Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Bullshit - the academic view

Bullshit annotated

Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON
From Weekly Mail & Guardian - 06 October 2006 03:59

In an engaging paper given last week under the aegis of the Philosophy Society of the University of Cape Town (UCT), Dr Ben Kotzee expanded on a subject one wouldn’t ordinarily expect to see on a list of academic monographs. Kotzee’s title was Our Vision and Our Mission: Bullshit, Assertion and Belief. So portentous a title cries out to be misconstrued. Has the UCT philosophy department decided to absolve itself in some cathartic ecstasy, a washing of the dialectic feet? Is the department proclaiming yet another unsettling mutation of postmodernism? In short: has bull­shit come home to roost?

That’s if you fall for the joke of the title. In fact, its faux profundity is, itself, sly ridicule: heading a paper on bullshit with a title that is pure bullshit is a most welcome light touch. Most academic humour is like being slugged with a sand-filled sock.

Kotzee’s paper examined and expanded on an academic oddity from which has sprung an energetic colloquy. His paper is the most recent of a fair battery of writings and reflections kicked off by the oddity, a 67-page miniature entitled On Bullshit. This curious little best-seller was published a year or so ago by the Princeton University Press. It is compiled of several short papers and articles by a professor emeritus at Princeton, Harry G Frankfurt, who speculated on the way bullshit hovers in some communicative limbo between truth and untruth, being not quite one nor the other. Hence its widespread use in places where bullshit reigns supreme, such as the world of advertising or politics, and where bullshit is the mother tongue, the only language spoken. Kotzee was honest enough to acknowledge that one of bull­shit’s most prolific assembly lines is academe itself.

In an article reviewing Frankfurt’s book, and published in The New Yorker last year, the critic Jim Holt summed up a definition of bullshit by quoting Frankfurt: “The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.” On this Holt expanded: “The bullshitter’s fakery consists not of misrepresenting a state of affairs, but in concealing his own indifference to the truth of what he says. The liar, by contrast, is concerned with the truth, in a perverse sort of fashion: he wants to lead us away from it. As Frankurt sees it, the liar and the truthteller are playing on opposite sides of the same game, a game defined by the authority of truth. The bullshitter opts out of the game altogether.”

Kotzee’s paper delved into the writings that have followed hot on Frankfurt’s heels, also on several others more or less on the same broad theme that have preceded Frankfurt. In their reasoning and expression, some of these essays and papers are disturbingly suspect: academic smoke and mirrors? It is entirely possible to bullshit when writing about bullshit.

Bullshit -- or to give the phenomenon some more tranquil term such as “humbug” (a word Dickens often used), “balderdash”, “claptrap” or “hokum” -- has enjoyed previous attempts at formal clarification. In a 1983 essay, the distinguished analytical philosopher Max Black called humbug “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings or attitudes”.

As Kotzee pointed out in his paper, the sheer ubiquity of bullshit in today’s world shows how much further things have been taken. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to avoid it. There are the “instant talking heads analyses” of news, so popular on television and radio, the sheer bullshit that constitutes so much of radio talk shows and, of course those wastelands of fatuity, the “mission statements”, the “team-building” sessions, “policy pronouncements”, “vision initiatives” capped by empty promises of “service delivery” and “performance targets”; all the other drivel of spin-doctors and their like. Bullshit’s always there, to lesser or greater degree an essentiality of normal human discourse. It’s the student writing an exam for which there’s been no real preparation by filling pages with half-remembered technical phraseology, it’s the misleading bilge of the used-car salesman. There are infinite fields of the most odious of leftist bullshit: the paralysing vernacular of fundamentalist political correctness.

There’s another recent book on the subject by Laura Penny, a Canadian college teacher, that I’m trying to get hold of. It has a fascinating title: Your Call Is Important To Us: The Truth about Bullshit. Jim Holt describes her approach, where she applies the term “bullshit” to every kind of trickery by which powerful moneyed interests attempt to gull the public; the promises of “products which will change your life” are of the prime editions. “Never in the history of mankind have so many people uttered statements they know to be untrue,” says Penny. And then adds that George W Bush is a “world-historical bullshitter”.

