Is Truth Dead

Is Truth Dead? Or, Experiment, History and Bullshit Nicholas Adams, University of Birmingham We do not live in a post-truth society. Or if we do, we have been doing so for some time, extending back into antiquity. Plato’s Republic (written around 380 BCE) is a work centrally concerned with the problem of ‘opinion’ and its relation to ‘knowledge’. Plato, writing in a period of political stress, and indeed shortly before his beloved city of Athens became eclipsed by a northern neighbour, famously tries to show how mere opinion can be cured by the pursuit of true knowledge. Plato’s Athens, like our Birmingham, was a city ruled by opinion, and Plato himself draws strong contrasts between ‘the philosopher’ (who seeks knowledge) and ‘the sophist’ (who deals in and is a manipulator of opinion). I shall claim we do not live in a post-truth society in 2017 CE (or no more than did Plato in 380 BCE), but we do inherit a tangle in which opinion and knowledge are powerful forces, and in which it is rather difficult in fact to decide who is a ‘philosopher’ and who is a ‘sophist’. My proposal today is that the question, ‘is truth dead?’ be tackled by asking three questions: (1) How do we resolve competing claims to truth? (2) How do we best try to understand one another’s claims to truth? (3) How do we resist bullshit? To answer these questions I call on three witnesses: Charles Peirce (1839-1914), R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943), and Harry Frankfurt (b. 1929). Peirce will help us sort out some tangles about competing claims; Collingwood will help us with understanding what others’ claims mean; and Frankfurt will help us distinguish bullshit from lies. The Four Ways (tenacity, authority, a priori and experiment) Our first witness is C.S. Peirce, a chemist, astronomer, mathematician and logician. 1 Peirce’s essay ‘The Fixation of Belief’ (1877) has as one of its aims the production of a taxonomy of beliefs. He raises the question of what we do when our beliefs are challenged. This is a practical question: it concerns the actions we pursue. Peirce sets up a system of classification of ‘feelings’ or ‘sensations’ or ‘states’: they are divided into ‘beliefs’ (which ‘guide our desires and shape our actions’) and ‘doubts’ (which ‘irritate’ us and set us on a quest for ‘belief’). In this account, beliefs are the backdrop to our actions; and doubts are disturbances to this backdrop. It is your belief that ‘Paradigms of Belief’ meets at 1pm on a Thursday that shaped your action in coming to this lecture. But had you walked into an empty lecture hall this belief would have been disturbed; it would have been swiftly transformed into a doubt; and you would have been – in Peirce’s sense, and perhaps others – ‘irritated’. Peirce’s central question is: what then? When beliefs are disturbed; when they become doubts; when you become irritated: then begins ‘a struggle to attain a state of belief’. And Peirce is curious to investigate what kind of struggle this might be. For there are several possibilities, and some are more common than others. Peirce is not Plato. Plato (in the analogy of the divided line) famously sought knowledge (noesis) rather than opinion (pistis), and this is knowledge of Forms rather than opinion about visible things. Peirce is explicitly concerned with opinion, and readily embraces the limitations of opinion that are a source of anxiety for Plato: especially the fact that our reasonings lead to probabilities rather than certainties. Peirce is not Descartes. Descartes (in Meditations) commended a method of doubt in which only those ideas which are ‘clear and distinct’ (these have technical meanings for him) survive. Peirce (in ‘How to make our ideas clear’) has alternative recommendations concerning clarity. In the essay we are considering now (‘The Fixation of Belief’) Peirce casts doubt on such a method of doubt. Sure we should doubt things, but such doubt is for Peirce the product of irritation. Your ability to write something down on paper and doubt it is no reason to doubt it. Peirce teaches us to distinguish between ‘real doubts’ and mere ‘paper doubts’, and urges us not to squander effort on the latter. The issue is doubt. And our concern is what to do about it. And Peirce’s answer is: ‘get rid of it’. How shall we get rid of doubt? That is an excellent question, and this essay is Peirce’s diagnosis of different ways of eliminating doubt. But the point is to get rid of it. And Peirce insists that once one has got rid of doubt, that is enough. A belief is established or re-established and we return to a state in which our desires are guided and our actions are shaped by beliefs. So how do we get rid of doubt? Peirce offers a taxonomy of what I shall call, with apologies to the Angelic Doctor, ‘The Four Ways’. The first is what Peirce names ‘the method of tenacity’. Peirce notes that it is common to take an answer to a question and ‘constantly reiterate it to ourselves’. 