“On Bullshit” by Harry B.C. Frankfurt is a beautiful, tiny, insightful book that defines bullshit.
“Why Define bullshit”, you might ask? Why not? It’s probably 90% of what you can read on the Internet. It’s probably a large chunk of what you hear from your upper management at work. It’s probably 90% of political advertisements, and it’d probably be 90% of commercial advertising if there weren’t any “truth in advertising” laws. [Those laws are why drug companies give you a feel-good video that implies you will be floating through fields of flowers after a dose of Fluoxidyne, while a speed reader lists side-effects and says "take this only on the recommendation of your physician." -- No law regulates the images and implications in the ads, just the words and the formal claims. Absent those laws, most companies would probably tell you wondrous bullshit about their products.]
So, it’s entirely reasonable for a philosopher to worry about what separates bullshit from truth and lies. Clearly, bullshit isn’t the same thing as telling the truth, and it’s not quite the same thing as lying, either. At 67 tiny pages, it’s probably the smallest philosophy book you’ll ever read. [That may be because he stopped writing before he started producing bullshit.]
