Harry G. Frankfurt Quote
When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker’s mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed. Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted. […] In any event, it cannot serve the purposes of sustenance, any more than hot air can serve those of communication.
When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker’s mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed. Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted. […] In any event, it cannot serve the purposes of sustenance, any more than hot air can serve those of communication.
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About Harry G. Frankfurt
Frankfurt made significant contributions to fields like ethics and philosophy of mind. The attitude of caring played a central role in his philosophy. To care about something means to see it as important and reflects the person's character. According to Frankfurt, a person is someone who has second-order volitions or who cares about what desires he or she has. He contrasts persons with wantons. Wantons are beings that have desires but do not care about which of their desires is translated into action. In the field of ethics, Frankfurt gave various influential counterexamples, so-called Frankfurt cases, against the principle that moral responsibility depends on the ability to do otherwise. His most popular book is On Bullshit, which discusses the distinction between bullshitting and lying.