Book Ordered: "On Bullshit"
Cyrus Bina, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Minnesota, and a member of Economists for Peace and Security. He is currently a visiting scholar at UCLA. This link (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JJ09Dj02.html) is to his a paper prepared for an invited keynote presentation at an international conference, entitled Globalization and Fluid Politics, November 1-2, 2008, to be held at Gothenberg University, Sweden. Dr Bina is an economic nerd, and his paper is classically academic. I find his analysis of the public discourse concerning oil and the Iraq war to be refreshingly accurate. As is, I believe, his recognition of unrelated axiomatic (or fictional) construction, using the concept which H G Frankfurt, the author of On Bullshit, calls, "bullshit".
Bina decribes his own discovery of this book as follows:
"I was particularly interested in a meaningful category that would adequately describe the anti-war writings on oil and their purported linkage to the question of war.
"This question was on my mind till one day, in 2005, when I came across in a bookstore a stack of petite volumes titled On Bullshit. Thumbing through the tiny pages, the author's brief description on the back-page reassured the skeptical reader: "Harry G Frankfurt, renowned moral philosopher, is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University." This was a godsend, I thought as I gave a quick read of the first few pages, and realized this is what I have long been seeking for the streamlining of my otherwise long-handed criticism of the "market typology" and my long-drawn-out dissatisfaction with neoclassical competition as embraced by nearly all textboooks on microeconomics and industrial organization.
"More importantly, I noticed that this book offers an apt category for depiction of nearly all recent writings on oil and war, whose relevance to the context and whose competence on the issues are suspect. I have been writing for nearly four decades on this subject, and only belatedly realized that I need a serious sui generis category - a shorthand - for identification of these writings and utterances; writings and utterances that are steeped in circular reasoning; that are devoid of historical periodization and replete with the panoramic fakery - in both academic and popular literature on oil, war, globalization and hegemony.
"In this 67-page gem of a book, the author remarked: "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. ... [Thus] the liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values." By contrast, Frankfurt rightfully insisted that "[f]or 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 the liar are ..."
"The author then went on: "his focus is panoramic rather than particular. ... He is prepared, so far as required, to fake the context as well." And finally a gentle reminder by the author: "Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent."
"Bullshit" indeed seemed to have been the accurate description of what I have painstakingly encountered in the mainstream as well as heterodox economic literature on oil in recent decades. I have written well over half a million words (and spoken four times that) to expose the faulty methodology and the lack of concern for truth concerning the epochal transformation and globalization of oil by the conservative, liberal and radical economists; and by international relations academics.
"In the majority of writings in these literatures, the preemption of truth has been accomplished by absolute lack of concern for contextual reality. The writers often resorted to axiomatic reasoning - not as an abstraction from complexities of the truth but abstraction from the truth itself - in order to justify their models - rather circularly. They preferred to hang on to the bygone colonial era, under the International Petroleum Cartel (1928-1973), and to force the out-of-the-context revival of this anachronism upon the present reality of global oil.
"That's why - before setting the context - I decided to insert the word "bullshit" in the subtitle and throughout this article - not as a sign of disrespect or put-down - but as a sui generis category of immeasurable value in order to accurately classify the enormous body of the popular writings on oil , war, and hegemony. "
Bina decribes his own discovery of this book as follows:
"I was particularly interested in a meaningful category that would adequately describe the anti-war writings on oil and their purported linkage to the question of war.
"This question was on my mind till one day, in 2005, when I came across in a bookstore a stack of petite volumes titled On Bullshit. Thumbing through the tiny pages, the author's brief description on the back-page reassured the skeptical reader: "Harry G Frankfurt, renowned moral philosopher, is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University." This was a godsend, I thought as I gave a quick read of the first few pages, and realized this is what I have long been seeking for the streamlining of my otherwise long-handed criticism of the "market typology" and my long-drawn-out dissatisfaction with neoclassical competition as embraced by nearly all textboooks on microeconomics and industrial organization.
"More importantly, I noticed that this book offers an apt category for depiction of nearly all recent writings on oil and war, whose relevance to the context and whose competence on the issues are suspect. I have been writing for nearly four decades on this subject, and only belatedly realized that I need a serious sui generis category - a shorthand - for identification of these writings and utterances; writings and utterances that are steeped in circular reasoning; that are devoid of historical periodization and replete with the panoramic fakery - in both academic and popular literature on oil, war, globalization and hegemony.
"In this 67-page gem of a book, the author remarked: "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. ... [Thus] the liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values." By contrast, Frankfurt rightfully insisted that "[f]or 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 the liar are ..."
"The author then went on: "his focus is panoramic rather than particular. ... He is prepared, so far as required, to fake the context as well." And finally a gentle reminder by the author: "Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent."
"Bullshit" indeed seemed to have been the accurate description of what I have painstakingly encountered in the mainstream as well as heterodox economic literature on oil in recent decades. I have written well over half a million words (and spoken four times that) to expose the faulty methodology and the lack of concern for truth concerning the epochal transformation and globalization of oil by the conservative, liberal and radical economists; and by international relations academics.
"In the majority of writings in these literatures, the preemption of truth has been accomplished by absolute lack of concern for contextual reality. The writers often resorted to axiomatic reasoning - not as an abstraction from complexities of the truth but abstraction from the truth itself - in order to justify their models - rather circularly. They preferred to hang on to the bygone colonial era, under the International Petroleum Cartel (1928-1973), and to force the out-of-the-context revival of this anachronism upon the present reality of global oil.
"That's why - before setting the context - I decided to insert the word "bullshit" in the subtitle and throughout this article - not as a sign of disrespect or put-down - but as a sui generis category of immeasurable value in order to accurately classify the enormous body of the popular writings on oil , war, and hegemony. "