Bullshit and Philosophy – Escaping from Bullshit

“Philosophy is Everybody’s business”- Mortimer J. Adler

DeeSeek answered:

Mortimer J. Adler, a prominent American philosopher, educator, and author, emphasized the importance of philosophy in everyday life with his statement, “Philosophy is Everybody’s business.” This assertion underscores the idea that philosophical thinking is not confined to academic institutions or professional philosophers but is a vital part of human existence that everyone should engage with.

Adler believed that philosophy addresses fundamental questions about life, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. These questions are not abstract or irrelevant; they are deeply connected to how we live our lives, make decisions, and understand the world around us. By engaging with philosophical inquiry, individuals can develop critical thinking skills, clarify their values, and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world.

In his works, Adler advocated for the democratization of philosophical education. He argued that everyone, regardless of their background or profession, should have access to the tools of philosophical thinking. This includes learning how to analyze arguments, question assumptions, and engage in reasoned dialogue. Adler’s vision was to make philosophy accessible and relevant to all, encouraging people to think more deeply about the big questions that affect their lives.

Adler’s perspective aligns with the Socratic tradition, which holds that the unexamined life is not worth living. By promoting the idea that philosophy is everybody’s business, Adler sought to empower individuals to lead more examined, thoughtful, and fulfilling lives. His work continues to inspire those who believe in the transformative power of philosophical inquiry for personal and societal growth.

I answered:

I claim that philosophy is the escaping from bullshit; therefore, escaping from bullshit is everybody’s business.

DeeSeek answered:

Your claim that “philosophy is the escaping from bullshit; therefore, escaping from bullshit is everybody’s business” is a provocative and insightful way to frame the importance of philosophy in everyday life. This idea aligns with the broader philosophical tradition of seeking truth, clarity, and understanding while challenging falsehoods, misinformation, and superficial thinking.

Philosophy as Escaping Bullshit

Philosophy, at its core, is about questioning assumptions, critically examining beliefs, and striving for intellectual honesty. In this sense, it is indeed a tool for “escaping bullshit”—whether that bullshit comes in the form of unexamined cultural norms, misleading rhetoric, logical fallacies, or outright deception. Philosophers like Socrates, who famously used questioning to expose ignorance and hypocrisy, and modern thinkers like Harry Frankfurt, who wrote On Bullshit, have explored the importance of distinguishing truth from falsehood and substance from emptiness.

By engaging in philosophical thinking, individuals can develop the skills to:

Identify bullshit: Recognize when claims are unfounded, misleading, or manipulative.
Challenge bullshit: Use reason, evidence, and critical analysis to dismantle falsehoods.
Avoid bullshit: Cultivate intellectual humility and a commitment to truth, resisting the temptation to spread or accept unsubstantiated claims.

Why Escaping Bullshit is Everybody’s Business

Your assertion that “escaping from bullshit is everybody’s business” is particularly relevant in today’s world, where misinformation, propaganda, and shallow thinking are pervasive. Here’s why this matters for everyone:

Personal Autonomy: Escaping bullshit allows individuals to make informed decisions about their lives, free from manipulation or deception.
Social Responsibility: A society that values truth and critical thinking is better equipped to address complex issues, foster justice, and promote the common good.
Democracy: A functioning democracy relies on an informed and rational citizenry capable of discerning truth from falsehood.
Mental Clarity: Escaping bullshit reduces confusion, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance, leading to a more coherent and meaningful life.

Philosophy as a Lifelong Practice

Adler’s idea that “philosophy is everybody’s business” complements your claim. If philosophy is the means by which we escape bullshit, then it follows that everyone should engage with it. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to become a professional philosopher, but rather that we should all cultivate a philosophical mindset—one that values curiosity, skepticism, and the pursuit of truth.

In a world saturated with information (and misinformation), the ability to think philosophically is more important than ever. By embracing philosophy as a tool for escaping bullshit, we empower ourselves and others to navigate life with greater clarity, integrity, and purpose. So yes, escaping bullshit is indeed everybody’s business—and philosophy is the way to do it.

Lectures on Philosophy

If you want to listen to lectures on philosophy, there is a set of lectures given by Hank Green which are as good — if not better — than those given in a college. One reason for their quality is that these lectures have been edited, so they come off as polished presentations. [This can be appreciated by looking at some of the outtakes.]

Here is the Crash Course Philosophy List. There seem to be 46 lectures.

However, just because these lectures are good or even better of their kind — I mean as lectures; classroom lectures are better in one respect. They allow the audience to ask for clarification and allow for criticism.

And, indeed, these internet lectures need clarifications and are subject to criticism.

I will offer one such criticism of the lecture on compatibilism.