2 Keep repeating it and you will believe it. Read media that reinforces your beliefs. And in argument just hold on to your beliefs, come what may. Peirce concedes that it cannot be ‘denied that a steady and immovable faith yields great peace of mind’. (Notice that Peirce names this a ‘method’. You might say, ‘That’s not a method. That’s a bloke in the pub!’ But for Peirce it is indeed a method. It is not merely a way of doing things. It has a logic, and it even has reasons – which can be specified.) [Demonstrate the method of tenacity with two volunteers] What’s wrong with tenacity? Principally: it does not work. Peirce does not mean that we will fail to convince others of our opinions. He does not mean that it is not effective in changing other people’s minds. Peirce means that it does not work for us. It is our beliefs (not others’) that are in the frame. The method of tenacity does not enable us to hold on to our beliefs. Why is this? Because, says Peirce, we are social. We engage in conversation with others. Now other people have different opinions from ours. And ‘in some saner moment’ and it is bound to occur to us that these different opinions as are good as ours. Peirce insists that this is a crucial ‘step’ (for this is a question of ‘method’). To acknowledge that others’ thoughts challenge our own enables better thinking. It is more than that, however. Peirce quickly changes his mind, somewhat. It is not just the luck of a ‘saner moment’. It has a deeper basis, in ‘an impulse too strong in man to be suppressed, without danger of destroying the human species’. This was written in 1877 – 140 years ago, when Peirce was 38. But it is striking that Peirce is diagnosing a set of problems which are quite contemporary in 2017. Keep repeating things. Only read media which reinforces our opinions. Hold on to our opinions come what may. This is all too familiar to us. But something has arguably changed over those 140 years. This ‘method’ is diagnosed by Peirce because, he says, it does not work. And it does not work because we are social. But what if we become less ‘social’ in Peirce’s sense? What if those ‘saner moments’ are less frequent? What if the ‘impulse in man’ actually can be suppressed, to a degree? These are not imaginary questions for us. They describe rather well our current political crisis. The second is the method of authority. In this method, it is not the individual who repeats opinions, limits media and holds on to beliefs. It is the state or the church. It is an old method, Peirce says. It means taking control of education and it also means a good deal of cruelty where ordinary people resist it. And sometimes extreme measures are called for. ‘When complete agreement could not otherwise be reached, a general massacre of all who have not thought in a certain way has proved a very effective means of settling opinion in a country. [Demonstrate the method of authority with two volunteers] 3 Here we see that Peirce’s diagnoses are horribly familiar. We should not kid ourselves that it is governments that are the problem. Sure, it is part of the political toolkit to repeat ‘messages’ until they are believed, and there are certainly countries where education is locked down and media is restricted. But we should think about how global corporations shape our beliefs. Why is there a ‘large’ popcorn at the cinema? Hardly anyone buys it. It’s so large you can hardly carry it. It exists because we will buy the ‘medium’ popcorn. Why? Because we habitually choose the middle way. Why is there ‘low fat’ yoghurt in the supermarket? It is stuffed full of calories. Because a focus on fat will distract you from the sugar. ‘Low fat’ was a marketing strategy by sugar companies in the 1960s. And the Harvard study of nutrition, which promoted low fat diets, was paid for by the Sugar Research Foundation. It changed how we think 50 years ago and is arguably the most successful piece of paid-for research ever undertaken. https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/12/sugar-industry-harvard-research/ (this link is from a news source associated with the Boston Globe). These days corporations have other clever tools, such as astroturfing. If you’ve never heard of it, you should read this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing But we should admit, without excuses, that we are happy to provide these services of authority to ourselves. Facebook and other social media has provided us with a bubble [Show SNL sketch ‘The Bubble’ from Nov 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOb-kmOgpI]. We don’t need governments and corporations to impose the method of authority. We willingly submit to it. Peirce affirms that the method of authority is