Difficulty: What the hell
What the hell is epistemic humility?
Epistemic humility sounds like the sort of phrase that philosophers would use to make a simple idea sound annoying. But the underlying idea is actually pretty ordinary.
To be epistemically humble is not to be timid, self-abasing, or allergic to strong opinions. It is not to say, “Well, who knows?” every five minutes, or to pretend that every claim is equally uncertain. Rather, epistemic humility is a willingness to let inquiry correct you.
In practice, that means being willing to say things like:
- I might be wrong.
- I don’t know.
- That objection matters.
- This evidence really does count against me.
- I need to rethink this.
That may sound modest. But it is actually quite demanding. It requires that one do more than merely sound reasonable, careful, evidence-based, or open-minded. It requires that one genuinely allow reasons, evidence, and criticism to constrain what one says and how one proceeds.
Why bullshit hates epistemic humility
This is where bullshit enters the picture.
Harry Frankfurt famously argued that bullshit differs from lying because the liar must pay attention to the truth in order to avoid it, whereas the bullshitter treats truth as beside the point. That insight is important. But I think there is another way to see what makes bullshit epistemically bad.
Bullshit often performs seriousness while insulating itself from serious correction.
That is, the bullshitter may speak in the language of evidence, rigor, nuance, clarity, realism, or practical wisdom, while refusing to let the standards associated with those words do any real governing work. Bullshit, in this sense, is hostile to epistemic humility because it wants the appearance of answerability without the vulnerability that real answerability requires.
To answer a question seriously is to risk exposure. It is to risk finding out that you do not know, that your view is weaker than you thought, or that the objection really does succeed. Bullshit tries to keep the social benefits of seriousness while evading that exposure.
That is why bullshit can be epistemically harmful even when it does not straightforwardly implant false beliefs. Sometimes its damage is deeper and more diffuse: it weakens the habits of mind by which we remain answerable to truth in the first place.
Not all bullshit is cynical
One reason bullshit is so hard to resist is that it is often sincere.
We are often tempted to think: if a person really means it, then it cannot be bullshit. But that is too quick. A person can sincerely believe that she is being careful, rigorous, helpful, realistic, or evidence-based, while the relevant standards are doing little or no actual guiding work.
That matters because sincerity and genuineness are not the same thing. Sincerity is a matter of what I feel: do I mean what I say? Genuineness is something else: is my activity actually being guided by the standards I invoke?
If I say that I care about evidence, then evidence should be able to count against me. If I say that I am being rigorous, then criticism should be able to threaten my argument. If I say that I am trying to get things right, then getting things right should matter more than merely sounding as if I am doing so.
Bullshit begins where that vulnerability ends.
A simple example
Suppose someone says, with great confidence, “I’m just being realistic,” or “I’m following the science,” or “I’m keeping an open mind.” Those phrases can be perfectly legitimate. But they can also function as a kind of epistemic camouflage.
Sometimes the speaker is not really opening herself to correction, reality, or science. She is borrowing the prestige of those things. She is using the appearance of intellectual virtue as a substitute for the real thing.
And when that happens often enough, the damage is not confined to one bad claim. It affects the surrounding culture of inquiry. Words like evidence, clarity, rigor, and nuance remain publicly praised, but they increasingly function as ornaments rather than constraints.
What makes this dangerous
A lie is often easier to understand morally and epistemically. The liar tries to get you to believe what she herself takes to be false. The betrayal is relatively legible.
Bullshit is often slipperier. It does not always aim to replace the truth in your mind with some specific falsehood. More often, it cheapens, bypasses, or exploits the norms by which truth is ordinarily tracked. It is vaguer, more atmospheric, more deniable.
That is why bullshit can be so culturally corrosive. Once it becomes common, people become less willing to say “I don’t know,” less willing to expose their views to genuine criticism, and less willing to distinguish between what merely sounds plausible and what has actually survived disciplined scrutiny.
A society saturated with lies is dangerous. But a society saturated with bullshit may be worse in another way: it gradually loses the capacity to notice what it has lost.
The anti-bullshit virtue
If that is right, then the remedy is not simply “more sincerity.” We already have plenty of sincerity. Nor is it enough to demand “more facts,” because facts can be selected, arranged, and performed in bullshitty ways.
What we need, rather, is a renewed willingness to be answerable to the standards our words invoke.
If I say I am following the evidence, then I should be willing to let evidence count against me. If I say I am being realistic, then I should be willing to ask whether reality is actually guiding my judgment. If I say I am open-minded, then I should be willing to let my mind be changed.
The enemy of bullshit is not permanent suspicion, clever debunking, or performative cynicism. Those can become their own species of bullshit. The enemy of bullshit is something quieter and more difficult: a genuine concern to get things right.
And sometimes that means saying the thing bullshit is designed to avoid:
I do not know.
I was wrong.
That objection matters.
That reason does not support what I wanted it to support.
That is not weakness. It is one of the conditions of serious thought.
Philosophy without Bullshit 