The book I am writing about is called
Bullshit and Philosophy. This book goes into depth about philosophy and the
different kinds of bullshit around philosophy. The section I focused on of “Bullshit
and Philosophy” was called “The Pragmatics of Bullshit, Intelligently Designed,”
by George A. Reisch. This section starts off telling us about how one
definition of bullshit leaves us with a puzzle. It says, “Liars must pay
attention to the truth, if only to avoid speaking it. Bullshitters don’t. They
are essentially indifferent to whether or not what they say is true. They just
don’t care and their indifference may be infectious.” This reminds me of when
people say they are going to BS a homework assignment or paper. They don’t find
out the truth and stay away from it, they just say stuff whether it is true or
not. If you were to make up a lie, you would have to know what the truth is so
you can avoid speaking it. When bullshitting, you just take the easiest way to
get something done and do not really pay attention to whether or not the
information you are using is completely true. Then it begins talking about
Intelligent Design, also known as ID. Reisch says his definition of bullshit is
different than the one heard before because it is inspired by Intelligent
design. Intelligent Design is well known for its criticism of evolutionary
theory and its claims that organisms are too complex to have evolved solely
under the influence of natural evolutionary processes. Intelligent Design’s
supporters insist, science itself indicates that the history of life on earth
involved intervention by some supernatural “intelligent designer” such as God. Reisch
does not believe that humans could have developed the same and would not be as
intelligent had they evolved through evolution. Later in my section it talks
about semantics. Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned
with meaning. Reisch claims that the involvement of the difference between
semantic and pragmatic analyses of language, is the reason the other definition
of bullshit focuses on the properties of the bullshitter’s speech and stops
short of inquiring into larger, ulterior goals that bullshit usually serves. In
the book it says, “Semantics concerns properties of language such as meaning,
truth or falsity- relations, that is, between words and sentences, on the other
hand, and the things or states of affairs they describe or refer to, on the
other.” The section ends with a case for purism about bullshit. Reisch claims
that “one implication of this pragmatic definition of bullshit is that there’s
really not quite that much of it about. It has a specific pragmatic structure,
does not come into being by accident, and is certainly not very effective
unless it is crafted with good measures of creativity and pragmatic
intelligence in the use of language.” With this he is saying, the definition of
bullshit is not very complicated, but will not be a reasonable definition
unless the creator of the definition uses creativity and has good knowledge on
pragmatic intelligence in the use of language.
I think Reisch is saying something less esoteric than that. I think he's saying there IS a prevalence of BS in our culture, and scholars whose conclusions suggest otherwise have gone off the rails somewhere.
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