The ‘transcendent significance’ of highfalutin bullshit

Abstract

The philosophical debate about bullshit has focused exclusively on what bullshitters say. In this paper, I suggest we should also pay attention to how they say what they say. In particular, we should look for what I propose to call highfalutin bullshit: the needless use of “big words” with manipulative intent, whether deceptive or otherwise—that is, an intent to influence the audience’s beliefs through means that bypass rational agency. First, I seek to explain its nature using Grice’s conversational maxims. As I show, all forms of bullshit philosophers have hitherto focused on can be analysed in terms of non-observance of Grice’s maxims under the categories of Quality, Quantity, and Relation. In contrast, highfalutin bullshit involves a manipulative non-observance, whether deceptive or otherwise, of Grice’s category of Manner and, specifically, the first maxim of Manner: “Avoid obscurity of expression.” After that, I respond to two arguments against my proposal. According to the first, “highfalutin bullshit” is just a new name for phenomena already described in the literature (e.g. obscurantism). According to the second, it is unclear why we should care about it. In response, I argue that highfalutin bullshit should be viewed as a form of bullshit in its own right, widespread and problematic. Finally, I contend that it is instructive to view highfalutin bullshit through the lens of argumentation theory, namely, as a means for masking or diverting attention away from argumentative bullshit.