-values of the statements. On the other hand, bullshit is not concerned with the truth-values and it’s a way to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

"To speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.”

I am or I could also be producing bullshits here. Given that, to have opinions about everything is to produce bullshit. The anti-realist notion that the objective world is incomprehensible and the withdrawal from the representation of the real world to representation of oneself is bullshit. Since being true to oneself is ignorant and dangerous unless one cares to consider the facts, of the statements he makes or of his state of mind being true to facts, or else you are just producing bullshit.

"Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”

Here is the definition of BULLSHIT and its distinction from an honest to god LIE by Harry Frankfurt, who claims that bullshit identifies as a very specific deformity of discourse.

His analysis prompts us to focus attention on the serious and important question of why politics, in particular, produces such torrents of the stuff. The key distinction he draws is that between the ‘bullshitter’ and the ‘liar’ is that Frankfurt’s liar aims to deceive as to the truth and does so by consciously uttering a falsehood.

I hits me how bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity, to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Now, it is of course very familiar to call politicians ‘liars’; some indeed seem to assume that they constitute a strange sub-species of humanity defined by a congenital inability, to be honest.

“Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial—notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”

Frankfurt also established the grave danger of bullshit, and why there is so much bullshit around. Spoiler alert:- bullshit is unavoidable when people are convinced that they must have opinions about “events and conditions in all parts of the world”, about more or less anything and everything – so they speak quite extensively about things they know virtually nothing about. Frankfurt is non-committal as to whether there is more bullshit around now than before, but he maintains that there is currently a great deal.

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.”

ترجمه قشنگی نبود
مجبور می‌شدم مجدد بخونم تا جمله رو بفهمم

3,5 :)

bardzo ciekawy wykład rozkładający na czynniki pierwsze tytułowe wciskanie kitu, rozróżnienie go od kłamstwa, blefowania i wszelkich innych czynności werbalnych ocierających się o mówienie nieprawdy. Przy tym popis lingwistyczny i intelektualny lekko podany. Smaczne.

Pfffft, where to begin!

I think this was a good little ruse for a "book"! I feel robbed! I thought this may be a deep, meaningful discussion on how society has descended into the nether regions of bullshit.

Instead it was pretty much Harry going through a dictionary and spouting a little rhetoric about the literal meaning of bullshit! Although he never really gets to any point other than the vague notion that bullshit is all around us, in society, so much so that we accept it more than we should! I accepted it far too readily in the form of this book!! It wasted half an hour of my life on a subject that I'm pretty well used to hearing!

Never mind!

On Bullshit (Sobre a Treta) é um pequeno livro de 2005 baseado num ensaio de 1986. Em 1986 o presidente dos EUA era Ronald Reagan, em 2005 era George W. Bush, eu ouvi falar do livro pela primeira vez em 2018, quando Trump era presidente dos EUA. Este enquadramento serve para perceber que o livro se foca no estudo da comunicação pública, nomeadamente de figuras com autoridade, apesar de não serem mencionadas no livro.

"Why is there so much bullshit? (...) There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before (...) Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic."

Frankfurt procura assim racionalizar e teorizar o modo de comunicar assente na treta, apresentando-o como variação da mentira, segundo Frankfurt bastante mais perniciosa:

“Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

Frankfurt qualifica a mentira como uma racionalização da realidade, um trabalho intelectual, enquanto a treta se define, a partir da criatividade e invenção, num trabalho artístico. Diria, seguindo este pressuposto, que a diferença contrasta o retórico e o entertainer.

“Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a particular point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to have that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.
On the other hand, a person who takes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as is required, to fake the context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist'.”

Publicado no VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

A look at the BS we face everyday. We have all met a person who has to 'one up' everyone with their BS. The interesting thing that I have noticed is that people who like to BS a lot can't stand it if they think someone is trying to BS them; they become hyper sensitive to the BS of other people. Great book on a little examined subject.

اول اینکه ترجمه‌ی کتاب اصلا خوب نیست، مترجم با تمام وجود سعی کرده که سواد ادبی خودش را به رخ خواننده بکشه و همین باعث میشه که قسمت ترجمه کتاب خیلی سخت‌خوان و در برخی قسمت‌ها نافهم بشه. اما به همان اندازه جستار آقای ملکیان بسیار روان و خواندنی بود.
برای من خیلی جالب بود که یک نفر انقدر دقیق و به صورت جامع و کامل مزخرفات روزمره (که در حال حاضر به لطف شبکه‌های اجتماعی هر روز هم شایع‌تر میشه) که هر روز مردم و مقامات در حال گفتنش هستند را بررسی کنه. ولی به نظرم کتاب میتونست خیلی کمتر و در حد یک مقاله‌‌ی ۲۰ صفحه‌ای ارائه بشه. چون بعضی از قسمت‌ها به سمت گزافه‌گویی و توضیح بدیهیات رفته بود.
تعریف حرف مفت در کنار راست و دروغ و این نکته که حرف مفت می‌تواند به مراتب از دروغ گفتن خطرناک‌تر باشه برای من قابل تامل و جذاب بود. حین خواندن کتاب به حرف‌های روزمره خودم و حرف‌هایی که دیگران می‌زدند از حیث حرف مفت بیشتر توجه کردم و حیرت زده شدم از حجم حرف مفتی که می‌زنم و می‌زنند.
خلاصه که کتاب ارزش خواندن را حتما داره، حداقل از این نظر که ما را با تعریف حرف مفت و پروپاگاندای فردی و جمعی آشنا می‌کنه.
و اینکه تا بیشتر از این حرف مفت نزدم ، سخن را کوتاه کنم.