superior to the method of tenacity. It has greater success, historically, and indeed many of the most impressive products of human civilization are products of the method of authority. And Peirce concedes that ‘For the mass of mankind, then, there is perhaps no better method than this. If it is their highest impulse to be intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to remain’. This is a harsh judgement, and tells you quite a lot about Peirce’s opinion of ordinary people. What’s wrong with the method of authority? It is unable to make pronouncements on everything. It must focus on the important things and let people make their own mind up about the rest. But ‘the rest’ is always related to ‘the important things’ and it will not be long before some people ‘put two and two together’, he says, and their opinions on one matter will impinge on what they think about matters regulated by those in authority. 4 And as in the case of individuals, so in the case of states. My state may insist on this or that doctrine. But other states insist on different doctrines. These different doctrines appear just as well founded as our own. And so some means must be found to decide between them. The third is the a priori method. Under this method we listen to reason. In such a picture the world is ordered by reason and we need merely attune ourselves to that order. There are many versions of this approach but, for Peirce, they all involve closing our eyes and thinking great metaphysical thoughts. The method is one in which we entertain thoughts and judge which of them are ‘agreeable to reason’. A priori means reasoning without paying attention to experience. [Demonstrate this method with two volunteers.] This method is superior to the other two because it involves thinking. Thinking is something that Peirce is strongly in favour of. What is wrong with the way of rationalism? Its failure is the most spectacular of the three methods so far surveyed. When philosophers sit down, close their eyes, and think great metaphysical thoughts, each produces an account according to reason. But, alas, they are all different. This method produces no harmony of thinking: quite the opposite. And because my opponent holds a different view, and because my view is clearly produced ‘by reason’, I have no choice but to denounce my opponent as lacking reason. This is a serious matter. In the method of tenacity I just refuse to agree with my opponent. In the way of rationalism I must denounce your rational faculties. The fourth is the way of scientific experiment. In this method one forms hypotheses as to what might be true, and one constructs experiments to test them. It is, for Peirce, the best method (although the others have advantages in some respects – these are worth looking for in the final pages of his essay). The philosophical task he sets for himself is to specify the logic which guides the formation of hypotheses and that which guides experimentation. But that is a matter for another day. We are concerned for now with the matter of how beliefs become doubts, and how doubts become beliefs. The experimental method is a way to transmute doubts (real doubts – not paper doubts) into beliefs. [Demonstrate the experimental method with two volunteers] The clear advantage of scientific experiment is that we discover quickly when we are wrong. And having discovered that, we can take measures to correct ourselves. Let us review the ‘four ways’: tenacity, authority, a priori, experiment. They are all ways to handle doubt, and they all have their adherents. We can put them to another use, however. This is the business of resolving disagreements. It is not just a matter of us having our beliefs and others having their beliefs. And it is not just a matter of 5 this fact throwing some of our beliefs into doubt. It is also a matter of disagreements and how to resolve them. Each of our four ways yields possibilities for resolving disagreements. ‘This is just how I see it.’ ‘This is the teaching of the Church.’ ‘Any reasonable person will agree.’ ‘Let us formulate relevant rival hypotheses and test them.’ It is not clear (at least to me) that we would never utter any and each of these claims. And as a theologian, I can imagine uttering the second – ‘this is the teaching of the Church’ – quite frequently, at least in certain circumstances. This will create some instructive difficulties when I am talking to Jews and Muslims, for example – and this is very close to the kind of pressure that Peirce has in mind when he assesses the short-comings of the method of authority. But the question of inter-religious encounter, in relation to the question of truth, is again a matter for another day. Question and Answer Peirce’s ‘four ways’ presuppose that we understand another’s beliefs, especially another’s beliefs that contradict my own. This, I think, we cannot take for granted. Many arguments rest fundamentally on two parties not understanding each other. And many others rest fundamentally on intentionally misunderstanding each other, as when in debate one party tactically misrepresents another’s claims. But we are concerned with truth, and whether it is dead. More specifically, we are trying to answer the question, ‘do we live in a post-truth society?’ Suppose we want to understand each other. How do we do that? There are many possible approaches to this question. It is urgent, because we know quite well that often we argue with each other without trying to understand what we are arguing against. Suppose we want to do better. What then? Our second witness is the British philosopher R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943). Like Peirce, he is a minority figure in the philosophical canon. And like Peirce he deserves to be in the front rank. Unlike Peirce, who was trained as a Chemist and who practised as an astronomer and mathematician, Collingwood was an historian. 6 This is interesting for those concerned with questions of method. The European philosophical tradition was in the late 1700s presented with several disciplines whose practices could serve is criteria for truth. There were two front runners. First was natural philosophy, especially in the form developed by Galileo (1564-1642), Isaac Newton (1642-1726), Robert Boyle (1727-1791) and others. Second, there was the writing of histories, especially as developed by Giambattista Vico (16881744), Voltaire (1694-1778), David Hume (1711-1776) and others. The distinction between what we now call ‘science’ and ‘history’ is largely a distinction between their methods for drawing generalities out of particular cases. Newton’s ‘laws’ and Hume’s remarks about ‘human nature’ are good examples of the products of those methods. Peirce’s habits of thought are scientific, which is visible even from our one essay in his concern with experiment, which occupies the privileged final place in his taxonomy of methods for responding to real doubts. Collingwood’s habits are historical, and are a product of his training and experience as an historian and archaeologist of Roman Britain. Collingwood’s philosophical proposals, like those of Peirce, are a product of his discipline-specific training and expertise. Our text is a chapter, ‘Question and Answer’ from his autobiography, published in 1938 just before he was fifty years old. He was roughly the same age as I am: an observation which rightly produces instant humility. Collingwood begins with the puzzle of the Albert Memorial. 7 The puzzle, which emerged from Collingwood’s daily walk to work, was its ugliness. Or, in Collingwood’s arresting description, its being ‘visibly mis-shapen, corrupt, crawling, verminous’. Collingwood’s question is, ‘what was Gilbert Scott doing when he made it?’ Now it is possible that Scott was incompetent. It is also possible that some people think it is beautiful. (However, if you visit the official web-site for Kensington Gardens, you will find that the monument is described as ‘most ornate’, ‘one of the grandest high-Victorian gothic extravaganzas anywhere’, ‘exquisitely carved’ and – my favourite – ‘fantastic’. These descriptions are quite compatible with Collingwood’s own.) Collingwood is a self-critical thinker. He dismisses the questions about competence and taste. They do not answer the question, ‘what was Gilbert Scott doing?’ The charge of incompetence dismisses the question entirely, because it supposes that Scott really did not know what he was doing. And the observation about taste likewise dismisses the question, because if it is beautiful the problem of what Scott was doing does not arise. The thing is ugly. It is ugly wugly. Once one grapples with this fact, one has to ask, and urgently, ‘what was Gilbert Scott doing?’ Collingwood does not answer this question. He does not say so explicitly but the question is formidably difficult to answer: we do not know what the architect was trying to do, because he never told anyone. Or at least, no record of his intentions is available. Or at least, no such record was available to or consulted by Collingwood. But it is a good question. If one knows what Gilbert Scott was doing, one can better understand how the Albert Memorial is a product of those intentions. The Albert Memorial is the answer to a question. We know the answer: it is the Albert Memorial. But we do not know the question. Collingwood urges us to consider this matter. 