This book is in a way the final chapter of my D.Phil. thesis on pragmatism and truth, which was submitted at Oxford University over a decade ago. I had intended then to say something about moral judgement, but David Wiggins, who supervised that thesis, showed me just how far I had to go before I got anything close to right enough.
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.