The present crisis of truth, the "post-truth" crisis, puts the philosophy of truth in a new light. It calls for a reexamination of the tasks of the philosophy of truth and sets a new adequacy condition on this philosophy. One of the central roles of the philosophy of truth is to explain the importance of truth for human life and civilization. Among other things, it has to explain what is, or will (...) be, lost in a post-truth era. Clearly, the deflationist answer that the role of truth is to serve as a tool of generalization and oblique endorsement will not do. My account of truth in this paper addresses this task. Truth, I argue, is first and foremost a human value. Its importance to our life/civilization lies, not exclusively, but principally, in the centrality of this value to our humanity. I investigate the ramifications of this answer to the issues discussed in the contemporary philosophy of truth, and I end with a comparison of the substantivist and deflationist approaches to truth in light of this new perspective. (shrink)

The polarization and charges of “post-truth” that mark contemporary politics may have its source, ultimately, in a crisis of epistemology, which is characterized by a tension between different forms of naïve realism—the view that reality appears to us directly, unmediated by interpretation. Perhaps too schematically, those on the right tend to be first-person naïve realists in treating economic and social realities as accessible to the ordinary political participant by simple common sense, while those on the left tend (...) to be third-person naïve realists in treating credentialed experts as forming a consensus—a new common sense. In treating reality as transparent enough to be legible either to oneself or to a group of experts, both sides tend to treat disagreement as a motivational problem—a problem of bad faith, motivated reasoning, perversity, and refusal to see the truth—rather than as an epistemic problem caused by the possibility that each side may hold a different set of interpretive frameworks that determines how and what it sees of reality. In obviating the possibility of genuine disagreement, the epistemological crisis is quite naturally transformed into a political crisis. (shrink)

The hypothesis put forward in this essay is that bullshitting is in large part responsible for, and perhaps at the core of, what we call post-truth. Bullshitting is essentially the attitude of ignoring the norms of assertion. The consequences of the widespread character of this attitude can explain why contempt for truth and knowledge are so widespread in our societies, even though they are supposed to be “knowledge societies.”.

On essaie ici de defendre l’idée que la production de foutaise est responsable en grande partie, et peut être centrale pour ce que nous appelons la post-vérité. La production de foutaise est basée sur l’attitude qui consiste à ignorer les normes de l‘assertion. Les conséquences de l’extension de cette attitude peuvent expliquer le défiance et le mépris pour la vérité et a connaissance qui envahissent nos sociétés, quand bien même on les appelle des « sociétés de connaissance ».

The rise of authoritarian and nationalist forces is currently accompanied by a change in the way public opinion is formed and in the culture of debate, a phenomenon that has been described as a crisis of facticity. There is an urgent need to clarify the (factual) foundations and benchmarks for democratic negotiation, even if lies are nothing new in politics. The article analyses this shift and discusses to what extent the liberal problematization of post-factual politics is becoming a (...) way of coping with the neoliberal crisis of hegemony. Finally, it seeks to illuminate what these developments mean for those strands of critical social science dedicated to exploring the connection between truth and power and deconstructing truth claims. (shrink)

A prevalent political narrative is that we are facing an epistemological crisis, where many citizens no longer care about truth and facts. Yet the view that we are living in a post-truth era relies on some implicit questionable empirical and normative assumptions. The post-truth rhetoric converts epistemic issues into motivational issues, treating people with whom we disagree as if they no longer believe in or care about truth. This narrative is also dubious on (...) epistemic, moral, and political grounds. It is epistemically dubious in being largely insensitive to the problem of complexity in politics; it is morally dubious because “post-truth” is often a derogatory label for individuals or groups that are deemed stupid, irrational, or morally compromised; and it is a politically toxic neologism because it purports to use the language of ‘truth’ as a weapon against power, yet these truth-claims are often themselves attempts to exert power over others by delegitimizing their perspectives. While it may seem as if truth and democracy are on especially bad terms lately, politics and truth have long had a vexed relationship, and moral panics about the value of truthfulness in politics are as old as politics itself. (shrink)

The problematic issues connected to post-truth communication emerged in all their social relevance after the victory of Brexit and Donald Trump in 2016. Fake news, echo chambers, filter bubbles, and a crisis of experts are some of the phenomena of this epoch of digital revolution that everyone is forced to deal with on daily basis. Public media echoed the plea for a return to a connection between reality, truth, and communication that has been advocated for by (...) philosophy and communication studies since the beginning of the century. However, the strategy for effecting this return is not clear. The paper presents two of the most common strategies employed by practitioners of communication in the newsrooms: reliance on a new form of positivism and the necessity of inculcating critical media literacy into the general population. Concluding that both proposals are inadequate, the paper proposes a rich, relational realism stemming from Peirce’s semiotic and metaphysical studies. (shrink)

