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4dc3617
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The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inq..
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reality
honesty
philosophy
truth
sincerity
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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f5eb9ac
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It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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0937662
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Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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cda9bdb
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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 op..
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truth
lie
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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ebbf371
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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 h..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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ec36b7b
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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.
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philosophy
truth
bullshit
sincerity
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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de546c6
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There are significant relationships, of course, between wanting things and caring about them..The notion of caring is in large part constructed out of the notion of desire. Caring about something may be, in the end, nothing more than a certain complex mode of wanting it. However, simply attributing desire to a person does not in itself convey that the person cares about the object he desires.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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8929738
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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..
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politics
current-affairs
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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223362e
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When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting..
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philosophy
truth
liar
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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86cfdfe
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Morality can provide at most only a severely limited and insufficient answer to the question of how a person should live.
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love
philosophy
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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40aba94
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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 extensive than 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..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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a89cecf
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After all, every use of language without exception has some, if not all, of the characteristic features of lies.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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f341483
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To establish and to sustain an advanced culture, we need to avoid being debilitated either by error or by ignorance. We need to know--and, of course, we must also understand how to make productive use of--a great many truths.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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2938c6f
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Is truth something that in fact we do--and should--especially care about? Or is the love of truth, as professed by so many distinguished thinkers and writers, itself merely another example of ?
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truth
bullshit
introduction
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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b5d1681
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The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowaday..
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politics
craftsmanship
marketing
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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0e997f6
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Civilizations... cannot flourish if they are beset with troublesome infections of beliefs.
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philosophy
bullshit
civilization
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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87eb534
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The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "antirealist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inq..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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34c1562
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However, it must not be assumed that bullshit always and necessarily has pretentiousness as its motive.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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ca15471
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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.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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e002d98
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We cannot think of ourselves as creatures whose rationality endows us with an especially significant advantage over others--indeed, we cannot think of ourselves as rational creatures at all--unless we think of ourselves as creatures who recognize that facts, and true statements about the facts, are indispensable in providing us with reasons for believing (or for not believing) various things and for taking (or for not taking) various action..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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e269b1a
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It is in this sense that Pascal's statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false. Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it ..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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5c54a93
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So far as freedom is concerned, it is of course true that freedom is commonly understood to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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fdcdf2a
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What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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02e6d8e
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There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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653319a
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When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he consider his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting ..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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86e674a
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The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who -- with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and ..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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3112f40
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The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inq..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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2b8634f
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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 natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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a2fbb33
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Morality, as I understand it, has to do particularly with how we ought to conduct ourselves in our relations with others.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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fc07809
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The point is rather that, so far as Wittgenstein can see, Pascal offers a description of a certain state of affairs without genuinely submitting to the constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of reality imposes. Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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2de11bb
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What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without it being assumed that they are committed to what they say. It is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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3b637e7
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When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker's mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially..
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reality
philosophy
truth
critical-examination
depiction
critical-thinking
marketing
logic
speech
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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93e3023
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From the point of view of morality, it is not important that everyone should have the same. What is morally important is that each should have enough.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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c06a4a4
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From the point of view of morality, it is not important everyone should have the same. What is morally important is that each should have enough.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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a0c3246
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pleonastic.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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4ecf69b
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We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug than with the sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire. The problem of understanding why our attitude towards bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying is an important one...
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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bbae6c3
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from a moral point of view, economic equality does not really matter very much, and our moral and political concepts may be better focused on ensuring that people have enough.
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Harry G. Frankfurt |
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283e71c
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That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true, not, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth - this indifference to how things really are - that I regard as the ess..
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Harry G. Frankfurt |