Why I Choose Dr, Harry Frankfurt Over Ann Althouse (on the matter of the value of speech.)

To recap, Dr. Harry Frankfurt is a Princeton Professor of Philosophy, and author of what I consider to be the most import book of my lifetime; "On Bullshit."

Ann Althouse is a Law Professor at U. Wisconsin, a blogger, and a frequent contributor to bloggingheads.tv.


The link is to the argument at issue, here. Professor Althouse seems to be one of those "free speech," extremists. And she is allowed. I can't force her not to think what she thinks. However, and I am not trying to be too critical, but I think that sort of extremist free speech ideology is at best some kind of Pollyanna, Libertarian, unrealistic, pseudo principled crap. At worse, it's bullshit. And when I say bullshit, I mean bullshit, as Dr. Frankfurt would define it.


I will jump to that definition. Dr. Frankfurt takes the time in his book to establish the separate definitions for lie and bullshit. He makes a clear distinction between the two, mainly that the purpose of the lie is to get people to believe in something other than the actual truth. Bullshit, however, implies some conscious attempt to blur the difference between truth and falsity, and bullshitters, in doing so, are not merely misrepresenting the facts, but misrepresenting themselves and what they are doing.

I might not be doing a very good job of explaining this, so let me find a quote. The following, from the wiki article:

"[b]ullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and in general are unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of their statements (it is because of this that Frankfurt concedes that "the bullshitter is faking things", but that "this does not necessarily mean he gets them wrong"). While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are" (Frankfurt 61)."

Wikipedia -- On Bullshit.

(I have said this here before. Read the book. Everyone!)

Please take note of the quote from the good Professor, as he clearly articulates why I am not a free speech absolutist. There's too much bullshit. And bullshit is bad.

Particularly, it is people like Glenn Beck, and so many of the other people over there on FNC who are not really at all trying to participate in a constructive discussion of issues. Hell, they aren't even engaging in normal partisan warfare. They, primarily are infotainers who follow the one flag, but when it is all said and done, they are playing their own game for themselves.

I need not even get to the partisan points here. So much of what is passing (attempted to be passed off) as data from those people, really is not even argument but just plain nasty bullshit. And we do not need more of that, even if there is a market for that. There's a market for snuff films too.

Oh. And one other thing. Just because some ancient jurist spat out some seemingly to some, attractive sophistry (such as that quote in the bloggingheads clip about more free speech,) doesn't mean it's valid, or universally true. Lord knows, that one (if from a case) smacks of dicta.