![]() without concern for reality and the truth. ![]() Bullshit, in this sense, is a statement made ‘in the wrong way’, i.e. It isn’t that bullshitters necessarily get it wrong, it is that they don’t even try to get it right. When people bullshit, the problem is that they offer a description of reality ‘without genuinely submitting to the constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of reality imposes’ (p. This, then, is the essence of bullshit: what we say is bullshit when we say it without any concern for whether it is true. The orator isn’t concerned with making his audience come to believe these things, he is concerned with showing allegiance to the country, with demonstrating he is a patriot. One can’t care about whether these things are true because it isn’t clear what it would mean for them to be true. They don’t care whether the country is blessed or whether it is great, or whether some men a long time ago were inspired by God. What the orator says is bullshit because the orator doesn’t care whether what they are saying is true. The utterance conveys as much information as if it were mere vapor. The reason it is bullshit, he argues, is because what is being said is ‘hot air’. This, Frankfurt tells us, is surely bullshit. ‘Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about ‘our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.’ (p. Frankfurt provides the following example of a paradigmatic case of bullshit: We all know a bullshitter, and can probably recall a particularly memorable piece of bullshit they said. What, then, is bullshit? To get the discussion of the ground it will be useful to have an example.
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