of truth and it’s not lying or deception
but rather and I assure you this is a
technical term in philosophy
indeed we work hard on our
politicians and PR firms carefully hone
their message looking for the words that
sell not necessarily the words that
accurately describe reality more often
than not we excuse as something
harmless maybe even fun the seasoned
bullshitter is praised for their roguish
ability to get by as if like Odysseus
showing that guile wins the day a
seasoned bullshitter is a
artist so if we are so willing to excuse
even valorize why I think it’s
a greater enemy of truth than lying
well the philosopher Harry Frankfort
provides us with an answer in his book
on he points out that the liar
says something that she knows to be
false the liar deliberately
misrepresents the world in order to get
us to believe something but the liar has
to know what she is saying is false
otherwise she’s merely misinformed not
lying
the bullshitter by contrast does not
care whether what he says is true or
false he wants to convince us of
something without regard for the truth
value of what he says at the same time
the bullshitter miss represents himself
as caring so the effect is that we think
the bullshitter is playing the same game
as us trying to say true things trying
to provide relevant evidence for his
claims but the bullshitter is up to
something altogether different playing
by different rules and using our
credulity to get away with it now
is worse than lying Frankfurt
argues because it undermines our respect
for the truth and undermines our ability
to find the truth this is the
epistemological problem with
the liar because she has to know what is
true cannot abandon our best practices
for seeking knowledge about the world
but the bullshitter they don’t care
indeed one reason why we is to
avoid doing the hard work of finding out
what is true so the more the bullshitter
bullshit’s the less able he will be to
find the truths in the future and the
more successful the bullshitter is with
that the less motivated he will
be to seek truth in the future worse as
piles up in society we lose the
ability to find and agree upon a set of
shared facts that we can use to
understand the world and hold the claims
of public figures to account to say that
we live in a post fact age is to say
that we live in an age where is
ascendant now the perils of for
society lie down a well trodden path and
one that I don’t want to take today
instead I want to focus on a less
appreciated but pernicious kind of
the we tell ourselves
and to understand this I want
to start first with the challenges in
seeking truth we often pay tribute to
the value of truth talk about how
important it is that we are committed to
truth but we usually fail to reckon with
how demanding seeking truth really is
how hard it is to find truths how hard
it is to accept truths when we find them
and how hard it is to accept what
seeking truth tells us about ourselves
take first the difficulty in finding
truth if I only learn about the world
out of textbooks I might think that
scientists simply describe the world as
it is given to us if I think that what
seems obvious to me must be true I might
think that the hard work of humanists is
nothing but obscurantism
and well but this is illusory
understanding the world is hard it takes
creativity it takes rigour it takes a
keen eye for detail and it takes
repetition and
philosophers do not continue to debate
the questions that vex Socrates because
they’re without answers we debate them
because they matter and our intellectual
tradition has left us with more
questions than solutions scientists
debate the best interpretation of their
data because simply looking at the world
is insufficient to understand it
historians debate how to understand the
events of the past because these events
are not given so we can view with a
clear and unbiased eye truth-seekers all
of us have joined an intellectual
tradition littered with false starts and
dead ends we fail in seeking knowledge
more often than we succeed yet if we
care about the truth we endure it can
also be hard to accept truths when we do
find them because the truth is sometimes
it’s harsh and sometimes challenges how
we think about ourselves and our place
in the world history is full of such
examples then we are not the center of
the universe that we’ve evolved from
so-called lesser forms of life that
claims about our own moral superiority
are unjustified or that we are complicit
in the harm of others now it is easy to
be committed to the truth when the
truths we find are things we want to
believe anyway
the true test one’s commitment to the
truth is one’s ability and willingness
to accept truths that one wishes were
not true
it can also be hard to accept what
seeking truth tells us about ourselves
that we are deeply fallible now of
course we all know that other people are
fallible we are keenly aware that other
people are often wrong and we also
acknowledge in general that we are wrong
sometimes – we all know that nobody is
perfect but it reminds me of what
philosophers call the paradox of the
preface an author in writing a book may
acknowledge that there are errors
contained therein given how hard it is
to understand the world we would not
expect any author to be able to write a
book that did not contain some falsehood
but the author is committed to the truth
of every cent
in that book otherwise she would not
have committed them to print so – with
our beliefs now we know abstractly that
we can be wrong at the same time of each
of our beliefs considered individually
we are sure that we are correct and so
we go into conversation discussion and
debate from the presumption that our
beliefs are fixed starting points and
our job is to show that it is others who
are mistaken and it is us who is correct
truly embracing intellectual humility
truly embracing the limitations of
ourselves as knowers means recognizing
that even my most cherished beliefs the
things I believe most strongly might be
wrong and so they should be subject to
the same critical scrutiny then I
typically reserved for those with whom I
disagree now we ourselves when
we don’t take heed of these costs of
truth seeking remember that the
bullshitter says things to convince
people of something without regard to
whether or not that is true when we
ourselves it is because we
prioritize something else above truth
but misrepresent ourselves to ourselves
as being concerned with the truth it is
when we care more for the feeling of
understanding or the feeling of being
right then we care about actual
understanding or actually being right
that we ourselves and I want to
give two examples
first we ourselves when we
provide post hoc rationalizations for
our current beliefs and desires if there
is a political position that I believe
and I am presented with an argument that
supports that position I am likely to
find it to be even stronger than it
actually is and if I am presented with
an argument against my position that
supports another view I am liable to
interpret it to be even weaker than it
is even if the arguments are of
equivalent strength my evaluation of the
evidence is
riven by how well that evidence fits my
current beliefs an existing worldview
rather than considering my beliefs based
on the strength of the evidence so to if
there’s a product I want to buy and I go
looking for positive reviews that will
validate or justify my desire to make
that purchase I start from the desire to
buy that product and then go casting
about for the arguments and evidence
that will support me in both of these
cases we are what intuitive psyche are
excusing what psychologists describe as
intuitive lawyers that is we start from
a position and then fill in the evidence
to support it but we think of ourselves
as intuitive scientists following the
evidence wherever it may lead we
ourselves because what we
really care about in these cases is the
defense of our current beliefs and
desires but we tell ourselves that we
are in it for truth and that we are
following the evidence we also
ourselves when we eagerly embrace
technological miracles that promise
cost-free resolutions to our problems or
simple solutions to complex questions if
I find a scientific theory that is clean
simple and easy to understand and I see
a rival theory that is complex nuanced
and highly qualified I do not wait until
I can fully understand both I am drawn
to the simple theory and I judge that to
be the correct one the true theory I
confuse my understanding with evidence
for its truth so to with these
technological miracles that promise
cost-free resolutions to our problems a
solution to climate change that allows
me to continue living the life to which
I am accustomed sounds much better than
one that is contingent on my sacrifice
and I may say of that proposal that it
is more promising more plausible and I
support it for those reasons when in
fact I support it precisely because it
allows me to keep living my current
lifestyle in both of these cases we are
prioritizing
our own comfort our comfort with ideas
and the comfort of our current lives
ahead of truth
but once again we tell ourselves that it
is the pursuit of truth that drives us
here – we are bullshitting ourselves so
what would it mean to stop bullshitting
ourselves it would mean first embracing
intellectual humility and recognizing
that my most cherished beliefs may be
wrong ii don’t mean recognizing that the
biases and fallacies i see in others are
liable to appear in my own reasoning as
well third it is recognizing that just
because something seems obvious seems
true to me does not mean that it
actually is true and finally it means
recognizing that the pursuit of truth
may require me to change it may require
me to do better
the rise of in our society is
indeed a problem one that we should all
be committed to solving one good place
to start is with the we tell ourselves