Compatibilism is the thesis that determinism and free will are compatible claims. However, before even offering to clarify what is meant by “free will,” the lecturer moves rather quickly to the question of responsibility. These, as I see it, are distinct issues. By not offering a clarification of “free will,” the lecturer muddles the issue.

Doing something freely (or of one’s free will) is to be contrasted with being forced to do something by another person. This is the kind of freedom which is sought by all human beings, and is dramatically illustrated by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, screaming for freedom:

My primary concern is to stay alive, and I can do this if I am free (from someone) forbidding me from taking up subsistence land.

Imagine a person, Friday, on an island foraging for food. He is free from the commands, whims, and brute force of another person.

Then comes Robinson Crusoe who subdues Friday and shackles him to a tree. Friday is no longer free. He is shackled so his limbs are not free, and he is no longer free from the dictates of Crusoe.

What does this predicament of Friday have to do with whether all of this or any of this situation is determined by natural forces? Whether you are a determinist or an indeterminist in science, is irrelevant to Friday’s plight. In this sense, free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism because whether Friday is free from the whims of Crusoe is a different question.

Incidentally, this question of the freedom of some people from the dictates of others (which is at the bottom of the capitalist, socialist, and anarchist debates) is for some reason excluded from these internet lectures.

Responsibility

As to the question of responsibility, one could start with actual legal law. Take a case of one person being accussed of killing another person. In law this is called manslaughter, but whether this manslaughter warrants to be called murder is a complex matter. Even with murder the law makes a distinction of degrees.

There are two very enlightening articles on this topic written by John Austin: “A Plea for Excuses” and “Three Ways of Spilling Ink.”

Objection to my position

Someone may justifiably object to my criticism by claiming that it is an evasion from the problem as stated. Well, what is the problem as stated? In terms of the Friday/Crusoe situation, the question is whether Friday — before the entry of Crusoe on the scene — acts freely, in some other sense.

OK, I did not address myself to making sense of this question, and if the term “compatibilism” is used as an answer to this question, then when I used the term “compatibilism,” it was to answer a different question. Let us, then distinguish, “compatibilism (1)” for the former, and “compatibilism (2)” for the latter.

The core of philosophy is escaping from bullshit.

Many years ago, I wrote a review of a book on the history of philosophy in Ukraine: “Comments on Chyzhevs’kyi’s Historiography of Philosophy in Ukraine” (1982). In it I claimed that philosophy is a critical examination of a Weltanschauung. So, what is a Weltanschuung? And what is criticism?

A Weltanschuung is the sum of a person’s beliefs about the make-up of the universe, his beliefs about the social order, his views on what is credible, and his views on values. In short — using the technical jargon of philosophy — his views on metaphysics and ontology, his views on epistemology, his axiology, and his logic or way of reasoning.

All philosophers must be interested in doing this, if philosophy is indeed a critical examination of Weltanschauungs. Let us use W as an abbreviation for a Weltanschauung. And to connect with another related notion, let us equate a Weltanschauung with a Possible World.

Now, there are many Ws. How so? Well, religions and myths form a part of a W, and if we simply dwell on the number of religions and myths, that alone is enough to give us a few hundred Ws.

C. D. Broad divided philosophy into two parts: Critical and Speculative Philosophy. Using Broad’s classification of philosophy, Critical Philosophy is concerned with clarification and the rejection of errors. The fundamental errors are those of contradiction and incompatibility. I sum up these tasks by the phrase “escaping from bullshit.”

What is the relevance of philosophy for ordinary people?

I really know of only a few famous philosophers who dealt with this question. One was Bertrand Russell; another was Mortimer J. Adler.

Adler made an impression on me with the slogan: philosophy is everyone’s business, and with the book “How to Read a Book.” However, he had a particular religious and ethico-political agenda which — in my estimate — was wrong. But I think he was on the right track in espousing Aquinas’s (and Aristotle’s) dialectical method, in which actual and possible objections are raised and answered.

But, it is the views and topics of Bertrand Russell which have impressed me more — mainly because of their secular perspective. [They are not bogged down with a religious or pseudo-religious background.]

In the following essay, Russell distinguishes the problems of technical or academic philosophy, from the practical problems which everyone has, and whose solution calls for wisdom.

Read the second essay “Philosophy for Laymen” in Unpopular Essays, 1921.

The Problem: How to discern bullshit in philosophy?

One of my concerns is the existence of an enormous amount of philosophical writings, and the seeming lack of guidance in separating, as is said, the wheat from the chaff, or, truth and importance from bullshit. The situation is this. You go to a bookstore or a library to read some non-fiction . . . what should you read? One answer is: read a textbook. In fields where there is a discernable and agreed to progress, this is a wise suggestion. However, because of the proliferation of textbooks for economic reasons, there is also the problem — perhaps a minor one — of picking the best textbooks.

