See here....How, the world asked in incredulous rage, can they possibly think this ludicrous scenario will convince us? The answer, of course, is that they don't.
There are various kinds of lie, with different strategies and purposes. This was a forthright specimen of a type increasingly common in modern politics: the lie you are not supposed to believe.
Monday, November 20, 2006
A Type of Lie
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8 comments:
If a lie is a statement designed to get someone else to believe something you don't, and you say something so mind-numbingly stupid that you know it will convince no one, is it still a lie? Harry Frankfurt's notion of bullshit might be more appropriate. The idea is that a liar at least buys into the importance of truth and falsity, but the bullshitter sees it all as a mere rhetorical game where truth and belief are not to be deeply connected.
Ok, I'll go back with the other idiots, I mean philosophers...
Agreed. I think bullshit works better here too.
Stick around with this idiot. I might not write much philosophy on the blog, but I still consider myself a philosopher by training (and by most of the stuff I read).
On a related note, there is a space between philosophy and policy where one is neither in the club of philosophers nor in the club of policy analysts/makers. Where I work resides in that space. A kind of purgatory.
"those who heroically insist on being decieved" .A large and growing category." I can be stipider but your going to have to give me a few minutes".OK ,sure.I can't think, therefore I am?
Everyday speech is so non-literal, vague and/or abstract that my parsimonious instincts make me think big-social complicit--self-deception comes from things we all do small-socially (one-on-one and in small audiences). We're happy to believe the coach when he tells us we can take back control of the game. I bet there are plenty of big-social deceptions we'd regard as innocent or necessary. I don't know if these qualify, but e.g. Is it bad to think like a Newtonian? To talk or think about what "I" felt or did (when neuroscience and psychiatry suggests such talk is highly problematic)? And here we are talking about what "Americans" think.
Sometimes it is really bad, however, to accept a lie (or Frankfurtian "bullshit") in that action may be based upon it and this action may be harmful to others. In this kind of case, complicity is as immoral as the harmful lie.
I don't see how we could blame somebody for complicitous self-deceit, if it turns out to be necessary, from a practical point of view, most of the time. The potential harm that follows from your false belief won't always have been foreseeable or even as probable as other benign or even beneficent consequences. Life as a conscious being isn't consistent with being skeptical and taking time to reflect and reexamine everything. Maybe that's not a poisonous snake or a tiger in your peripheral vision, but jumping is good policy nevertheless. Also we have the story of the philosopher who falls down the well. How are we poor vulgar masses to know when to question authority when we don't have time even to watch the full hour of Fox News?
...which relates to goings on over at Aspasia's and intro philosophy classes around the world, I suppose.
Yeah, but it's increasingly difficult to claim ignorance when we're assaulted with media all day. Wait a minute, I think I just made the opposite point....
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