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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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.”.

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)

The post-truth condition is just as much about naming a meta-game as winning it. This condition can be tracked across Western intellectual history from the Homeric epics to popular culture. The common thread is that players are more likely to succeed in this meta-game if they have a certain consistency of character, which Thomas More called “integrity.” The presence of integrity means that the historical losers have often had an advantage in defining for subsequent generations the name of (...) the game because the steadfastness of their characters may make them be regarded as the agents of history, for better or worse. Further, naming the game tends to be stabilized by a variety of mental and material conditions, including “modal power”—control over what people think is and is not possible. Modal power is related to both Machiavellian politics and Kantian transcendentalism, and to the phenomenon of “truthiness.” The character of the post-truth player is epitomized by Thomas More, the “man for all seasons,” who remained consistent as he moved between multiple games, and ultimately to his execution. (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)

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)

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)

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 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)

"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)

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)

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 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)

In recent years the cultural pessimistic position has become known, according to which we live in an “age of post-truth.” This thesis is supported by the observation of an increasing use of argumenta ad passiones in politics. In contrast to this view, I believe that “time” and “representation” play a more decisive role in individual post-truth arguments than the appeal to passiones. By analysing typical post-truth arguments, I arrive at a much more positive view (...) on the present age: the designation of individual arguments as “post-truth” is already an expression of a process of enlightenment. (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 essay explores the connection between post-truth and fear, arguing that the latter may be used as a tool to control information and thus manipulate public opinion. Furthermore, it discusses the role of law in regulating post-truth (among others, by a better regulation of Information Society providers). Eventually, some solutions are proposed.

This reflection on the fiftieth anniversary of Philosophy and Rhetoric begins by recalling a debate on its pages about the origins of rhetoric, which queried the relationship between Plato and the Sophists. I argue that contrary to the shared assumption of the debate, the two sides differed less over what counts as good philosophical/rhetorical practice than over whether its access should be free or restricted. An implication of this proposed shift in interpretation is that Plato and the Sophists are both (...) reasonably seen as "post-truth" thinkers, concerned more with the mix of chance and skill in the construction of truth than with the truth as such. Focusing on Plato's hostility to playwrights, I argue that at... (shrink)

The US populace appears to be increasingly polarized on partisan lines. Political fissures bifurcate the country even on empirical matters like vaccine safety and anthropogenic climate change. There now exists an ever-expanding interdisciplinary research program in which theorists attempt to explain increases in political polarization and myriad other phenomena collected under the “post-truth” heading by appeal to social-epistemic structures, like echo chambers and epistemic bubbles, that affect the flow and uptake of information in various communities. In this paper, (...) I critically analyze C. Thi Nguyen’s important and popular analysis of echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. As I demonstrate, the explanatory mechanisms on which Nguyen focuses are, arguably, overly cognitive and obscure significant effects of social-epistemic structures on our affective lives. The broader lesson to draw from my discussion is the following: commonly used expressions intended to refer to social-epistemic problems, like “political polarization”, possess no univocal definition across theorists, and various ways of making the terms precise are differentially successful in characterizing verifiable phenomena. Theorizing about social-epistemic structures should be responsive to relevant empirical work on various phenomena that we have good reason to believe constitute real and substantive problems that result from the flow and uptake of information. (shrink)

This paper on post-truth politics argues that to the extent that one wants to understand political discourses generally (post-truth political discourses in particular), it is crucial to see them as circulating talk that performs rather than reports. This implies a shift in focus. Many react strongly to ‘post-truth’ assertions by appealing to evidence, objectivity, facts and truth. In this paper, it is suggested that, when analysing political discourses, there is no point asking, ‘Is (...) it true?’ One should rather ask, ‘What happens as a result?’ Understanding political discourses as performative demands that the resulting doing, transforming and changing may transcend established parameters and known patterns. That also means problematising the types of argument allowed, or discourse considered appropriate, in a given situation. What, then, is the force within the performative discourse driving transformation? What role does intention play? And who—if anybody—can be designated as the master of the discourse? One way of answering these questions is to broaden the perspective of what happens in verbal exchanges. The hearer-speaker relation is fundamental, one in which meaning is shaped and the performative force is formed. A political discourse in general, and a post-truth political discourse in particular, cannot do and perform—cannot function—in a vacuum. This evokes serious questions about accountability and responsibility and also about human action and freedom. (shrink)