With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions. In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today. As Peters and colleagues note, conceptualisations of ‘facts’ and ‘evidences’ are politically, socially, and epistemically reconstructed in post-truth contexts. At (...) the same time, with intelligence commodified, reified or marginalised, freedom of speech and of mobility can entail fights for entitlements, or escapes from local responsibilities. The decline and corruptions of democratic free speech and academic freedom, or the absence of forces to defend them, are thus serious challenges. These challenges grow as the competition of ideas, sometimes under the rubric of academic freedom, often implies the power struggle and questioning of statuses in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’. Competition as a value invoked in some conceptualisations of freedom, becomes more important than human dignity, which was originally supposed to expand and strengthen under democratic conceptions of freedom in higher education. What had been happening to freedoms, of speech, teaching, and learning, across different subject positions and cultures of higher education, remains largely underexplored, as alt-right movements, neoliberalism and illiberalism, and post-truthism values and orientations expand. (shrink)

Contrary to widespread assumptions, post-truth politicians formally adopt a rhetoric of ‘truth’ but turn it against established experts. To explain one central factor behind this destructive strategy and its success with voters, I consider Walter Lippmann and Friedrich Hayek, who from 1922 onwards helped develop and popularize a political rhetoric of ‘truth’ in terms of scientific expertise. In Hayek’s influential version, market economics became the crucial expert field. Consequently, the 2008 financial crisis impacted attitudes towards (...) experts more generally. But even sweeping rejection of experts continues to use the rhetoric, by now dominant, of expert truth. Paradoxically, this bipartisan language fuels division as opponents accuse each other of disregarding ‘truth itself’. Against the underlying metaphysics of context-free ‘facts’, John Dewey and Alfred Schutz recommend understanding truth as ‘presumptive’ knowledge produced within human practices, which can be robust but requires a readiness to engage in pluralistic and open-ended processes of (re-)contextualization. (shrink)

We are facing a crisis of trust in expertise today. Fewer and fewer people trust experts, and more and more politicians openly ignore expert consensus. 'Democracy in the Post-Truth Era' asks what might happen to democracy if we reject the fundamental liberal assumption that people are capable of making informed choices. The book explores the potential impact on society if people, including politicians, never appreciate the relevance of expert opinions. What if people cannot choose between supporters and (...) opponents of key issues such as the causes of climate change, effectiveness of vaccines and ways of combating economic and social crises? Applying social epistemology to these questions, the book considers whether democracy can be defended in the post-truth era. (shrink)

Just days after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, specific passages from American philosopher Richard Rorty’s 1998 book were shared thousands of times on social media. Both and wrote about Rorty’s prophecy and its apparent realization, as within the haze that followed this unexpected victory, Rorty seemed to offer a presciently trenchant analysis of what led to the rise of “strong man” Trump. However, in this paper, Forstenzer points to Rorty’s own potential intellectual responsibility (...) in the unfolding crisis of liberal democracy. -/- This paper seeks to elucidate the relationship between Rorty’s liberal ironism and contemporary post-truth politics. While the paper ultimately concludes that Rorty is not causally responsible and thus not complicit with the rise of post-truth politics, it contends that Rorty’s philosophical project bears some intellectual responsibility for the onset of post-truth politics insofar as it took a complacent attitude towards the dangers associated with over-affirming the contingency of our epistemic practices in public debate. In the last instance, this paper argues that Rorty’s complacency is a pragmatic failure and thus cuts to the heart of his pragmatism. (shrink)

This article proposes that autocratic democracy represents the natural political form of right-wing populism. It argues that while the emergence of autocratic democracy as a genuine political alternative to liberal democracy may be currently located primarily in states where liberal democratic norms were not well-consolidated, there are reasons to hold that structural features of contemporary politics in consolidated democracies relating to the decline of mass parties and the globalisation trilemma create the space for the right-wing mobilisation of populism. It is (...) further claimed that the dilemmas of the EU in conjunction with the politics of immigration and multiculturalism provide resources for the right-wing mobilisation of populist discontents such that we should not be sanguine about the ability of liberal democracy to be resilient in the face of continuing populist pressures. (shrink)