8 Now it is a commonplace in philosophy to suppose that a body of knowledge consists of certain elements, commonly called ‘propositions’, ‘statements’, ‘judgments’ and so on. Collingwood affirms this list but insists it is incomplete. A body of knowledge is indeed these things, but only in so far as they are taken together with the questions to which such utterances are answers. In other words, taking Plato again as our example, to find Republic (and in particular the analogy of the divided line) meaningful, one needs to understand not only its claims, but also the questions to which those claims are the answers. This has deep consequences. It is common in theology to find two figures who appear to say the same thing. For example both Augustine and Bonaventure claim that we know God through ‘divine illumination’. One can understand their ‘propositions’, ‘statements’ and ‘judgments’ through study. But proper study of their work, as done for example by Lydia Schumacher in Divine Illumination, reveals (although only after patient investigation) that Augustine and Bonaventure are asking quite different questions. And so the fact that their ‘answers’ are the same, namely, ‘we know God through divine illumination’, becomes a problem. Their answers are the same, but their questions are different. If we ask two different questions, can they have the same answer? They cannot. If I ask ‘can I do this?’ and ‘should I do this?’, I might well answer ‘yes’, but the ‘yes’ is not the same in each case. One is a ‘yes’ of ability. The other is a ‘yes’ of morality. Of course in everyday speech we might say, ‘I give the same answer to both questions’. But where the questions are different, it is not at all clear that the answers can meaningfully be the same. Suppose I say, ‘Peter is an idiot’. It really matters what the question is. If the question is, ‘can I trust Peter with this task?’, the answer, ‘Peter is an idiot’ is a version of ‘no, you cannot’. But if the question is, ‘Is Peter still my friend, because he just sent me the most offensive email?’, the answer, ‘Peter is an idiot’, is a version of ‘Yes, he is your friend’. Collingwood’s logic of question and answer is a logic in which claims must be taken together with the questions to which they are answers. He notices that this has deep consequences for the idea of contradiction, or – as it is sometimes named – the law of non-contradiction. If you hold your nose and look this up on Wikipedia you will find this: It states that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time, e.g. the two propositions "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive. Collingwood identifies the problem with ‘in the same sense’. If this is construed as a the meaning of the terms, then there are cases where it is false. ‘Peter is an idiot’ is a nice example. The meaning of ‘idiot’ is the same in both examples I gave. But if it 9 is construed as the meaning of the statement in conjunction with the question to which it is an answer, then it is true. But that means that ‘the meaning of the statement’ is bound up with the question to which it is an answer, and that question is rarely stated explicitly. The job of identifying the question is the job of the one trying to understand the claim. It can be seen how significant this is for understanding each other’s claims. Collingwood’s lesson is that it is not enough to try to understand each other’s utterances. That is an incomplete task. We must understand each other’s utterances together with the questions to which they are answers. How does this help us with the question of truth? It helps us see that judging the truth of what another says is inseparable from guessing at the question to which such speech is an answer. We can ask of someone’s claim: ‘is it true?’ But we cannot judge yes or no before we ask of someone’s claim: ‘what question are they answering?’ Consider the question of Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE It is a nice example of people’s utterances being answers to questions (in this case, a trick question). And it is a nice example of a problem in public perceptions of truth. It is also spiteful. The audience is invited to laugh at hapless ordinary folk. But Kimmel does not trust the audience at all. He has carefully to explain – in a laboured way - that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are the same before we cut to the video. The clear implication is that the audience who is invited to laugh at ignorant ordinary folk is itself made up of ignorant ordinary folk. Something is not quite right, here. To combine Peirce’s ‘four ways’ with Collingwood’s ‘logic of question and answer’ provides us with some powerful intellectual technology. If we are concerned with challenges to our beliefs, or if we are determined to discover what questions others (with their rival beliefs) are answering, we have some useful tools. But in these cases the problems concern rival beliefs (Peirce) or different questions (Collingwood). What if the problem is different? What if the question of truth does not arise? What if the problem is Bullshit Let us call our third witness: Harry Frankfurt. 