Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Nonsense in action

I mentioned before that I see a connection between Orwell and Wittgenstein, and that "bullshit is things we do." I'm just re-reading Orwell's essay on politics and language as well as Frankfurt's "On Bullshit," and it's interesting to see some connections. For instance, compare Orwell (1946):
If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.   
With Anscombe (1958):
It would be a great improvement if, instead of "morally wrong," one always named a genus such as "untruthful," "unchaste," "unjust." We should no longer ask whether doing something was "wrong," passing directly from some description of an action to this notion; we should ask whether, e.g., it was unjust; and the answer would sometimes be clear at once.
The points may not be the same but they are surely similar. And Wittgenstein makes neither of them, but I believe he would have been sympathetic to Anscombe's point (and Orwell's, for that matter). If you want evidence, try this from Frankfurt's essay:
Wittgenstein once said that the following bit of verse by Longfellow could serve him as a motto:
In the elder days of art/ Builders wrought with greatest care/ Each minute and unseen part,/ For the Gods are everywhere.
The point of these lines is clear. In the old days, craftsmen did not cut corners. They worked carefully, and they took care with every aspect of their work. Every part of the product was considered, and each was designed and made to be exactly as it should be. These craftsmen did not relax their thoughtful self-discipline even with respect to features of their work which would ordinarily not be visible. Although no one would notice if those features were not quite right, the craftsmen would be bothered by their consciences. So nothing was swept under the rug. Or, one might perhaps also say, there was no bullshit.
As for bullshit's being something one does, this is something Frankfurt suggests. He quotes Max Black on humbug (a notion he takes to be very similar to that of bullshit) and points out that Black identifies humbug as a category of action as well as of speech (this is on p. 3 of the pdf). Frankfurt doesn't then do much with this, except to say that bullshit is to be defined not by the content of what is said but by the program or intent of the speaker, by his engaging in speech without regard for the truth or falsity of what he says.

Bullshit is concern with appearance over substance, and this can take various forms. More on this soon, I hope.  

15 comments:

  1. I agree that Wittgenstein would've been sympathetic towards Anscombe's idea. Indeed, it reminded me of his comment that "beautiful" is a poor word because it doesn't really say anything definite; it just expresses approval (I think that's in the Monk biography.) That sounds very much like the aesthetic version of Anscombe's remark.

    And the Longfellow verse reminds me of an antithetical comment in Culture and Value. Quoting from memory, it goes something like: "We notice a crack in our design and we stuff it with straw. But, to salve our consciences, we use only the best quality straw". That, I think, suggests one of the temptations towards bluster or (to use a now almost vanished word) cant.

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    1. Yes! I've been thinking about that remark on 'beautiful' a lot, or quoting it to myself a lot anyway. I hadn't made this connection, but I agree.

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    2. "One uses straw to try to stuff the cracks which show in the work of art's organic unity, but to quiet one's conscience one uses the best straw." (16 January 1930)

      Surely related: "Aside from the good & genuine, my book the Tractatus Log.-Phil. also contains kitsch, that is, passages with which I filled in the gaps and so-to-speak in my own style. How much of the book consists of such passages I don't know & it is difficult to fairly evaluate now." (exactly five months later)

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    3. Interesting suggestion. (I have nothing to add, really, but thanks.)

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  2. One reason to like Orwell (and Wittgenstein and Anscombe) is that for him the MAIN task is to make ONE'S OWN stupidity visible to ONESELF.

    I don't get the same sense from Frankfurt.

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    1. Frankfurt has a different feel, yes. Working on oneself is much harder, and much more worthwhile. The audience is more likely to listen, for one thing.

      Someone once suggested to me that "On Bullshit" is itself bullshit, which seemed unfair. But the decision to publish an old paper as a hardback book is bad. It's not as if he's a starving adjunct. But now I'm both getting off the point and focusing on something other than my own flaws.

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    2. Why is it bad if the essay is good and worth marketing in a form likely to get more people to read and think about it?

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    3. well, there is 'taking ourselves seriously and getting it right'

      and the book on love

      but i gather reshef's observation would still hold despite those

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    4. Maybe it's not bad. It always feels like a rip-off to me, but I suppose the buyer should beware. And so far as I blame anyone I blame the publisher far more than I blame Frankfurt.

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  3. the first quote from orwell puts me in mind of the difficulties that led beckett to write in french.

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    1. I like Beckett more in theory than in practice, but this is another reason to like him.

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  4. By the way, thanks again for bringing the Orwell essay to my attention. I still need to read it carefully all the way through, but it might be something I use in the future in the Honors Rhetoric course I'm teaching (with a team) and still trying to figure out for myself (as the semester winds down...). Another recent discovery (perhaps something for your critical thinking course) is Schopenhauer's "The Art of Being Right."

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    1. i sure wish someone decent would put that back in print.

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    2. Thanks for the Schopenhauer--I've heard of this but never read it before. It could be a nice part of a critical thinking course.

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  5. Simon Critchley - SHITISFUCKEDUPANDBULLSHIT
    https://www.ici-berlin.org/docu/critchley/?tx_bddbflvvideogallery_pi1[video]=2
    -dmf

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