“What’s Wrong With Bullshit” by Florian Cova: Summary and Critique

🔁 Critique of Traditional Accounts (e.g., Frankfurt)

• Cova critically examines Harry Frankfurt’s seminal account of bullshit, which defines it as speech indifferent to truth—neither lying nor telling the truth, but simply unconcerned with accuracy.
• He argues this process-based approach, focused on the speaker’s intention, fails to explain real-world cases where we judge something as bullshit without knowing or caring about the speaker’s mindset.
• Examples include anonymous advertising slogans, bureaucratic jargon, or philosophical prose, which can seem like bullshit regardless of authorial intent.

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🧾 Proposal of an Output-Based Account

• Cova shifts the focus from speaker’s intent to the epistemic quality of the content itself—a claim’s effect on inquiry rather than how it was produced.
• Bullshit, in this model, is defined as a claim that initially appears insightful, but upon minimal critical inspection by a competent thinker, is revealed to be:
  • ❌ Trivial: offers no new insight.
  • ❌ Misleading: skews or misrepresents reality.
  • ❌ Meaningless: uses complex language without content.
  • ❌ Unsubstantiated: lacks evidence or coherence.

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🧠 The Concept of “Truth-Tracking Bullshit”

• Cova introduces a nuanced category: statements that are technically true, yet function epistemically as bullshit.
• These claims create the illusion of insight or depth while contributing nothing substantial to understanding.
• Examples:
  • A job applicant says “I led key cross-functional synergy alignment” – likely true but epistemically empty.
  • A philosophy paper that is semantically correct but inflates trivialities using dense language.

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🔍 How Bullshit Harms Inquiry

• Cova emphasizes bullshit’s epistemic danger: it discourages deeper questioning.
• Even if the statement is not false, it disguises its vacuity, making listeners feel as if they’ve learned something, when they haven’t.
• This erodes the norms of truth-seeking—especially dangerous in academia, media, or politics.

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🪞 Implications for Evaluating Discourse

• Cova’s model applies not only to philosophy but also:
  • 📚 Literature: When language masquerades as profound without coherent meaning.
  • 🗳️ Politics: Empty rhetoric dressed as insight.
  • 🎓 Academia: Overly technical prose masking trivial arguments.
  • 📺 Media: Buzzwords with little content.

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✍️ Benefits of the Output-Based Model

• It offers a practical tool: even when speaker intent is unknown, we can still assess the epistemic value of statements.
• It accounts for phenomena ignored by Frankfurt’s view:
  • Bullshit written by AI or PR teams.
  • Claims passed on without belief (e.g., influencers reading scripts).
  • Passive bullshit, like algorithmically generated texts or buzzword-laden resumes.

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💬 Three Stimulating Critical Questions

1. How does the output-based definition challenge traditional views of responsibility and deception in communication?
   • It shifts moral and epistemic judgment from who says it to what is said—a potentially radical move in ethics of discourse.
2. Can “truth-tracking bullshit” be more insidious than lies, precisely because it appears trustworthy?
   • This raises a profound question: is epistemic harm worse when disguised as truth?
3. How might Cova’s framework be operationalized in real-world settings (e.g., journalism, AI content moderation, literary criticism)?
   • Could we create rubrics or detection methods for epistemically hollow claims, based on his model?

🧠 1. Post-Structuralism & Semantic Instability

• Cova’s analysis of meaningless statements—those that appear profound but collapse under scrutiny—aligns with post-structuralist concerns about the instability of meaning.
• Cova echoes Derrida: just as deconstruction reveals textual contradictions, Cova’s “output-based account” shows how texts can simulate insight without actual substance.
• 📌 “Bullshit exploits linguistic form to simulate depth without delivering coherent content.”

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🧾 2. Reader-Response Theory & Interpretive Competence

• Cova’s invocation of the “minimally competent inquirer” resembles reader-response critics’ focus on the reader’s role in constructing meaning.
• Just as Stanley Fish emphasizes “interpretive communities,” Cova implies that readers’ competence determines whether bullshit is revealed or remains hidden.
• 📌 “Bullshit’s vacuity is detectable only when the reader subjects it to minimal scrutiny.”

