Which is worse – lying or bullshitting?

Which is worse – lying or bullshitting?

    Only when we're discussing ideas can we ignore scenarios and treat a lie to get a piece of candy on the same level as a lie to cover up a murderer. Same with bullshitting, we can ignore scenarios, though it's different from bullshitting in a friendly environment where distractions can bring irrelevant consequences or in a dangerous environment where bullshitting could annoy and have fatal consequences. So, in the philosophical field, we can take these two concepts to the metaphysical world and discuss them in cold blood regardless of their multiple possible scenarios. This is the early objective of this essay, to judge in metaphysical terms what is worse, lying or bullshitting, and then see if it is applicable in the physical world. My statement is that bullshitting is worse than lying. So, in this essay, I will briefly introduce both concepts from an ontological point of view, and then I will create a scenario as a framework to help understand my point of view on this topic by placing both cases in the same scenario. Subsequently, I will discuss and defend my argument, for which I will criticise Kant's categorical imperative laws because I think it will help with a better understanding of my argument.

It can be said that lying is simply "not telling the truth," which apparently would be enough in a flat way, but omitting the truth could also be misleading, right? There is the field of philosophy of language to analyse ontological phenomena like this to avoid mix-ups of definitions, so "not telling the truth" is too broad and inconsistent to define "lying." A logical construction could be used to illustrate a scenario of lying: "X tells Y that "Z" is true, knowing that "Z" is false, and tries to deceive Y into believing that "Z" is true," there are different definitions of lying, such as in the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries online. "to say or write something that you know is not true," or a more elaborate one by the philosopher Igor Primoratz (1984);  “[lying is] making a statement believed to be false, with the intention of getting another to accept it as true,” or another by Arnold Isenberg (1973); “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it”. But the different forms of lying make it difficult to come up with a single universal definition of lying. For example, if the goal of a lie is to deceive someone, what is a "bald-faced lie," where everyone knows it's a lie and everyone knows that everyone knows it, such as in the hypothetical case of a lawsuit in which a witness continues to lie despite clear evidence that the witness is lying to protect someone's identity for whatever reason.

Bullshitting, unlike lying, is a problem in social epistemology because it lacks a clear definition; it is not deeply rooted ontologically or epistemologically. This lack of perspective on the subject leads to a common misunderstanding of the subject, leading to a greater need for references to help talk about it, as it is more than just mere shit talking. Philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005) did some serious scholarly work on bullshitting, stating that the bullshitter does not care about the truth and linking bullshitting to some extent with terms such as humbug, nonsense, hot air, and bull session. On the other hand, a controversial view from Frankfurt was the claim that bullshitting is a greater enemy of truth than lying. This statement was not shared by Steve Fuller (2006), who considers that people who hold this line of thought are against bullshitting, calling them "detectors of bullshitting."  Fuller states that nonsense engages in "deferred epistemic gratification" by throwing a variety of ideas and statements there regardless of the weight of the evidence. George Reisch (2006) argued that liars are not indifferent to the truth, they simply disguise their preference for another truth. Wakeham (2017), also unlike Frankfurt (2005), suggested that there is no clear line between bullshitting and lying. 

Before I start the discussion and give my argument for the topic, I'll create a case to use as an example by setting up a concept map that will unite all the concepts into a single scenario that can then be used in the discussion section to help develop ideas. In an apartment shared by four students, L, M, D, and B, there is a device with an electronic memory pen related to the consumption of electrical energy from the flat; on the device screen there is a pound countdown marker. All the flatmates agree to charge the electronic memory pen at the corner store for £20 each time it gets empty. The flatmates would always follow the established cyclical order.

 

To make it easy, each capital letter stand for an action: L for lying, M for misleading, D for deceive, and B for bullshitting.

Lying: flatmate M asked L who was the last to pay the £20, L told M that he was the last one, knowing it wasB, so L wants to deceive M with a lie.

Misleading: When D asked M about who was the last to pay the £20 for electricity, M said that he went two days ago to the corner store for the flat’s needs. D assumed that M was the last to pay the £20, but M went to the corner store for another need, toilet paper, so M didn’t tell a lie; he just didn’t answer the question.

Deceiving: Just after M had paid for the £20 of electricity, D made the gesture of plugging the electronic pen into the device as B was looking at it, leading B to think he must be next to pay.

Bullshitting: B will be leaving the flat in a week, as he has many concerns with the move, he doesn't know who paid the last £20 for electricity, and he doesn't care. So, when the new tenant asked him who was the last to pay for electricity, B told him a random flatmate, then L asked him the same thing, and he said another random flatmate.