The truth potential of art is realized not only by great art (of educated elites) but also by the cultural industry that has become the art of the masses. Great art and cultural industry do not only contradict one another but often interpenetrate and overlap subversively. Especially in critical periods of crisis (and revolution) great art and cultural industry go together with political action. However, in more counterrevolutionary periods as nowadays post-truth democracy, Adorno's gloomiest interpretation of (...) the cultural industry becomes topical again. (shrink)

Under the shifting epistemic and political norms of post-truth politics, the conditions of feminist solidarity and agency are increasingly threatened. This article argues that feminist humour provides models for affective orientations that sustain feminist work and survival during such periods of political crisis. First, I explore a potential issue post-truth politics poses for feminists: That information overload can lead to truth burn-out that threatens intersectional feminist thinking and action. Next, I explain why comedy is (...) well-suited to help maintain feminist work in the context of post-truth politics. I then present a reading of Sarah Cooper’s skit, ‘How to medical’ to explore Cooper’s work and demonstrate how it operates as parodic political critique. I conclude that the affective stance of a feminist comedian models how feminists can keep surviving in the midst of post-truth crises. Such work shows how oppressive power can be engaged closely enough that deep critiques can be developed but with sufficient affective distance that feminist engagement can be sustained over time, through a multiplicity of crises. Cooper’s engagement can thus be read to generate strategies for how to (effectively) feminist affect under post-truth conditions. (shrink)

Departing from the (post-)Anthropocenic crisis state of today’s world, fuelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various post-truth populist follies, and an apocalyptic WW3-scenario that has been hanging in the air since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this article argues for the possibility – and necessity – of an affirmative posthumanist-materialist mapping of hope. Embedded in the Deleuzoguattarian-Braidottian (see Deleuze and Guattari 2005 [1980]; Braidotti 2011 [1994]) methodology of critical cartography, and infused with critical posthumanist, new materialist, (...) and queer theoretical perspectives, this cartography of hope is sketched out against two permacrisis-infused positionalities: nostalgic humanism and tragic (post-)humanism. Forced to navigate between these two extremes, the critical cartography of hope presented here explores hope in numerous historico-philosophical (re-)configurations: from the premodern ‘hope-as-all-too-human’, to a more politicised early modern ‘hope-as-(politically-)human’ – representing hope’s first paradigm shift (politicisation), and from a four decades-long neoliberal redrawing of hope as ‘no-more-hope’ – hope’s second shift (depoliticisation) – to a critical (new) materialist plea to de-anthropocentrise and re-politicise hope – hope’s third and final post-Anthropocenic shift (re-politicisation). By mapping these (re-)configurations of hope, a philosophical plea is made for hope as a material(ist) praxis that can help us better understand – and counter – these extractive late capitalist, neoliberal more-than-human crisis times. (shrink)

How should we share the truth about the environmental crisis? At a moment when even the most basic facts about ecology and the climate face contestation and contempt, environmental advocates are at an impasse. Many have turned to social media and digital technologies to shift the tide-but what if their strategy is not only flawed, but dangerous? The Truth about Nature follows environmental actors as they turn to the internet to save nature. It documents how conservation efforts (...) are transformed through the political economy of platforms and the algorithmic feeds that have been instrumental to the rise of post-truth politics. Developing a novel account of post-truth as an expression of power under platform capitalism, Bram Büscher shows how environmental actors attempt to mediate between structural forms of platform power and the contingent histories and contexts of particular environmental issues. Bringing efforts at wildlife protection in Southern Africa into dialogue with a sweeping analysis of truth and power in the twenty-first century, Büscher makes the case for a new environmental politics: one that radically reignites the art of speaking truth to power. (shrink)

This essay argues that Knafo and Teschke fundamentally misread Brenner’s original contribution to the transition debate. They equate his rejection of trans-historical or trans-modal laws of motion with the notion that social-property relations do not have strong rules of reproduction that structure the actions of agents and give rise to ‘developmental patterns’ specific to each form of social labour. Knafo and Teschke’s critique of Brenner’s analysis of capitalist expansion and crisis is also theoretically and empirically questionable.

