David B. Calhoun’s Blog

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1. To be infinite is not to be limited by anything.
2. Either space is all that exists, or there exists something else X.
3. If space is all that exists, then necessary it is not limited by anything else and 3b. therefore space is infinite (from 1).
4. If space is not all that exists, then it might possibly be limited by something else X.

Frankfurt wrote this as a fairly short essay, and as such it’s not really worth it to buy it on its own (for the price). I would recommend getting “The Importance of What We Care About”, which is a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”. Get it especially if you think you’ll be reading more Frankfurt. His style is very readable compared to other academic analytic philosophers, so I’d recommend it.

I’ve read a couple of user reviews and some people come off disappointed, either thinking this essay to be an academic joke or itself bullshit. I don’t think it’s either. If the main focus of philosophy is to love truth, then this book seriously contributes to that cause. If you’re interested in truth, you can’t ignore this book. And just Frankfurt’s name alone means, if you’re interested in contemporary philosophical discussions, you can’t ignore this book. Frankfurt is one of the leading academic philosophers today, and is famously known for his “Frankfurt counterexamples” to a particular theory of free will.

The main motivation for Frankfurt writing this essay is what he sees to be “the prevalence of bullshit” in the world today (this alone should make you think it’s a serious study, not a joke.. since why would he want to contribute to the problem of the prevalence of bullshit with more bullshit?). But what exactly is bullshit? He admits there has been no serious study of the meaning of the word. So it’s clear from the beginning this is very much an analytic essay, the focus of which will be on breaking down the meaning of bullshit and distinguishing it from what it is not.

So what is bullshit? To answer this question, the essay starts with an examination of an earlier essay by Max Black, “The Prevalence of Humbug??�, and assumes for the sake of the paper that humbug and BS are similar. Black describes two features of humbug are that 1) “it is short of lying??� and 2) “those who perpetrate it misrepresent themselves in a certain way??�. Frankfurt thinks both features to be also true of bullshit, but finds Black’s description of both to be “significantly off the mark??�. The remainder of his paper offers, along with examples of bullshit, an improved account of mainly the first of these two features.

Frankfurt’s improved account of bullshit as being “short of lying??� is that while the lier knows the truth but deceives in telling a falsity, the bullshitter has no concern for either truth or falsity – the concern of the bullshitter is just to bluff their way through, resulting in something that is not false but phony. So bullshit is not the same as lying.

Frankfurt ends the paper concluding that the increase of bullshit today is due to the increase in communication, which results in more people being required to speak on subjects they know little to nothing about. Thus these people must bluff or bullshit their way through (some user reviews here on Amazon.com support this). Frankfurt ends the paper with a short paragraph accusing skepticism in its various forms as one of the reasons there is an increase in bullshit in the world today.

I like the essay - it is something very much concerned with Truth. If I taught an introduction course in philosophy, this might even be one of the first essays I would assign. This essay on its own gives a reason to study philosophy, which is concerned with the truth, rather than simply go through life bullshitting and not being concerned with the truth at all.

What in the essay do I disagree with? As it turns out, very little. It’s hard to disagree with much in this essay (maybe others would find this easier to do than me), but I do have issues with one of the last paragraphs, where Frankfurt claims that skepticism is one of the reasons for the increase in bullshit today. I know this isn’t supposed to be a fully worked out argument, just a passing thought, but I really can’t think of any bullshit that has as its (even distant) cause skepticism. So I’m a bit suspicious of this argument.

In closing, I do recommend that anyone living in the world today who is concerned with Truth read this book. And if you think you might be interested in reading more, then instead of this $10 single essay, pick up Frankfurt’s “The Important of What We Care About”, a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”.

I’ve been reading Coppleston’s History of Philosophy, specifically the first volume detailing some of the Pre-Socratics. I’ve just read the section on Parmenides and Melissus and came across the concept of “the infinite” again.

Melissus takes issue with Parmenides’s concept of being. Parmenides said that Being is finite (spacially, according to Coppleston), but Melissus argues that Being is infinite, for to be finite is to be limited by something else. But outside of Being, this “something else”, there is nothing at all. So how can nothing limit Being? We must say that Being is, literally, limited by nothing. Therefore Being must be infinite, contrary to Parmenides’s opinion.

This same sort of concept of the infinite comes up again in Modern Philosophy with Spinoza, who argues that substance is not only independent (by definition), but infinite (Ethics, Proposition VIII). Roughly, this is because if it were not infinite, it would be finite, which is to be limited by something. Not only limited by something, but something of its own kind, which is to say this “limiting thing” must share an attribute with the thing it’s limiting. But this is absurd, since in Spinoza’s philosophy no two substances can share the same attribute (Ethics, Proposition V). Therefore, he says, substance must be not only =def independent, but also infinite.

These seem to be the same definitions of “the infinite”, namely:
Something is infinite =def when it is not limited by anything.

This is a rough definition, but in each argument something more specifically like the following is posited:
Something is infinite =def when it is not limited by any second thing.

On first glance this appears to be the same as the first definition. If it appears that way to you, then good, I am just at the point where I can reveal my question: Is it possible for something to limit itself? Put another way, is it possible, without any second thing, for something to limit itself?

It seems that we would have to answer in the affirmative. Otherwise we might be lead to saying some pretty absurd things. For instance, when I say the table in front of me is finite, on this classic Melissus/Spinoza account I would have to be saying something like “This table is finite because it’s limited by some second thing”. Since we’re talking about a physical object, I look to what is closest to the table. The majority of the table is surrounded by air. So then am I saying something like this?:

“The table is finite because it’s limited by a second thing, namely, air”

But this seems not only strange, but wrong. The air isn’t really interacting with the table all that much. And it would also seem that by removing the air, or all other physical things around it, the table could somehow become infinite! This also seems ridiculous. I only can imagine a table free-floating out in space. And if some distant galaxy is all that is left to exist besides the table, then we would say the table is limited?

Maybe I’m not understanding these terms quite right, which is certainly possible. But if so, then I wish for a better definition of what it means to be infinite. And I would like an answer to my question, “is it possible for something, without any second thing, to be finite?”.