The scenario that I have exposed above has some weaknesses, and some definitions can get tangled up with each other. For example, if flatmate L tells a lie, L is explicitly deceiving M, that leads to see that both concepts are working together, so it demonstrates how lying and deceiving are feeding each other. Continuing with the different scenarios, flatmate M mislead flatmate D by not answering his specific question, isn't that a passive form of lying? Or a lie by omission? Also, D that deceives M by acting as if he has paid, isn't that misleading? That leads me to a thought. The transformation process, which is in fact a way from validating ideas to reality, exists on the threshold between the metaphysical world, where everyone is dealing with ideas, and the physical world, where one may be struggling to try to fit the two worlds realistically. From a personal standpoint, I see no point in building a castle of ideas in the metaphysical world if these ideas cannot cross the threshold without being deconstructed. This kind of thought came to me many times when I read books by philosophers. Emmanuele Kant is one of those philosophers with whom I have these types of thoughts; many times, I have the feeling that part of his valuable work is unrealistic, for example, Kant maintains that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is the categorical imperative, which suggests that it should be followed regardless of the wishes of the people. One of Kant's categorical imperative laws is not to tell a lie even if it is not harmful to anyone. While such a thought makes perfect sense because it leads people on the path of what is moral and ethically correct, I believe it is completely unrealistic for the physical world. It would work if there was no greed or wickedness in people, but there is, and there is no divine justice to protect us from that, we must do it ourselves. for example, if a potentially murderous person approached you and asked where the person he would probably kill was, and you certainly knew where he was, would it be wrong to give the murderer the wrong address to protect a human life? Would it be better to tell the truth to the murderer? It would seem obvious that the alternative would be to omit the question, but who knows if it is easy to do it? Or, as a mild example, if there is a problem that affects the dignity of a friend and you know what it is and you know that your friend wants to keep it a secret to preserve his dignity, is it not worth say a lie to protect your friend as long as it is not affecting anyone else? Because of these exceptions, I believe Kant is unrealistic in some ways, because, while his approach is perfect in the metaphysical world, it does not seem applicable in the physical world. Notwithstanding, I assume that my point has weaknesses as soon as I am no one to suggest what the physical world is and what is not.

Responding to the question "Which is worse, lying or bullshitting?" As a rule of thumb, I believe that lying is worse than bullshitting because the liar has the desire to deceive another person, which is morally wrong, whereas the bullshitter has no desire to deceive another. However, as I explained above in the Kant example, it is not an answer to generalise to all cases; there may be scenarios in which bullshitting may be worse than lying, there may be scenarios in which there is a potential risk of life or death in which bullshitting may bring disastrous consequences; on the other hand, as I mentioned before, there are scenarios in which lying can help a person in a critical situation. Furthermore, as Fuller (2006), criticised Frankfurt (2005), in the balance of positive and negative actions, bullshitting does not necessarily have to be a negative behaviour; we are human beings, and we need situations of relaxation. I have been bullshitting many times as a way of escaping from a dull situation where there is a collective depressive environment, where the truth does not matter because there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain; in fact, bullshitting can do you good. On the other hand, lying does not have these positive conceptions; it may be a positive need at a specific moment, but it is definitely a negative behaviour; it is a breach of the truth with a person; you can lose people's trust; and sometimes, it can be very difficult to regain another person's trust once you've lost it. 

A counterargument to my view that bullshitting is something less worse than lying would be a misinterpretation of the epistemological meaning of bullshitting, endorsing it as a hidden desire to occult reality (Reisch, 2006). Assuming that there is a will to change reality, it could not be bullshitting at all, and whatever that could be, would be the same or worse than a mere bullshitting. Let's put this in the flatmates scenario that I’ve created above and say that B starts to confuse the order of payment for electricity because he doesn't like the current system. He would rather pool all the £20 from the flatmates and pay once together because he thinks it's easier and there is no chance of forgetting to pay or confusion in the order of them, so since B couldn't convince his flatmates to change the system, he started doing seemingly meaningless bullshitting to try to confuse the payment order and piss off his flatmates to make them see that his proposed system is better, but is that really bullshitting? Although on the surface it is bullshitting since B randomly confuses the flatmates, in reality it is not bullshitting because the essence of bullshitting is not having a goal, and B has a goal; he wants to change reality, ergo the Payment System. This argument could be contrasted with the argument that bullshitting can be done in order to have fun, in fact, it is difficult for me to think of doing an action with zero purposes; there is always some slight reason that pushes someone to do an action, but this argument does not work here because it refers to a purpose merely of behaviour and mood, and the purpose of B is materialistic.

In conclusion, lying is worse than bullshitting, since it implies moral wrongness, regardless of which of the two cases treats the truth worse, as I mentioned above. Furthermore, bullshitting, unlike lying, does not always have a negative connotation. The take-home message is: don't tell a lie unless you absolutely have to, and have fun bullshitting with your friends for a while. 

 Toni Font 15/12/2022, Aberdeen.