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires as a condition of accreditation that every health care institution -- hospital, nursing home, or home care agency -- have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues. Most organizations have chosen to fulfill this requirement with an interdisciplinary ethics committee. The best of these committees are knowledgeable, creative, and effective resources in their institutions. Many are wellmeaning but lack the information, experience, and skills to negotiate adequately the complex ethical (...) issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees is the first resource designed to address the range of work performed by ethics committees as part of their multiple responsibilities, including education, case consultation, and policy development. It features an eight-chapter curriculum reviewing the content of contemporary health care bioethics and discussing the ethical foundations of clinical practice, with each subsequent section focusing on a set of ethical issues that commonly arise in the clinical setting. Through case studies, the authors explore issues such as informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, decision-making concerns of minors, end-of-life issues, palliation, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. They offer sample policies and procedures, draft guidelines and protocols, and key legal cases. Providing both a strong theoretical foundation and practical applications, this handbook will be essential reading for every member of a health care ethics committee. (shrink)

. In whatever form, terminal philosophy holds that some matters are so fundamental that they are presupposed in any practice of reason-giving; accordingly, if reason-giving were applied to such matters in order to justify them, or even to criticize, then the very attempt to do so would necessarily assume what is at issue, a fatal circularity . No further argumentative recourse is possible at this level of fundamentality ; rational reason-giving must terminate.

A fascinating collection of studies, _The Politics of Truth and Other Untimely Essays_ explores the historical and theoretical underpinnings of personal liberty and free government and provides a trenchant analysis of the crisis of civic consciousness endangering both of them today. The book addresses a range of issues in contemporary political philosophy and constitutional theory. These are seen to be all the more urgent in importance because of the surging aspirations for liberty in the wake of the collapse (...) of the Soviet empire and the post-Cold War anomaly of crisis, malaise, and disarray in free government itself in America and in other bastions of modern democracy. While each essay can stand alone, there is an underlying thematic unity to the collection. The fundamental problem considered throughout is whether and to what extent the fall of communism may mark an epoch in world history. These questions are applied to the East Central European nations struggling to achieve free government and personal liberty. The elements required to identify the preconditions of liberty are addressed and specific attention is given to the terms of institutionalization in the American founding. Several essays focus on American political thought, with emphasis on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Two elements, in particular, are treated: the jurisprudential and common law background to the American political tradition and the centrality of religion within the unfolding of the American political experiment. Sandoz explores the uncommon alliance of philosophers, statesmen, and evangelists during the nation's founding. This alliance, nurturing communities of persons bound together by their faith and a mutual regard for one another, played a vital role in the establishment of the system of freedom under law. Sandoz sees the tension between religion and natural law as a constant in the human struggle for freedom. That the preservation of liberty under law is no easy task is acknowledged and addressed as it can be seen in the American founding, in the post-communist struggle of East Central Europe, and in the deepening contemporary crisis of American society. Anyone interested in the "politics" of "truth" will appreciate this volume. (shrink)

In this paper I explain the present adversarial collective bargaining process (ACB) and then critique it on legal and ethical grounds. A new methodology, that I describe as the collaborative collective bargaining process (CCB), will then be explained and similarly critiqued. I argue that replacing the present ACB model with the CCB model will result in better long-term results for all parties concerned. This is because the ACB model is comparable, in many respects, to the adversarial process used in court (...) litigation. It is a combat model based on power. ACB makes the battle lines clear, and it grants victory to the more convincing display of power, but it leaves casualties. Indeed it cannot operate except upon the casualties of the opposing party, and those casualties are the basis for ever-renewed combat. Tactics employed in ACB to achieve victory include deception, lying and the abandonment of truth as a moral value. I argue that, in sharp contrast, CCB can foster an environment which encourages candor and truthfulness. By following the CCB model, the parties can avoid the negative and self-defeating elements of ACB and can work together toward mutually beneficial goals by the use of an ethically defensible approach to labor negotiations. (shrink)