Populists are often cast as deniers of rationality, creators of a climate of “post-truth,” and valuing tribe over truth and the rigors of science. Their critics claim the authority of rationality and empirical facts. Yet the critics no less than populists enable an environment of spurious claims and defective argumentation. This is especially true in the realm of science. An important case study is the account of scientific trust offered by a leading public intellectual and historian of (...) science, Naomi Oreskes, and the misapplication of that theory during the coronavirus pandemic. (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)

‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically because its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding (...) of truth. (shrink)

‘Post-truth’ has become a buzzword for numerous current crises: the fragmentation of the media landscape, the ongoing debate about ‘fake news’, the loss of trust in science, etc. Although these crises take place in society, it is claimed that the roots of post-truth can be traced back to the history of philosophy. Occasionally, it is asserted that Karl Popper’s critical rationalism gave rise to post-truth: His rejection of verificationism has limited truth claims in (...) the realm of science. Given the absence of infallible evidence and certainty, critical rationalism calls for challenging scientific authority. I argue that post-truth is compatible with critical rationalism from an epistemological point of view, considering that both positions are critical of certainty. However, in critical rationalism, fallibilism, responsibility, and the idea of criticism are combined, and in this respect, it offers a possible way to overcome the problems that are associated with post-truth. This treatment of the problems of post-truth results from the recognition of moral responsibility to take action on the basis of a hypothesis that remains open to revision. (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)

Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous. Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'. It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world. In this paper, I issue a sceptical (...) challenge against the distinctiveness and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin. (shrink)

We often encounter the term “post-truth situation” in quite different contexts. This paper compares existing approaches to the term, reviewing sources of this notion in different domains and fundametally identifying its conceptual core. The starting point is the analysis of the recent transformation of the relationship between scientific fact and the political sphere and the change of the role of experts in relationship to society. The next section focuses on the role of digital and especially social media in (...) the emergence of the post-truth society and some important phenomena that are constitutive for the post-truth society in the information arena. Subsequently, we identify other sources of post-truth situations in the economic sphere, which is related to globalization, and also in the field of postmodern philosophy. (shrink)

It is often claimed that epistemic bubbles and echo chambers foster post-truth by filtering our access to information and manipulating our epistemic attitude. In this paper, I try to add a further level of analysis by adding the issue of belief formation. Building on cognitive psychology work, I argue for a dual-system theory according to which beliefs derive from a default system and a critical system. One produces beliefs in a quasi-automatic, effortless way, the other in a slow, (...) effortful way. I also argue that digital socio-epistemic environments tend to inculcate disvalues in their agent's epistemic identity, a process that causes the cognitive shortcircuits typical of conspiracy theories. (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)

This article critically evaluates what we call the ‘popular narrative’ about the state of the public sphere. We identify three elements of this popular narrative (the post-truth element, the polarisation element and the new technology element), and draw on philosophical work on hinge epistemology and social roles to challenge each one. We propose, instead, that public debate has always depended on non-evidential commitments, that it has always been home to significant, deep division, and that social media, rather than (...) causing these phenomena, has just made them more visible. Finally, we recommend some changes to traditional and social media which we believe would help foster a healthier, more inclusive, public sphere. (shrink)

This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and ethical. The second objective is to illustrate how the (...) class='Hi'>post-truth condition—in particular, the spread of misinformation typical of the digital environments we inhabit—obstructs our capacity to cultivate the virtue of civility by impairing every component of civil deliberation. The paper hopes to direct virtue theorists’ attention to the need to foster civic virtues as a means of counteracting the negative aspects of the post-truth age. (shrink)

This book engages with post-truth as a problem of societal order and for scholarly analysis. It claims that post-truth discourse is more deeply entangled with main Western imaginations of knowledge societies than commonly recognised. Scholarly responses to post-truth have not fully addressed these entanglements, treating them either as something to be morally condemned or as accusations against which scholars have to defend themselves (for having somehow contributed to it). Aiming for wider problematisations, the authors (...) of this book use post-truth to open scholarly and societal assumptions to critical scrutiny. Contributions are both conceptual and empirical, dealing with topics such as: the role of truth in public; deep penetrations of ICTs into main societal institutions; the politics of time in neoliberalism; shifting boundaries between fact - value, politics - science, nature - culture; and the importance of critique for public truth-telling. Case studies range from the politics of nuclear power and election meddling in the UK, over smart technologies and techno-regulation in Europe, to renewables in Australia. The book ends where the Corona story begins: as intensifications of Modernity's complex dynamics, requiring new starting points for critique. (shrink)