In the confines of a column I can do no more than give a taste of Kotzee’s splendid paper. It takes Frankfurt’s work a most satisfying legion further along the road, auspicious in its sense of humour and irony. It can be read in full -- and well deserves to be -- on the internet at www.uct.ac.za/depts/philosophy/philsoc.htm.

Cat Lover?

How to Give your Cat a Pill

A short guide in 15 steps

1. Place your kitten in the crook of your arm, as if cradling a baby. Put your right index finger and thumb on both sides of your pet’s jaw and, carefully exerting pressure, hold the pill ready in your other hand, As soon as the kitten opens her mouth, insert the pill so she can swallow it.

2. Pick up the pill from the floor and fetch your kitten from behind the sofa. Cradle her in your arm again and repeat the process.

3. Fetch the cat from the bedroom and bin the wet pill.

4. Take a new pill from the bottle, and hold your cat in your arm while keeping both front paws still. Force open her jaws and push the pill into her mouth with your right index finger. Keep her jaws closed while you count to ten.

5. Using the net, fish the pill out of the aquarium and fetch the stupid cat from the top of the cupboard. Call your partner to come in from the garden and help you.

6. Kneel on the floor and hold the cat between your thighs. Take a firm grip of her front paws, ignoring the loud screeching. Tell your partner to hold the cat’s head firmly and open her mouth with a wooden ruler. Insert the pill via the ruler in the cat’s mouth and stroke her throat to encourage reflex action of swallowing.

7. Haul the animal down from the curtain rail and take another pill from the bottle. Make a mental note to buy a new ruler and to get the curtains repaired. Sweep up the broken glass from the fallen picture frames and pieces of china from the broken ornaments.

8. Wrap the blasted animal in a large towel. Get your partner to sit or lie on top of the cat so that only her head sticks out from under your armpits. Suck the pill up through a straw and force the cat’s mouth open. Blow the pill into the cat’s mouth through the straw.

9. Carefully check the pamphlet in the pill bottle to see whether the pills are dangerous for humans. Have a cold beer to remove the bitter taste from your mouth. Dab your partner’s arm with disinfectant, put ointment on the wounds and bandage them. Clean the bloodstains from furniture and carpets.

10. Fetch the damned cat from the neighbour’s garage. Have a second beer. Then take another pill from the bottle. Put the animal in the wardrobe so that only her head sticks out. Force her jaws open and, using a catapult, shoot the pill down her throat.

11. Fetch the screwdriver from the garage and hang the wardrobe door back on its hinges. Take out your whisky and have a generous tot. Disinfect the scratchmarks on your cheeks. Check whether your anti-tetanus injection is still valid. Throw your torn shirt in the rubbish bin and put on your overalls.

12. Ring the fire brigade to rescue the blasted animal from the tree outside, apologising to your neighbours for the foul language. Take the last pill from the bottle.

13. Tape the wretched animal’s front paws together with duct tape. Tie her securely to one of the legs of your dining room table with anchor rope. Put on your welding gloves, hide the pill in a lump of mincemeat and pour a large glass of water. Hold the animal’s head from behind, chuck the pill into its jaws and follow this with the entire glass of water. Keep the cat’s jaws clamped for at least five minutes.

14. Pick up the whisky bottle and empty it. The loss of blood is making you light-headed so ask your partner to ring Casualty. Ask them to stitch your fingers and forearm and remove the pill from your eye. Meanwhile ring the Hyperama to order a new dining room table.

15. Ring the SPCA and organise for them to fetch this f****** animal from hell. Ask the local petshop if they sell hamsters..

Equality

"A Japanese company and an SA company challenged each other to a boat race. On the day of the race, the Japanese had a manager and eight rowers in their boat. The SA team included one senior manager, two assistant senior managers, three project leaders, one observer and two rowers. The Japanese won by 10 lengths and shared the prize equally. SA management demanded an explanation for this humiliation. After several meetings, the managers brought in outside consultants to help. They came up with a great plan for the next race - they bought a sleeker boat with wider oars and told the two rowers their performance must improve. This time the Japanese won by 15 lengths. The managers were rewarded for coming up with an excellent plan. The consultants were paid handsomely for their contribution. The rowers were fired. It was agreed that next year two outside rowers would do the rowing."

(Financial Mail - September 1996.)