I’m quite fond of Bullshit!, an American television series hosted by the sceptical magicians Penn Jillette and Teller.1 Part “gotcha!” exposé, part foul-mouthed satire, the show takes an assortment of odd-ball hucksters, gurus, and gullible flakes and debunks their absurd claims. This includes attacks on the usual guff: self-help programmes, diet schemes, psychic pet readings, snake-oil medical remedies, and the like. But the show also scrutinizes a few mainstream views and sacred cows (e.g., chiropractic medicine and certain forms of waste recycling). Penn & Teller don’t pretend to be politically agnostic—there is an overt libertarian bent to their commentaries—but they do a reasonably good job of debunking a wide variety of falsehoods and gimmicks. This said, at no point in the series is the most fundamental question asked: what precisely is bullshit? Most people know intuitively what it means but would be hard-pressed to give a formal definition.

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 67.

Harry Frankfurt has noticed this lack of conceptual clarity too. Bullshit is a rude word. Rude words don’t usually inspire lengthy philosophical treatises. Bullshit is no exception: it has inspired a very short philosophical treatise called On Bullshit. The book is not just short, it is also small. At least there is enough space to tentatively define what bullshit is. For those of us who think there is too much of this stuff in our lives, this is a worthwhile goal indeed. The first step in eradicating something is to figure out what it is. For this we owe Frankfurt our gratitude.

As with any tightly reasoned essay, there is always a risk that a précis will do violence to the arguments made. I won’t reproduce the arguments here. I’ll just describe the main elements of bullshit. At root, bullshit is an act of (a.) misrepresentation. There is an attempt to deceive. Unlike a lie, however, there is no attempt to deliberately claim something that isn’t true, strictly speaking. Someone who puts forth bullshit isn’t much concerned about whether or not a claim is true or false. Thus, bullshit is (b.) phony. It is “unconnected with a concern for the truth.” (p. 30) Liars know they are saying something false. Bullshitters can’t be bothered to find out. Bullshitters are not malicious. They are cavalier. For this reason, lying is usually seen as more immoral than bullshitting. Bullshit is able to work its magic because it (c.) distracts. When someone bullshits, they don’t just say something phoney, they do so in an extravagant way that is difficult to pin down precisely. To do this, bullshitters employ cliché, exaggeration, pretentiousness, bombast, figurative language, imaginative play, and so forth.

Described in this way, bullshit can be thought of as the antithesis of craftsmanship. Frankfurt articulates this nicely by juxtaposing bullshitting with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s craftsman ethic.

It should be noted, however, that bullshit is not simply carelessness, cover-up, and amateurism. As Frankfurt points out, there are many politicians and marketers (among others) who take great care to design bullshit messages in order to achieve a goal (such as persuasion, evasion, or solicitation). The point is that these creative “bullshit artists” are not concerned about whether these messages reflect reality or not.

Frankfurt concludes by considering whether bullshit is becoming more common. He acknowledges that there is no way to measure this. However, he does argue that people are now expected to hold views on virtually everything. The problem with this is: “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” (p. 63) Frankfurt also chastises purveyors of “antirealist doctrines”, or those who are not concerned about whether something is true or false because of a philosophical conviction.

Your Call is Important To Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny (McClelland & Stewart, 2005), pp. 278.

The ultimate goal of On Bullshit is to be the starting point for a larger discussion about a neglected topic. I will turn my attention to the next link in the conversational chain, Laura Penny’s Your Call is Important to Us. By way of foreshadowing, let me say that I am about to give this book a thrashing. Before I do so, let me also say that Penny’s introductory chapter contains some contributions about the concept of bullshit that are worth considering. She endorses Frankfurt’s book and continues with his train of thought. I’ll start with this.

Penny correctly points out that bullshit isn’t “just happy talk,” but can also take the form of scaremongering and demonisation. She also points out that bullshit works because of the passivity and apathy of the audience: “The fact that most of us feel like we can see through the prevailing pretences but expect and accept them is part and parcel of the way bullshit works. Bullshit thrives on the soft bigotry of low expectations.” (p. 8) This echoes Frankfurt’s discussion of why we don’t pay much attention to bullshit. We think we know better and so we let it pass without comment. Finally, Penny makes a distinction between simple and complex bullshit. Complex bullshit (or bafflegab) is jargon intended to confound and impress instead of explain. This, too, is consistent with Frankfurt, for he argues that bullshit is likely to be used to fill gaps in knowledge. That makes politicians and business executives prone to the use of bafflegab to bluff their way through a conversation. In other words, it is a substitute for the rigorous consideration of something.

So why do I dislike Penny’s book so much? It isn’t just because of her unapologetically cynical attitude and laboured polemical style. Cynicism is the knee-jerk rejection of claims made by others, particularly those in authority. Ever since the Ancient Greek cynic Diogenes started lampooning the powerful and self-righteous, we’ve recognized that cynical diatribes can be quite entertaining. And we have a delightful and avowedly cynical diatribe against modern bafflegab … with Corinne Maier’s Bonjour Paresse (2004). But unlike Maier’s book, Your Call is Important to Us is not clever nor humorous (corny is the word that comes to mind). It does have all the defeatism (“I’m not a problem solver. I’m a crank.”; p. 243) and hand-wringing (“… my infernal clickety-clacking …”; p. 260) that makes cynicism deservedly marginalised as a lesser form of criticism. Worse, Penny suggests that cynicism is the proper response to bullshit. The problem with this claim is that cynics can be among the most prolific and unrepentant producers of it.

That would be reason enough to dislike the book. But that’s not my central grievance. What makes Penny’s book so irritating is that she can’t stay on topic. The rest of the book is a desultory rant against Globalism, hyper-capitalism, saturating consumerism, America’s influence in Canadian society, and the U.S. Republican Party. The book contains surprisingly few examples of rhetorical claims and sell-jobs, let alone messages aptly described as bullshit. Everything that Penny disagrees with politically is simply labelled bullshit. This makes Penny’s opening chapter a ruse: this book is not an indepth exploration of the neglected topic of bullshit; bullshit is just a catchy theme used to market a hodgepodge of political complaints.

That is where the hypocrisy creeps in. For example, “Welcome to the new consumer apartheid” is a great example of a bullshit description of modern customer service. Can we seriously compare a bad experience at the shopping mall with the racist and violent subjugation of millions of people? Unfortunately, this is a quotation from Business Week magazine that Penny seems to endorse as part of an argument (p 214). Is this really much different than Penny’s marquee example of bullshit (the telephone busy signal, “your call is important to us”)? Remember Frankfurt’s definition, the one Penny thinks highly of. That is not the only example I could have cited.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against politically motivated analysis. And I don’t have anything against Penny’s brand of politics. Penn & Teller don’t claim to be politically agnostic, either. Only on a few occasions do they let their libertarian beliefs get in the way of their analysis. For example, when certain activists spout nonsensical, anti-government conspiracy theories, they are willing to check their biases at the door and call these claims for what they are: bullshit. Their selection of topics is sometimes informed by their ideological views. Yet, there is an attempt to debunk using empirical evidence and detailed explanations. Penn & Teller do ruthlessly mock their targets and use inflammatory rhetoric to emphasize a point. The show is a form of infotainment and we should not lose sight of the limitations of this format. Yet again, this usually doesn’t get in the way of what is otherwise a substantive critique. And they don’t just substitute one form of bullshit for another.

Review by Peter Stoyko

NOTES

1. For the record, I have only seen the first two series of this show (on DVD). The fourth season is about to be aired on the American television network Showtime at the time of writing.

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