On first reading, this book/essay is enormously compelling and entertaining. But subsequent readings raise serious worries about Frankfurt's account. For example:

On Frankfurt's account, there are two necessary conditions for something to count as bullshit:

(1) The speaker must be indifferent to the truth of what he says.
(2) He must intend to deceive his audience about his indifference to the truth of what he says.

Who would count as such a producer of bullshit? Maybe the Fourth of July Orator who makes a bunch of patriotic claims which he doesn't care are true or false, and who aims to convince his audience of patriots that he actually believes. But that seems like a special case. Many other kinds of things we would intuitively call "bullshit" don't have those features.

Even Frankfurt's example involving Wittgenstein and Fania Pascal lacks one of these two features: Pascal does not, in any obvious sense, intend to deceive Wittgenstein about her indifference to the truth of what she says ("I feel just like a dog that has been run over").

Moreover, it is unclear why Frankfurt thinks that the bullshitter is a greater enemy of truth than the liar, as he famously claims. He may be indifferent to the truth of what he says, but he clearly cares about giving his audience false beliefs about his own attitudes. So he isn't completely indifferent to the truth.

*******
Re-reading February 2022

I teach this pretty frequently, and I think I can say better now what I think Frankfurt gets wrong about the description of the Fania Pascal/Wittgenstein exchange as an example of bullshit. Not only does Pascal not intend to deceive Wittgenstein about her alleged indifference to the truth, but she also isn't indifferent to the truth of what she says. She does know how a dog feels when it is run over, namely *really bad*. The reason Wittgenstein is annoyed by her expression is that it isn't the most apt description of how she feels—I think Wittgenstein thinks there are more precise ways of saying how she feels. The "dead dog" anecdote occurs in the context of Pascal remembering other expressions of precision from Wittgenstein:

"Francis told me that Wittgenstein would devote hours to shaving off tiny slivers from the small photos he took before he would be satisfied with some kind of balance achieved. Certainly when he gave me my copies they were much reduced from the original size; one was now smaller than an inch square. During the Spanish Civil War Wittgenstein, seeing in our room an enlarged photograph of John Cornford, who had just been killed in Spain, sniffed: 'They think you can just enlarge a photo. Now look. It's all trousers.' I looked, and of course, he was right." (Recollections of Wittgenstein, p.28)

Wittgenstein appears upset not by indifference to the truth of what she says, but by her choosing a sloppy analogy.

Hey! Nice to read my own review from 2019 on this book. It seems there were far too many words that I could not understand. That’s not the case now. Progress! I am keeping my rating the same but with a much deeper understanding of the subject matter. Frankfurt’s important essay on bullshit is one that I believe to be crucial reading, but one that also meanders quite a bit. At its core, it’s a topic that many philosophers touch on at some point or another, using slightly different words and producing slightly different hues. Good faith, virtue, honesty, sophism, whatever you want to say. Here is the key portion of the essay:

“Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

------------------------------------------
[2019 Review]

I can't help but to feel terrified when I pick up a work of philosophy such as this one - there are way too many words I can't understand, the concepts are blurry, and I constantly have to go back and re-read the previous paragraph. But with this one, it is worth it. The distinction between lies and bullshit is absolutely real, and it is playing itself out in society over and over again.

A delightful little treatise on the semantics of the word and how it differs from other words used to describe mendacity. The author, a Princeton Professor, argues that there are key differences between a lie and bullshit. A liar and a truth-teller play on different sides of the same game. A liar must acknowledge that truth exists in order to defy it. A bullshitter, on the other hand, has no interest in the truth and is only interested in furthering his own agenda. He could just as likely tell a truth without knowing it as a lie. If and unnamed American president were to swear to the Canadian prime minister that something is true that he doesn't know for sure just to win an argument, then that president would be a bullshitter. That's a pretty poor example, though, as no American president would ever do such a thing.

Living with the biggest bullshitter I've ever known distracted me somewhat from reading this impersonally. However, I've now a handy-dandy little argument in my pocket which supports my experience that bullshit is in its insidiousness far more unwieldy and destructive than lies. Liars, at least, respect that there is a truth which they withhold or obscure, and their lies are vulnerable to confession or exposure and therefore defeat; bullshitters are careless shape-shifters, to communicate with them is to engage in shadow-boxing. They are therefore impossible for a person who values truth and honesty to deal with. I appreciate Frankfurt's assertion that bullshitters, for having an eroded or entirely lost ability to recognise or even care about the truth, are greater enemies of the truth than those who tell lies. Think about gender, think about race, think about any specifically defined group of people in the world-- and all the bullshit generated about them by television and movies, artists, scientists, "experts", or any ol' group of dumbasses at work, the bar, on the internet. It's hard to defeat bullshit. It feels right in the hearts of those who perpetuate (or buy into) it, because they don't care if what comes out of their mouths is true or not; you can't hold them accountable and their consciences won't needle them a bit, because to them it's a matter not of truth (a fact-seeking activity) but "sincerity", a slippery category of self-knowledge, which itself is an unattainable objective. If it's true that good things come in little packages, the ideas and conclusions put forth in this bitty book are no exception.