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So, you don't see how someone could both be "credibly earnest" and misrepresenting what they're up to?

Do you think misrepresentation has to be consciously deceptive? That it feels insincere to the person doing it?

I mean, the point of Frankfurt’s bullshitter is that we know they’re bullshitting (or more expansively, Frankfurt gives us a set of criteria to test them against). We know they don’t care about the truth value of their statement, only that they are misrepresenting themselves because of a hidden “enterprise.” But there’s no such unknown enterprise in either’s case, and neither appears to be misrepresenting themselves (to my point about appearing earnest). Maybe that latter part is itself deception, but without the former they would fall into Frankfurt’s classification of a “liar” instead.

(I have to admit a bias when it comes to Frankfurt: I don’t think On Bullshit is that convincing. In particular, I think Frankfurt doesn’t do a good job of motivating the connection between bull sessions and bullshit in his strong sense, and many of his examples - like the Pascal/Wittgenstein one - don’t demonstrate misrepresentation either.)

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