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🎭 3. Rhetoric and Performance Theory

• Cova’s account contributes to performance theory by framing bullshit as a performative strategy—a rhetorical act focused on impression over truth.
• Literary language, like bullshit, may prioritize aesthetic or affective resonance rather than factual communication.
• 📌 “Bullshit functions rhetorically by signaling profundity, regardless of content.”

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🔍 4. Critical Theory & Ideological Critique

• Cova’s claim that bullshit erodes inquiry intersects with Frankfurt School critiques of ideology and commodified discourse (e.g., Adorno, Horkheimer).
• Bullshit in literature or media can serve as an ideological smokescreen, obscuring power structures while simulating engagement.
• 📌 “Bullshit often serves to maintain the status quo by discouraging real investigation.”

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🧪 5. Structuralism & Epistemic Form

• By shifting the analysis to the structure of claims, not the speaker’s intention, Cova mirrors structuralist approaches that focus on underlying forms and functions in discourse.
• His definition identifies a pattern of vacuity across genres, styles, and contexts.
• 📌 “Output-based bullshit can be systematically detected across different texts by examining structure, not authorship.”

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🧠 6. Cognitive Poetics and Psychological Processing

• Cova introduces the “illusion of insight”, a term resonant with cognitive literary studies examining how readers mentally process language.
• Bullshit generates heuristic satisfaction—feeling like understanding has occurred—even when none has.
• 📌 “The illusion of insight explains why even intelligent readers may find bullshit convincing.”

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🪞 7. Metafiction and Reflexivity

• His argument supports the metafictional tradition in literary theory by revealing how texts can become self-aware simulations of meaning.
• Authors such as Borges or Calvino deliberately toy with the fine line between insight and nonsense—a line Cova philosophically defines.
• 📌 “Some bullshit is intentionally constructed to reflect the limits of interpretation itself.”

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🛑 8. Ethics of Interpretation

• Cova’s notion of epistemic harm introduces an ethical framework into literary theory: What happens when a text pretends to inform, but misleads?
• This has direct implications for critical pedagogy, literary journalism, and scholarly writing.
• 📌 “The danger is not falsity, but the discouragement of thought.”

⚖️ 1. Over-Reliance on the “Minimally Competent Inquirer”

• Cova’s framework hinges on what a “minimally competent inquirer” would conclude.
• ❗ Criticism: This standard is vague and highly subjective—what qualifies as “minimal competence” varies by context, education, and culture.
• Some critics argue this turns his theory into a circular or elitist standard.

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🤐 2. Neglect of Speaker Intention

• While Cova criticizes Frankfurt for being too focused on intention, his own model dismisses speaker motivation entirely.
• ❗ Criticism: This may overcorrect—ignoring intentions can be problematic, especially in moral or legal contexts (e.g., satire vs. propaganda).
• Bullshit uttered maliciously is surely epistemically worse than accidental nonsense.

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🧩 3. Ambiguity in Epistemic Value Judgments

• Cova’s test rests on whether a statement is trivial, misleading, meaningless, or unjustified.
• ❗ Criticism: These categories are blurred in practice—many works of literature or art thrive precisely in ambiguity or open meaning.
• What one reader finds meaningless, another may find profound.

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🌀 4. Possible Misapplication to Aesthetic Discourse

• The framework can be misused to condemn literary, poetic, or spiritual language as “bullshit” merely because it resists strict logical unpacking.
• ❗ Criticism: This risks reducing aesthetic, emotional, or symbolic expression to a rationalist checklist.

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🧠 5. Risk of Promoting Over-Skepticism

• Cova’s model encourages critical scrutiny—but some fear it could lead to hyper-skepticism or dismissive cynicism, especially toward complex language.
• ❗ Criticism: Not all complexity is bullshit. Encouraging shallow dismissal of hard ideas may undermine genuine learning.

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🔁 6. Potential Redundancy with Frankfurt

• Though Cova offers a different angle, some argue that his output-based view still overlaps with Frankfurt’s theory when applied.
• ❗ Criticism: Both models often converge in practice—statements that fail epistemic standards are often intended to mislead or impress.

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🔎 7. Lack of Empirical Testing

• Cova’s theory is philosophical, not empirical.
• ❗ Criticism: There’s little data or experimental support showing that “minimally competent” readers reliably detect bullshit using his criteria.
• Psycholinguistic studies may be needed to back up his model.