People have been lying and people have been BS-ing as long as they've been talking.
The topic of my class is truth, with the particular focus on the role truth plays in meaning and
communication.
If we think about non-truth then, the simple definition would be it's a statement that
fails to correspond with the facts.
But that alone doesn't really draw all the kind of distinctions you might want to draw
if you think about why non-truths might be uttered.
The primary focus of the class I'm teaching right now is technically known as BS.
It's a label that was introduced by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, and he characterizes
BS as an individual who presents some piece of information, a claim, as being true.
But they do it without any regard whatsoever as to whether what they're saying is actually
true or false.
I think we could all imagine going back through history and finding cases of great BS-ers,
or great liars.
Think of the era of yellow journalism.
There's a mechanism for producing more BS and more lies, or more truth for that matter,
and presenting it to more people more frequently than ever before, and this is the case of
social media.
I'm hoping that some of the students in the class I'm teaching now will get excited
about the idea of looking at the role of social media in attitudes towards lying, fake news,
etc., right now, and whether that is playing a big role and why there seems to be such
renewed attention, such concern about it.
They are probably figuring out the norms for using a lot of this media, and maybe they're
the ones that will figure out how to manage BS in the Twitter Age.
So that's, again, that's the reason for doing the class.
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