What distinctive philosophical position unites Whitehead, Heidegger, Carnap, J. L. Austin, Quine, van Fraassen, and Derrida, among many others? According to David Weissman, they all assert or presuppose intuitionism, as he calls it, or the view that "everything real should be present or presentable, in its entirety, to the mind." An implausible set of bedfellows, perhaps, yet Weissman argues persuasively that they are indeed intuitionists, and that "we as philosophers have lost sight of this most fundamental truth about our (...) history and procedures." We have lost sight of it because we combine "disinterest in the history of philosophy... with the assumption that our method is neutral." Thus, "we renounce [intuitionism] even as we practice it," just as, one might add, many renounce Cartesianism even as they remain profoundly influenced by Descartes. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The current crisis situation is connected with the tendency to eliminate the philosophical basis of higher education, the classical university, whose mission is to form a certain type of state, culture, and person. Philosophy and humanities in general played an important role in forming the modern concept of man. In the context of the expansion of the information society and the development of the latest technologies (biotechnologies, artificial intelligence), which stimulates the world market, the problem of the fundamentals (...) of the social and personal dimension of a person, his/her ability to consciously choose their own life, is becoming actualized. The main purpose of the article is in problematizing the development prospects for philosophy in a modern university, and its significance in the formation of a modern person with a certain level of self-awareness. To achieve this, the authors envisage providing a description of modern society, related trends in humanitarianism, determining the situation in university education, and characterizing the type of person or post-human that it mainly produces. _Theoretical basis._ The basis of the article is sociocultural anthropology. _Originality._ Trends in society and education, defined by the relationship between the state, education, and the market, reflect the situation of the post-human or trans-human, which is characterized by the creation of a nomadic subject with nomadic thinking. The crisis of the modern and classical university as an institution constituting a modern man is associated with the rapid development of technologies, the expansion of the information society, the orientation towards the knowledge economy, which subordinates the university to the market, requiring the formation of a person that corresponds to market feasibility. However, in today’s world, the realization of freedom priorities, the prevention of manifestations of unfreedom, the ability to critically interpret information, and distinguish between truth and falsehood are of great importance. The formation of this depends on the education system. But, the situation in higher education is determined by the dominance of techno-scientific understanding and development of the world, the priorities of the economy, economic viability, and profit. Under such conditions, the humanities and philosophy, in search of ways and means of their own survival, risk turning into a kind of techno-sophistry that produces various images. These images can be more or less successfully sold on the market, recreating a certain figure of a human-consumer and a human-transformer who obeys the post-truth situation, even appearing as an object of transformation by ideology or propaganda. _Conclusions._ It is, therefore, essential to form a person who is capable of critically comprehending the reasons for his/her choice, which can be provided by philosophy with the foundations of searching for truth. In the conditions of technological development, in view of the achievements of artificial intelligence, and the latest network resources, it is important in education not only to overcome the orientation towards professional fragmentation and to verify permanent knowledge but also direct live communication on the basis of critical thinking, which forms the basis in the process of cultivating a person by philosophy. (shrink)

Post-truth politics has been diagnosed as harmful to both knowledge and democracy. I argue that it can also fundamentally undermine epistemic autonomy in a way that is similar to the manipulative technique known as gaslighting. Using examples from contemporary politics, I identify three categories of post-truth rhetoric: the introduction of counternarratives, the discrediting of critics, and the denial of more or less plain facts. These strategies tend to isolate people epistemically, leaving them disoriented and unable to (...) distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. Like gaslighting, post-truth politics aims to undermine epistemic autonomy by eroding someone’s self-trust, in order to consolidate power. Shifting the focus to the effects on the victim allows for new insights into the specific harms of post-truth politics. Applying the concept of gaslighting to this domain may also help people recognize a pernicious dynamic that was invisible to them before, giving them an important tool to resist it. (shrink)

In recent years, it was notorious the presence of a persistent interpretation of the political field in terms that find in the notion of crisis its main narrative. In order to assess this historical sensitivity ―which is an effect of the rupture of the grand narrative of progress― the analysis of Janet Roitman has been particularly relevant. Her critical perspective on this historical matrix is based on her assumption that such sensitivity leads to a strong paralysis in terms of (...) political agency, mainly through its claim of being the same incarnation of moments of truth. The central aim of this paper is to challenge this interpretation of the narrative of crisis as a case of post-historical meaning through the analysis of the transhumanist philosophy as deployed by Nick Bostrom. It is thanks to the scrutiny of the affective dimension involved in this sort of historical meaning focused in the role played by anxiety, that is possible to explore the kind of agency that may result from this framework. (shrink)

As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he refers as the (...) crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to post colonialism. (shrink)

