This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
In his essay, “Lying,” St. Augustine distinguishes lies of eight types, which he classifies according to the characteristic intent or justification with which a lie is told. Lies of seven of these types are told only because they are supposed to be indispensable means to some end that is distinct from the sheer creation of false beliefs. It is not their falsity as such, in other words, that attracts the teller to them. Since they are told only on account of their supposed indispensability to a goal other than deception itself, St. Augustine regards them as being told unwillingly: what the person really wants is not to tell the lie but to attain the goal. They are therefore not real lies, in his view, and those who tell them are not in the strictest sense liars. It is only the remaining category that contains what he identifies as “the lie which is told solely for the pleasure of lying and deceiving, that is, the real lie.” Lies in this category are not told as means to any end distinct form the propagation of falsehood. They are told simply for their own sakes — i.e., purely out of a love of deception:
There is a distinction between a person who tells a lie and a liar. The former is one who tells a lie unwillingly, while the liar loves to lie and passes his time in the joy of lying. … The latter takes delight in lying, rejoicing in the falsehood itself.
What Augustine calls “liars” and “real lies” are both rare and extraordinary. Everyone lies from time to time, but there are very few people to whom it would often (or even ever) occur to lie exclusively from a love of falsity or of deception. For most people, the fact that a statement is false constitutes in itself a reason, however weak and easily overridden, not to make the statement.
For St. Augustine’s pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason in favor of making it. For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a reason in favor nor a reason against. Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost. Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.
Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great.
Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.
The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “anti-realist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.
นี่คือประเด็นของความแตกต่างระหว่างเขาและคนโกหก เขาและโกหกแทนตัวเองแอบเป็น endeavoring ในการสื่อสารความจริง ความสำเร็จของแต่ละขึ้นอย่างเราว่า แต่ข้อเท็จจริงเกี่ยวกับตัวเองที่โกหกซ่อนอยู่ว่า เขากำลังพยายามที่จะนำเราออกจากความกลัวที่ถูกต้องของความเป็นจริง เราจะไม่รู้ว่า เขาต้องการเราเชื่อว่าสิ่งที่เขา supposes เป็นเท็จ ความจริงเกี่ยวกับตัวเองที่ bullshitter ที่ซ่อน คง คือ truth-values งบเขาไม่สนใจกลางเขา ว่าเราจะไม่เข้าใจคือว่า เจตนา ไม่รายงานความจริงหรือบริษัทปกปิด นี้ไม่ได้หมายความ ว่า คำพูดของเขา anarchically impulsive แต่ว่าแรงจูงใจแนะนำ และควบคุม unconcerned กับสิ่งที่เขาพูดอย่างแท้จริงอย่างไรไม่ต้องนอนยกเว้นว่าเขาคิดว่า เขารู้ความจริง ผลิตพล่ามต้องคดีดังกล่าวไม่ คนอยู่จึงได้ตอบสนองต่อความจริง และเป็นที่เคารพของขอบเขต เมื่อเป็นคนซื่อสัตย์พูด เขากล่าวว่า เท่า ที่เขาเชื่อว่าเป็นจริง และการโกหก ไม่ด้อยขาดไม่ได้ที่เขาพิจารณางบของเขาเป็นเท็จ สำหรับ bullshitter อย่างไรก็ตาม เดิมพันเหล่านี้จะปิด: คงจะไม่มีด้าน ของความจริง หรือด้าน ของเท็จ ตาของเขาไม่ได้ในข้อเท็จจริงทั้งหมด เป็นสายตา ของคนซื่อสัตย์ และการโกหก ยกเว้น insofar อาจเกี่ยวข้องกับความสนใจในการเดินทางไปกับสิ่งที่เขากล่าวว่า เขาไม่สนใจว่า สิ่งที่เขากล่าวอธิบายความเป็นจริงอย่างถูกต้อง เขาเพียงหยิบออก หรือทำให้พวกเขา เพื่อให้เหมาะกับจุดประสงค์ของเขาในเรียงความของเขา "โกหก บุญเซนต์ออกัสติแยกอยู่ 8 ชนิด ซึ่งเขาแบ่งประเภทตามลักษณะเจตนาหรือเหตุผลที่บอกการโกหก อยู่ของเจ็ดชนิดนี้จะบอก เพราะพวกเขาควรจะ ขาดไม่ได้หมายถึงการสิ้นสุดบางอย่างที่แตกต่างจากการสร้างความเชื่อเท็จแท้จริง ไม่ falsity ของพวกเขาเช่น ในคำอื่น ๆ ที่ดึงดูดที่เบิกไป เนื่องจากพวกเขาจะบอกเฉพาะในบัญชีของ indispensability ควรเป้าหมายไม่ใช่การหลอกลวงตัวเอง บุญเซนต์ออกัสติพิจารณานั้นเป็นการบอกว่า unwillingly: สิ่งบุคคลต้องการจริง ๆ จะไม่บอกแนว แต่ จะบรรลุเป้าหมาย พวกเขาไม่ดังจริงอยู่ ในมุมมองของเขา และผู้ที่บอกพวกเขาจะไม่โกหกความรู้สึกที่เข้มงวดที่สุด มีเฉพาะประเภทเหลือที่ประกอบด้วยสิ่งที่เขาระบุว่าเป็น "แนวที่จะบอกแต่เพียงผู้เดียวสำหรับความสุขของการนอน และ อย่าง คือ โกหกจริง" อยู่ในประเภทนี้จะบอกเป็นหมายถึงการสิ้นสุดใด ๆ แตกต่างกันการแพร่กระจายของ falsehood พวกเขาจะบอกเพียงแค่สำหรับตน sakes — เช่น หมดจดจากความรักของการหลอกลวง:มีความแตกต่างระหว่างบุคคลที่บอกการโกหกมุสา เดิมเป็นคนที่บอก unwillingly การโกหกการโกหกชอบนอน และผ่านเวลาในความสุขของการนอน … หลังใช้เวลาในการนอน rejoicing ใน falsehood ตัวเองอะไรบุญออกัสติเรียก "โกหก" และ "จริงอยู่" เป็นพิเศษ และหายาก ทุกคนอยู่เวลา แต่มีคนน้อยมากที่มันจะบ่อย (หรือแม้แต่เคยไป) เกิดขึ้นโดยเฉพาะจากความรัก ของ falsity หรือหลอกลวงโกหก สำหรับคนส่วนใหญ่ ความจริงที่ว่าคำเท็จถือในตัวเองมีเหตุผล แต่อ่อนแอ และ แทนได้ ไม่ต้องทำยอดFor St. Augustine’s pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason in favor of making it. For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a reason in favor nor a reason against. Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost. Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great.Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “anti-realist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.
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