Twenty years of Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit

Elizabeth Harman, Gideon Rosen, Jaime Fernadez Fisac, and Joe Schmid at ɫֱ, October 30, 2025.

Twenty years of Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit

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Among all the attributes of AI, the models are prone to bullshitting. And so too are some humans, as the renowned philosopher Harry Frankfurt detected, and warned: “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.” 

The antidote? Critical thinking, valuation of humanity, and of course, university press books. To mark the 20th anniversary edition of On Bullshit, and honoring our mission to ignite conversations, ɫֱ organized a TeamUP with our community collaborators ɫֱ Public Library, Labyrinth ɫֱ and ɫֱ University GradFutures to host an event on bullshit and truth

 

About the Panelists

Jaime Fernández Fisac, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at ɫֱ University, studies how to make robots and AI trustworthy around people, and how efforts to make generative AI more helpful can instead give rise to “machine bullshit.” Elizabeth Harman, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values at ɫֱ University, has published on the ethics of abortion, what we owe to animals, moral ignorance, moral uncertainty, and actions above and beyond what morality requires. Gideon Rosen, Stuart Professor of Philosophy and Acting Chair of the Department of Philosophy at ɫֱ. He is the author of  A Subject With No Object (with John P. Burgess) and general editor of the Norton Introduction to PhilosophyDZ S󳾾, a third year Philosophy PhD student at ɫֱ University working in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. He also creates philosophy videos on his YouTube channel, Majesty of Reason, where you can now view this TeamUP event. 

Also of Interest

Can’t get enough On Bullshit? We have also teamed up with the New ɫֱ Network for a podcast series The Truth about Bullshit. Episodes, and truths, will continue to drop this fall.