It is widely asserted that we are now living in a post-truth society. What that means, this book argues, is that the contemporary global world is thoroughly infested not only with trickster figures but an entire and operational trickster logic; or, that we now live in a Trickster Land - an argument advanced by the claim that in modernity liminality has become permanent; or that modern life is patently absurd. The first part of the book presents a series (...) of 'guides' to this condition, in the form of key thinkers and writers who can help us understand and navigate our Trickster Land. Such guides include Hermann Broch, Lewis Hyde, Roberto Calasso, Michel Serres, Sándor Márai, Colin Thubron, and Albert Camus. The second part goes on to discuss five main regions of Trickster Land: art, thought, the economy, politics, and society. This last, central chapter of the book contrasts trickster logic with the basic, foundational logic of social life, presented as gift-giving by Marcel Mauss and as sociability by Georg Simmel, and which is expressed here, combining Heraclitus and Plato with the Gospel of John, by three basic terms of ancient Greek culture, as arkhé charis logos: meaningful social life originally and in its essence is animated by the power of kind benevolence. This volume will appeal to scholars of social theory, anthropology and sociology with interests in political thought and contemporary culture. (shrink)

The engagement of the Catholic Church with the post-World War II international human rights project has been marked from the beginning by strong support coupled with pointed reminders of larger issues left unaddressed. In the 1990s, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came under assault from many directions, the Catholic Church was the strongest institutional defender of the entire body of principles in that historic document. Today, with the human rights project in crisis, its future may well (...) hinge on how its defenders deal with problems to which Church leaders have repeatedly called attention. Prominent among these is the question of what happens to freedom when man “goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself ”(John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, n. 1). (shrink)

What is post-truth? -- Science denial as a road map for understanding post-truth -- The roots of cognitive bias -- The decline of traditional media -- The rise of social media and the problem of fake news -- Did post-modernism lead to post-truth? -- Fighting post-truth.

'Post-truth', Oxford Dictionary's 2016 word of the year, appears to cover only the turn away from reason in contemporary politics. In fact the truth behind 'post-truth' is historically and philosophically more complex. As Fuller shows in this book, it reaches into the nature of knowledge itself.

Welcome to the Post-Truth era-- a time in which the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy and the world as we know it. The Brexit vote; Donald Trump's victory; the rejection of climate change science; the vilification of immigrants; all have been based on the power to evoke feelings and not facts. So what does it all mean and how can we champion truth in in a time of lies and 'alternative facts'? (...) In this eye-opening and timely book, Post-Truth is distinguished from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. What is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public's response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion. Where trust has evaporated, conspiracy theories thrive, the authority of the media wilt and emotions matter more than facts. Now, one of the UK's most respected political journalists, Matthew d'Ancona investigates how we got here, why quiet resignation is not an option and how we can and must fight back. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one (...) should not ameliorate for the sake of truth or knowledge, in the case of ideologies—at least, not primarily. (shrink)

The claim that we live in a post-truth era has led to a significant body of work across different disciplines exploring the phenomenon. Many have sought to investigate the role of fake news in bringing about the post-truth era. While this work is important, the narrow focus on this issue runs the risk of giving the impression that it is mainly new forms of media that are to blame for the post-truth phenomenon. In this (...) paper, we call attention to the ways in which journalistic practices in traditional forms of media also play an important role in contributing to a post-truth environment. We will do so by focusing on one particular practice common in news journalism. False balance involves presenting two sides of a debate as more equal than is justified by the evidence. We will argue that although false balance does not constitute fake news, it does contribute to an environment in which truth is devalued. By obscuring what counts as evidence and who qualifies as an authority, false balance legitimizes post-truth attitudes. We finish by outlining the virtues that journalists should develop in order to guard against false balance. While fake news is made more likely when journalists possess the vices of dishonesty, prejudice or corruption, we argue that focusing too much on guarding against these vices may actually make false balance more likely. In order to be responsible gatekeepers and to avoid false balance, journalists must also develop the virtues of wisdom, vigilance, courage, care and justice. (shrink)

Fake news and alternative facts have become commonplace in these so-called “post-factual times.” What about medical research - are scientific facts fake as well? Many recent disclosures have fueled the claim that scientific facts are suspect and that science is in crisis. Scientists appear to engage in facting interests instead of revealing interesting facts. This can be observed in terms of what has been called polarised research, where some researchers continuously publish positive results while others publish negative results (...) on the same issue – even when based on the same data. In order to identify and address this challenge, the objective of this study is to investigate how polarised research produce “polarised facts.” Mammography screening for breast cancer is applied as an example. The main benefit with mammography screening is the reduced breast cancer mortality, while the main harm is overdiagnosis and subsequent overtreatment. Accordingly, the Overdiagnosis to Mortality Reduction Ratio is an estimate of the risk-benefit-ratio for mammography screening. As there are intense interests involved as well as strong opinions in debates on mammography screening, one could expect polarisation in published results on OMRR. A literature search identifies 8 studies publishing results for OMRR and reveals that OMRR varies 25-fold, from 0.4 to 10. Two experts in polarised research were asked to rank the attitudes of the corresponding authors to mammography screening of the identified publications. The results show a strong correlation between the OMRR and the authors’ attitudes to screening. Mammography screening for breast cancer appears as an exemplary field of strongly polarised research. This is but one example of how scientists’ strong professional interests can polarise research. Instead of revealing interesting facts researchers may come to fact interests. In order to avoid this and sustain trust in science, researchers should disclose professional and not only financial interests when submitting and publishing research. (shrink)

