Frankfurts Distinction between Bullshitting and Lying - Essay Example

? FRANKFURT’S DISTINCTION BETWEEN BULLSHITTING AND LYING Submitted Frankfurt’s Distinction between Bullshitting and Lying Relaying wrong information about a person, event or act can take different approaches. Whereas some people may intentionally convey the wrong figures and distorted facts with malicious intents, others present misleading arguments for sheer lack of proper knowledge. This paper shall differentiate two vital classes of dishonesty that occurs in human society as well as in multi-agent systems. According to the work of Harry Frankfurt, someone who lies has the knowledge of the truth. A liar knows what he says is not true. In bullshit there is no knowledge of truth (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 43). A bullshitter lacks proper knowledge to support the statement he makes. The different situations in our multi-agent systems and human culture give strong support for bullshit. This research is meant to analyze particular problems regarding to reasoning in the social context. Bullshit is one of the most salient features in our culture. Everyone knows and contributes to it but takes the situation for granted. The majority of people are confident in their ability to recognize bullshit and avoid being caught up in it (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 21). This phenomenon has not raised much inquiry so people fail to understand what it is, why it there or what functions it serves. We lack a conscious appreciation of its relevance to us. Frankfurt analyses three categories of dishonesty which are weaker from plain lies but not less harmful in distorting knowledge in a common setting. A lie is the utterance of statement from a speaker which he clearly knows not to be true. In our social life, it very common for people to make statement or talk of things they have no proper knowledge of. It usually out of curiosity or to appear knowledgeable even when one is not. This is termed as bullshit since one has no knowledge of correct information. With lies there is a negative relation to the truth whereas bullshit there is no connection of what the speaker says with the truth (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 17). Bullshit occurs when people are forced to talk of issues they have no proper knowledge of. For example in our modern society, everyone is expected to be abreast with the current social and political issues even when one lacks time to be correctly informed on all important aspects. Most people make a living in professionals that target at generating, processing and providing data. Examples of this are lawyers, financial analysts, business consultant, journalists and scientist (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 22). In these professionals one is expected to be knowledgeable even in situations when he or she is not. When one simply fails to admit lack of knowledge, bullshit is generated. The third form of bullshit is dishonesty. The hearer is provided with correct information which one can use to make an incorrect inference. For example one can wish to persuade a friend to come for the weekend by claiming the newspaper predicts fine weather even though one knows weather forecast is reputably unreliable. The newspaper predicts good weather but telling a friend this information one makes an inference to what is untrue that the weekend weather will most likely be fine. Deception is a form of dishonesty that one applies while talking the truth. Deception depends on monotonic reasoning where one provides information while withholding some to lead someone into the wrong conclusion. For example if someone says tweety is a bird not including it a penguin we inference it can fly while it cannot (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 22). Withholding information in a classical formalism leads to missing inferences whereas non-monotonic formalism results to wrong inferences. With deception, one uses the non-monotonic inference capabilities of another individual to implant wrong ideas without lying to him. In knowledge and argumentation, the possession of knowledge is a double fact. One has either information about a preposition or not though one can provide information to what extent one has knowledge about the preposition. For one to be considered knowledgeable, access to the truth must be gotten (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 21). One is supposed to be up to date with the current issues and in a position to face critics with relevant argument. Bullshit can also be termed as making claims of thing you do not have proper knowledge of. Bullshit has become a relative concept as while as knowledge. In order to make a knowledgeable claim, one is supposed to be aware of possible counterclaims and the associated ways to dispel them. If one makes a claim because of a plausible reason it becomes bullshit. Deception can also be termed as giving correct information. For instance, yesterday on TV, the assistance finance minister promised to save Hortis Bank (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 12). The hearer can make inference to that while knowing it wrong. The difference between bullshit, deception and lies is of significance from the perspective of mechanism design. Different means can give undesirable incentives for different forms of dishonesty. For example a financial advisor, who advises his client on investment product, being paid on commission, will tend to advise his client on the product that highly give more commission. Hence there will be incentive of deception or more so lies. If the advisor is paid directly by the client on an hourly fee, he will not lie but give information appearing to be more knowledgeable. Here with lies, one tries to make the listener trust very specific claims about the entity world. With bullshit one has no interest in making the hearer believe A or B (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 21). If the advisor is paid by the clients directly, the incentive will be bullshit but if he is paid on commission, the incentive will be to lie. There are different strategies for dealing with dishonesty. In the light of the discussion above, the interest of the consultant is to appear knowledgeable. The client interest is to get relevant information and to avoid deceit the client should have a small field of expertise in the field of the consultant. The consultant should avoid group consensus because there is always the risk of being wrong and claiming you could not have known. A group consensus is formed with a new problem which is analyzed leading to other argument from where the group forms its basis (Frankfurt, 2005, p. 11). Later when it realized the group formed its basis on quicksand, it breaks and a new one is formed. The essay has provided information on the three classes of dishonesty: bullshit, lies and deception. It has described what bullshit is, its purpose on those who use it and why it so much on a collective level. This phenomenon should be put into account in conduction of a multi-agent simulation strategy where the client and the consultant put into account what has been discussed. The issue of collective rationality is a vital one since it touches in the way our society works. Bibliography Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On BullShitting. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Read More