My field of study has been philosophy. And the situation in philosophy is — what can I say? — very fuzzy. There is, first, the problem of demarcating the field. In some bookstores, philosophy is cataloged together with religion and “new age” literature. Second, there is a vague demarcation between continental and analytic philosophy. Third, there is an avalanche of books and especially journal articles on philosophy. How does one sift through this avalanche of literature?

In 1994 I tried to do a kind of study of influences in philosophy. I was using the computer data bank of Philosopher’s Index, which has a category of “mentioned author.” So, I compiled a list of the 100 most “influential” (meaning, most mentioned) authors from roughly 1940 to 1994. You can look at my findings here.

The thing that struck me at the time — though I did not mention or pursue the problem — was that most articles were never mentioned or commented on. This is — what can I say? — weird, because philosophy, as I conceive it, should be dialectical, meaning that it should engage in critical discussions (dialogues).

This matter of ignoring philosophers and writings needs an explanation. And the only explanation that seems plausible is an economic one. The only job a philosopher qua philosopher can do is teach; so philosophers try to get teaching positions. Since there are more philosophers than teaching positions, there is a competition for jobs. And, other things being equal, what distinguished philosophers in the quantity and quality of their publications; hence, the avalanche of publications. The writings tend to be commentaries on famous philosophers, some are commentaries on contemporaries, and others offer some purported original insight.

Now, as a student of philosophy, how do I sift through this avalanche. One way is supposedly to take a course in philosophy. But, which course? given by whom?

Reading about schools of philosophy and philosophers, there was a tradition in the ancient and medieval world to flock to hear a distinguished philosopher. This was true in a small relatively homogenous community, such as the Athenian and Roman empires, and in the Latin scholarly world of the medieval world. One also reads of students flocking to hear Hegel or Heidegger in Germany.

But this flocking to hear a philosopher is now very rare. Who are you to read or listen to? About what? In 1986, Charles S. Yankoski made an effort to provide some guidance, but his experiment failed through lack of money and institutional support. Take a look at this effort here.

Place of Bullshit in Philosophy

Accepting or succumbing to bullshit is foolish; rejecting bullshit is wise.

The proposition above is an example of an appraisal, a value judgment. And what field of learning studies appraisals? According to the late philosopher Curt Ducasse, the primitive or basic subject studied by philosophy is precisely various appraisals. And the knowledge of the norms of appraisals is wisdom. A philosopher, on this line of reasoning, is a lover of — in the sense of a searcher after — wisdom, which happens to be the etymological description of philosophy.

However, knowing what wisdom is, does not make one wise. The reason is quite straightforward. Wisdom consists of knowing how to act A in given circumstances C, which can be expressed by the conditional statement.

If one is in circumstance C, one should act (or do) A.

Now, it is possible to know this rule or norm, but not know that one is in circumstance C, or not to have a clear idea of the circumstance C. But the difficulty in acting wisely is further complicated by the phenomenon called “weakness of the will.” In other words, although you know how you should act, you do not. You may be lazy, you may procrastinate, you may be pulled by some other desire, with the result, you fail to act at all, or you fail to act in a timely manner. My point is, that wisdom is one thing, and acting wisely is another. Philosophy, according to Ducasse, studies the nature of wisdom; it does not make you wise. Put otherwise, the necessary condition for acting wisely, is having wisdom. But having wisdom is not a sufficient condition for being wise.

See: C. J. Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science: Its Matter and Its Method, 1941.

Can we choose to believe?

“Escaping from bullshit,” in one important sense, is an elliptical expression for “escaping from bullshit beliefs.” But if you believe something, it seems that you don’t recognize it as a bullshit belief. If you did, you wouldn’t believe it. So, let us assume that there may be among your many beliefs some bullshit beliefs. Why make this assumption? Because you recognize that others have beliefs which are incompatible with your beliefs, and incompatible beliefs can’t be both true; so, one of you has to have some bullshit beliefs. Is it you?

Most of the beliefs we have we inherited from our culture. Others we obtained through observation, hearsay, and authority. It comes from listening to people we encounter, news sources, magazines, television, and now the internet.

So, if someone asks you why you believe what you do, you may answer that you learned about it from Bill, or you heard it on the radio, or you read about it on the internet, or it is in your sacred book.

The response may be: “OK, I understand the source of your information, but how do you know that this information is true?”

And instead of offering a justification for their belief, people sometimes say: “I choose to believe it.” And it is sometimes said to others: “You shouldn’t believe this,” or “you shouldn’t believe him.”

The implication is that you can choose to believe or not to believe. But, is it possible to choose to believe or not to believe?

A very detailed and insightful essay on this topic was written by William P. Alston, with the esoteric title, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification” (1988).

Assume that you are convinced by Pascal’s Wager that it is better to believe that God exists (in other words, you want to believe that God exists), but you don’t believe that God exists. Can you choose to believe that God exists?

pascalswager