This paper tackles some of the arguments Steve Fuller – arguably the best advocate of post-truth currently on the scene – put forward to show that, correctly understood, post-truth is the best conceptual tool to get a clear picture not only of what is happening in our societies today, but also of what has happened throughout the secular history of Western culture. The implicit assumption is that post-truth represents a reliable ‘epistemological compass’ – that (...) is, a notion (or a set of notions) for proper orientation in both cultural and physical environments. The aim of the paper is to show that Fuller’s arguments do not work, because an epistemological compass can only be centered on a plausible notion of objectivity, and – it will be contended – this is exactly what Fuller lacks. Accordingly, it will be stressed how the upshot of his theses is the opposite of what he presumes it to be and, moreover, that his theses prove lethal to his own position. (shrink)

This article argues that although post-truth is understood to pose a particular misogynistic threat to feminism, we cannot assume that feminists should simply oppose post-truth. The way the post-truth debate is constructed is problematic for feminism in three ways: it misconceives the relationship between democracy and truth; utilizes a questionable binary between reason and emotion; and propagates elitist assumptions about protecting democracy from the people. Recognizing the insufficiency of our understanding of post- (...) class='Hi'>truth, feminists have called for greater understanding of the roles of language, affect and truth in the post-truth debate. In response, I suggest that the theories of Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig can help. However, I seek to emphasise that if feminists are to intervene meaningfully in the inequalities and intensified affective flows that structure the post-truth paradigm they would benefit from a deintensifying, confrontational but nonaggressive, approach. (shrink)

"Dishonesty inspires more euphemisms than copulation or defecation. This helps desensitize us to its implications. In the post-truth era we don't just have truth and lies but a third category of ambiguous statements that are not exactly the truth but fall just short of a lie. Enhanced truth it might be called. Neo-truth . Soft truth . Faux truth . Truth lite ." Deception has become the modern way of life. Where (...) once the boundary line between truth and lies was clear and distinct, it is no longer so. In the post-truth era, deceiving others has become a challenge, a game, a habit. High-profile dissemblers compete for news coverage, from journalists like Jayson Blair and professors like Joseph Ellis to politicians (of all stripes), executives, and "creative" accountants. Research suggests that the average American tells multiple lies on a daily basis, often for no good reason. Not a finger-wagging scolding, The Post-Truth Era is a combination of Ralph Keyes's investigative journalism and solid science. The result is a spirited exploration of why we lie about practically everything and the consequences such casual dishonesty has on society. American society has become permeated from top to bottom by deception. Its consequences for the nature of public discourse, media, business, literature, academia, and politics are profound. With dry humor, passionate fervor, and deep understanding, Ralph Keyes takes us on a tour of a world where truth and honesty are no longer absolutes but mutable, fluid concepts. (shrink)

Steve Fuller has replied to my critique of his endorsement of a post-truth epistemology. I trace the divergence in our approach to social epistemology by examining our distinct responses to the principle of symmetry in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Fuller has extended the concept of symmetry and challenged the field to embrace a post-truth condition that flattens the difference between experts and the public. By contrast, I have criticized the concept of symmetry for policing the (...) field to rule ideology critique out of court. I argue that a focus on post-truth populism obscures the role of counter-elites and ideologies that restrict political choice. A better way to promote democracy would be to support minority positions within science that promise to open up suppressed political possibilities and to seek the coordinated use of different disciplines to address significant public problems. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of post-truth and the impact it is having on contemporary life, bringing out both its philosophical and political dimensions. Post-truth is contextualised within the philosophical discourse of truth, with particular reference to theories of scepticism and relativism, to explore whether it can take advantage of these to claim any intellectual credibility. Sim argues that post-truth cannot be defended on either sceptical or relativistic grounds – even those provided by (...) recent iconoclastic philosophical movements such as poststructuralism and postmodernism. The affinity between post-truth and conspiracy theory is emphasised, and the extent to which post-truth plays a role in religious doctrine is also considered. Post-truth is seen to constitute a threat to liberal democratic ideals and our Enlightenment heritage, raising the question of whether we are moving into a post-liberal age where the far right would hold power. To prevent this, post-truth urgently needs to be countered. (shrink)

