On Bullshit -- A Brief Response

"The lack of any significant connection between a person's opinions
and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to
say, for someone who believes it is his responsibility, as a
conscientous moral agent, to evalute events and conditions in all
parts of the world… bullshit also has deeper sources, in various form
sof 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."

Frankfurt argues, then, that there are two chief causes of the
proliferation of bullshit, which appear to contradict one another: the
compulsion, from within and without, to evaluate everything, and the
inability to evalute anything. How is it possible for evaluation to
be the hallmark of morality—how is it possible for morality to exist
at all—when 'skepticism' (a word mentioned in this tome for the first
and only time on the second-to-last page) ostensibly denies the
existence of an objective reality to evaluate?

Frankfurt proceeds to argue that evaluation, as a process, turns
inward when external referents are (or are believed to be) unstable,
and he believes that this is the most propesterous development of all.
But how can Frankfurt argue that evaluative impulse becomes directed
exclusively at oneself at the same time he argues that, more than
ever, people are compelled to evaluate "the conduct of his country's affairs" (OB, 64)? It seems that the
argument requires a finer analysis of the relationship between the
internal and the external.

I would argue that evaluation of onself or out of oneself becomes
increasingly projected on an outside world, and so colors and defines
the external, which exists regardless of whether we exist, with and by
the internal, which exists if and only if we do. The projection of
self upon the world is exactly analogous to the projection of a movie
upon a screen. The screen exists with or without the projection, but
it has no meaning, and no purpose, without it.

This self-projection occurs and intensifies because of skepticism.

Skeptics believe that they can say only one thing truthfully: that
they don't know enough to say that they don't know enough about a
world that those who know objectively more about insist is
unknowable. Hence, skeptics, suspect that they may know more than
those who 'should' know more .

The 'Objective' is increasingly and tyranically 'right' in principle.
Paradoxically, however, it becomes less known, less completely
understood, with each new discovery. Reality becomes less knowable
not, as in the past, because the universe is so large or so awesome,
or because its magnitude overwhelms our feeble, tiny circuits of
comprehension. No; today, reality is less knowable because our
circuitry is not fine enough.

The universe of atoms, quarks, and energy is so small, so complex, and
so indecipherable that we cannot see it, smell it or feel it. We
cannot interact with it. And yet we're told that the universe is
better understood today than it has been on any day before?

An increasingly fine understanding of the universe, or rather, an
increased understanding of how fine the universe is, makes us bulls in
the chinashop of our own reality. The world no longer dwarfs us: we
dwarf it.

Our ignorance is increased in proportion with our understanding. The
veil is rent from whole new vistas of cluelessness and confusion
within us.

The truth teases us: but it retreats from us!

Hence, skeptics reserve all judgement on right and wrong until more
is known. They believe that one day we may know more. This is not
certain, but it is possible. In measured anticipation, then, all
determinacy, judgment, and morality (the three are related) are
suspended indefinitely…

Until the day when a directive comes—either from within (subjective)
or without (objective)—that I (subjective) or we (objective) know
enough .

Either case requires a cataclysmic event to jolt the skeptic from the
inertia of indeterminacy.

This begs the question: must this event necessarily be unpleasant?
Given the likely magnitude of the event, and the presuamble
epistemological shift at the moment of this event, questions of
pleasant and unpleasant cease to be relevant. It is, after all, a
cataclysm. It could be either pleasant or unpleasant, depending on
how you look at it. More than likely, it will depend on how much you
like the new determinacy, the new truth that results from the moment.
If you love the truth, the cataclysm that reveals it will be, will
have been pleasant. If the "truth" is undesirable, it will have been
unspeakably unpleasant . Sometimes, the truth hurts.

In any case, the new determinacy now, certainly, and for the first
time, defines you.

It should be noted that—functionally—the new determinacy is equally
determinant regardless of whether the cataclysm that bore it was
internal or external.

The new reality and the new determinacy are the cause and effect of
one another.

The bullshitters are the ones who wish not to be skeptics in the
moment of indeterminacy. That is to say, bullshitters wish not to be
skeptics, but they exist in the same time, and they are borne of the
same conditions and the same beliefs.

Their opposition is exactly analogous to the opposition between liars
and truthtellers, but bullshitters and skeptics live in a completely
different dimension.

DIMENSION A: WE KNOW ENOUGH TO KNOW WE KNOW THE TRUTH

LIARS |----------------------------------------------------------------|
TRUTHTELLERS

DIMENSION B: WE DON'T KNOW WHETHER WE KNOW THE TRUTH

BULLSHITTERS |------------------------------------------------------------|
SKEPTICS

DIMENSION X (FRANKFURT'S WORLD): WE KNOW ENOUGH TO BELIEVE WE SHOULD
KNOW THE TRUTH

LIARS |--------------BULLSHITTERS------------------------------SKEPTICS----------------|
TRUTHTELLERS