10 Frankfurt’s On Bullshit was originally an article published in 1986 in Raritan, a literary journal, and then republished by Princeton University Press in 2005 as a very short and very small book. It was on the New York Times Bestseller list for some weeks. Frankfurt investigates three related terms to describe actions: lying, humbug and bullshit. And the text compares their orientation to truth with subsidiary interest in the notions of correctness and sincerity. The motivating problem (the ‘real doubt’, in Peirce’s terms, or the question to which the book is an answer, in Collingwood’s) is: ‘what is the bullshit, of which there is so much?’ Frankfurt takes it for granted (and explicitly assumes that his reader takes it for granted) that are lives are beset with bullshit. But he is, in medieval terms, a good existentialist. He knows that there is bullshit and now pursues the question of what it is. The heart of the discussion is a distinction between the liar and the bullshitter. This is a noteworthy shift of emphasis from the product (lies and bullshit) to the producer (liars and bullshitters). What distinguishes them is their orientation to truth. Liars know the truth, and care about it, but are concerned to misrepresent it. The object of liars is for their targets to believe a falsehood. To lie (as opposed to inadvertently uttering a falsehood) is to try to bring about belief in a falsehood. Liars do not believe this falsehood. Indeed they both do not believe it and know they do not believe it. That is what makes a liar a liar. Bullshitters do not care about the truth. The purposes of the bullshitter are many and varied and might include trying to construct an impression (‘see I am like this’) or persuading you to do something (‘buy this shiny thing’). So long as the object constructs the intended impression or performs the desired action, it does not matter whether the utterances are true or false. Honest folk and liars are, alike, concerned with the truth, and know what is true and what is false. Bullshitters, in distinction to both the honest and dishonest, are not concerned with the truth and may not even know whether their own claims are true or false. They do not care either way, so long as the goal is achieved. Frankfurt raises a deeper issue towards the end of the discussion about the question of sincerity. Liars are not sincere and know they are not sincere. In the words of an old wit, ‘sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made’. Are bullshitters insincere? Frankfurt makes his most worrying suggestion right at the end. It is possible that bullshitters are quite sincere. Because the question of truth or falsity does not arise, they might genuinely believe what they say (albeit in a way that more deeply does not really care either way). Frankfurt interestingly tries to render this observation less worrying by noting that we are obscure to ourselves; and because sincerity means conveying clarity about that 11 self, sincerity is itself bullshit. But it seems to me that the deeper observation is much more troubling than this. Yes it is bad to claim clarity about what is irremediably obscure. But it is surely worse (much worse, even) simultaneously to believe one’s claims and not care about their truth or falsity. What does it even mean to believe something and yet not care about its truth? Bullshit presents a formidable challenge to our discussions of belief-doubt-belief (Peirce) and of question-and-answer (Collingwood). In Peirce’s case there are doubts. And in Collingwood’s case there are questions. But in the case of bullshit there is neither doubt nor question. There is the possibility of belief without caring about its truth, and of unfaked sincerity indifferent to falsehoods. At around the same time that On Bullshit was republished as a book, the comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term ‘truthiness’. This connotes a willingness to form a belief because something ‘feels true’ regardless of its truth, and where the ‘feeling that it is true’ obstructs any investigation that might confirm or challenge the truth of the belief. This has something in common with Peirce’s account of the method of tenacity: one holds on to a belief come what may. Over ten years on, Colbert was prompted by the rise of support for Donald Trump to introduce a new, contrasting, term: ‘Trumpiness’. Truthiness is believing something that feels true. Even if it isn’t supported by fact. … Truthiness comes from the gut. … Truthiness has to feel true. But Trumpiness doesn’t even have to do that. In fact, ‘Many Trump supporters don’t believe his wildest promises – and they don’t care’. … And, if he doesn’t, ever, have to mean what he says, that means he can say anything. … Truthiness was from the gut. But Trumpiness clearly comes from much lower down the gastrointestinal tract. … His supporters know this. His supporters aren’t dumb. … These legitimately angry voters don’t need a leader to say things that are true, or feel true. They need a leader to feel things that feel feels. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqOTxl3Bsbw) The reference to the lower intestine makes the link to bullshit clearly enough, but the discussion adds two additional layers to Frankfurt’s analysis. First, as well as the bullshitter’s indifference to truth, this species of bullshit not believed by those hearing it (it is the supporters’ ‘not caring’ about truth, in Colbert’s quotation from the Washington Post). The indifference to truth is shared by bullshitter and bullshitted alike. Second, the bullshit is not the representation of a person at all (whether sincere or insincere) or instrumental towards some end, but the evocation of ‘feels’ (echoing perhaps the colloquial ‘all the feels’). Both bullshitter and bullshitted are alike vessels of something else. The question of belief itself evaporates. It is a ‘yes’ not of assent but of ecstasy. In this case it is, Colbert suggests, an ecstasy of rage. 12 For Frankfurt, bullshitters do not care about truth. For Colbert, things are worse: neither party cares about truth and indeed does not ‘care’ at all, but feels. Surely my claim that we do not live in a post-truth world here comes to grief and is utterly shipwrecked. Surely if the question of belief, and indeed the question of questions, is out of the frame, then things have gone quite mad and the discussion is ended. To any who are tempted by this conclusion I suggest: you are feeling things that feel feels. With respect, yours is an ecstasy of despair not so far distant from that ecstasy of rage. Frankfurt begins his discussion, ‘One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share’. This is a persuasive claim because it is limited in extent: ‘there is so much bullshit’. Yes there is. The question, not asked by Frankfurt, but now urgent given the possibility of ‘Trumpism’, is less ‘what is this bullshit?’ so much as ‘where is this bullshit?’ This is, with Collingwood, a question that invites an answer and, with Peirce, a doubt that stimulates an inquiry. If the answer to ‘where is this bullshit’ is ‘it is everywhere’, then we are indeed in grave danger. But only if the answer to the question, ‘what else is there besides bullshit?’ is ‘there is nothing else’ can we enjoy our ecstasy of despair. And besides, this entire lecture would have to be bullshit. It is not, and this is because of certain formal features it displays. Claims are made; they are tied to specific texts; the truth of these claims is asserted; and you are furnished with the resources to test them. But perhaps a more limited claim will still support the contention that we live in a post-truth world. Let us say, ‘all politics is bullshit without remainder’. But even this is not defensible. The claim is a cry of pain and, like all such cries, commands our attention and invites an act of healing. But the pain is caused, perhaps, by the discovery that ordinary people are swayed by stories not by facts; ordinary folk are more impressed by narratives than by statistics. Well yes, of course. Plato said as much in ancient Athens. The Advertising Standards Authority (https://www.asa.org.uk) has the authority to demand that false advertising (that is, lies) be removed from display or broadcast. There are sanctions for those who refuse to comply. Newspapers that publish falsehoods (wittingly or unwittingly) can be compelled under libel laws to publish corrections or, again, face sanctions. Their existence is testimony to truth in a sense that is relevant to our guiding question. It is true that the new Republican dominated Congress attempted, openly, to reduce the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, the body that reviews allegations of 13 misconduct against members of the House of Representatives. But it is also true that they abandoned this attempt. This failed attempt is also relevant testimony to truth. There are no legal sanctions for those who painted false claims on the side of a red bus during the Brexit vote. That is true. It is quite possible that many of those who celebrated it ‘did not believe and did not care’ (to quote Colbert on Trumpism). But surely this is best cast as a a question of the location and extent of bullshit, not of its universal victory. There is work to do. A lot. But so long as it can be identified (as Frankfurt does) and its increasing intensity named (as Colbert does) we are still in the business of asking questions (with Collingwood) and of launching inquiries (with Peirce). We are quite possibly ‘in danger of destroying the human species’ (Peirce). Our institutions, including the university, are gravely threatened. But until they are gone… 14