In the wake of Brexit and Trump, the debate surrounding post-truth fills the newspapers and is at the center of the public debate. Democratic institutions and the rule of law have always been constructed and legitimized by discourses of truth. And so the issue of "post-truth" or "fake truth" can be regarded as a contemporary degeneration of that legitimacy. But what, precisely, is post-truth from a theoretical point of view? Can it actually (...) change perceptions of law, of institutions and political power? And can it affect our understanding of society and social relations? What are its ideological premises? What are the technical conditions that foster it? And most importantly, does it have anything to teach lovers of the truth? Pursuing an interdisciplinary perspective, this book gathers both well-known and newer scholars from a range of subject areas, to engage in a philosophical interrogation of the relationship between truth and law. (shrink)

After explaining why, after dealing with post‐modernist confusions about truth in various books and articles from the mid‐1990s to, most recently, 2014 (§1), Haack returns to the topic of truth. She begins (§2) with some thoughts about the claim that concern for truth is on the decline, and perhaps at a new low; a claim that, sadly, may well be true. Then (§3) she looks at some of the many forms that carelessness with the truth (...) may take, and shows that, so far from revealing that the concept of truth is seriously problematic or that there is no such thing as objective truth, it simply makes no sense to say that lies, half‐truths, etc., are ubiquitous unless there is such a thing as truth, and a legitimate truth‐concept. After that, (§4) she argues that, of course, there is such a thing as objective truth, and a robust truth‐concept. And finally, (§5) she suggests some ways to fight against the rising tide of unconcern for truth—and gives her answer to the (trick) question in her subtitle. (shrink)

Low-level dishonesty is rife everywhere, in the form of exaggeration, selective use of facts, economy with the truth, careful drafting - from Trump and the Brexit debate to companies that tell us 'your call is important to us'. How did we get to a place where bullshit is not just rife but apparently so effective that it's become the communications strategy of our times? This brilliantly insightful book steps inside the panoply of deception employed in all walks of life (...) and assesses how it has come to this. It sets out the surprising logic which explains why bullshit is both pervasive and persistent. Why are company annual reports often nonsense? Why should you not trust estate agents? And above all, why has political campaigning become the art of stretching the truth? Drawing on behavioural science, economics, psychology and of course his knowledge of the media, Evan ends by providing readers with a tool-kit to handle the kinds of deceptions we encounter every day, and charts a route through the muddy waters of the post-truth age." -- Publisher's website. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“Post-truth” politics is often framed as a failure of the competition of idea­s. Yet there are different ways of thinking about the competition of ideas, with different implications for the way we understand its benefits and risks. The dominant way of framing the competition of ideas is in terms of a marketplace, which, however, obscures the different ways ideas can compete. Several theorists can help us think through the competition of ideas. J. S. Mill, for example, avoided the (...) metaphor of the market by focusing, instead, on competition as the testing of arguments in adversarial encounters before a critical audience. Georg Simmel, alternatively, conceived of competition as a form of indirect conflict, where two individuals strive in parallel to gain audience approval. This view emphasizes innovation and creativity in the competition of “all for all.” More recently, theorists have developed the market logic of competition by thinking of a marketplace not for ideas but for rationalizations. This articulates some of the features of Simmel’s view of competition, but underestimates the degrees of constraint required to secure the goods of competition. Ultimately, recognizing these different modes of competition in the public sphere can enrich our theories of deliberative democracy and sharpen our view of the problem of “post-truth” politics. (shrink)

The essay reflects on the harmful effect that recourse to post-truth (modern form of political lie) supposes for democracy. Taking Hannah Arendt's thought as a reference, the Author analyzes the role that truth plays in the political sphere and the recourse to lying as a mode of domination by totalitarian political systems where reality constitutes an uncomfortable fact. Opposite with these systems, democracies try to preserve the autonomy of citizens to shape their political preferences, in a context (...) dominated by reason and truth, against the deformations of reality generated by the use of emotions and lies. (shrink)