After recalling the progress made in the diagnosis of the post-truth phenomenon, thanks to recent experimental findings (from cognitive and social psychology) and theoretical work (post-truth versus half-lies and propaganda, degrees in epistemic vice and scale of responsibility), we indicate four other ways to improve our awareness of the scope and mechanisms of post-truth: we introduce some qualifications so as to distinguish between a post-truth world and an Orwellian universe, the negative and (...) positive sides of emotions, an utter contempt for facts, and the sharp dichotomy between facts and values, and between science denialism and blind scientism. Finally, objective truth being taken for granted, we make some suggestions for a “way out”: we should be aware of our cognitive biases and of possible sources of manipulation, cultivate our epistemic virtues, and keep evidence as a prior demand. We should also work in a “scientific spirit,” i.e., refuse any compromise with society, morality, or practice so as to ensure freedom of conscience within an academic and democratic “space of reasons.” But even more urgently, we should avoid some still too frequent misunderstandings about truth itself and about knowledge (which we identify), and remember that post-truth is serious because it is a threat to reality itself: hence we should also take care of our metaphysical prejudices and work to find better ways of ensuring metaphysical knowledge. (shrink)

As the coronavirus pandemic continues apace in the United States, the dizzying amount of data being generated, analyzed and consumed about the virus has led to calls to proclaim this the first ‘data-driven pandemic’. But at the same time, it seems that this plethora of data has not meant a better grasp on the reality of the pandemic and its effects. Even as we have the potential to digitally track and trace nearly every single individual who has contracted the virus, (...) we have no idea exactly how many people have had the virus, been hospitalized, or died because of it, largely due to a confluence of factors, particularly active obfuscation and mismanagement by public authorities and misinformation spread through social media and right-wing media channels. But beyond these dynamics, there also lies the less nefarious ways that the everyday, subjective practices of data collection, analysis and visualization have the potential to themselves produce these very same dynamics where data is at once valorized and ignored, preeminent and completely useless. That is, the pandemic has revealed only the general inadequacy of our data infrastructures and assemblages to solving pressing social issues, but also the more general shift towards a ‘post-truth’ disposition in contemporary social life. But, as this paper argues, it would be a mistake to see the centrality of data as being somehow the opposite from the larger post-truth apparatus, as the two are instead fundamentally intertwined and co-produced. (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)

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)

“Post-truth” is a misleading label: there is no new concept of truth, nor is there a change in what is true. However, there is something new, and bad, happening in our dealings with truth: the lack of trust in institutions dedicated to produce knowledge. In this chapter, I try to explain why this happens. I also address the effects of this lack of trust in the election of a far-right president in Brazil. The changes in our (...) epistemic landscape result from deep-rooted features in human culture, the conflict between epistemic values, as embodied in our cooperative efforts to produce knowledge, and coordination values, that make the identitary function of beliefs very salient. Moreover, in the unstructured information landscape of the Internet, it is very difficult to read cues for reliable sources. There is another structural factor that plays an important role, the increasing inequalities, creating an environment in which status and identitary anxieties also increase, making identitary claims very powerful. These anxieties are exploited by the far-right, against our moral and epistemic common ground. The equilibrium between the coordination game and the epistemic game is fragile. The victim is our epistemic common ground. (shrink)

Following tropes of light and dark in Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘The Hill We Climb’, the article explores, from a feminist perspective, who counts as a truth-teller. Against the backdrop of Hannah Arendt’s and Michel Foucault’s works on truth-telling, the article theorizes feminist modes of truth-telling. It scrutinizes truth-making in politics while unearthing the andro-centrism in truth-telling. Under the impression of post-truth rhetoric in recent populist landscapes, the article argues for a feminist and intersectional (...) articulation of truth-telling to disclose the gendered and racialized power relations in contemporary masculinist populism. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend the idea of the success of post-truth as one of the main features of hypermodernity. In order to understand such a claim, I will start by defining “post-truth” and showing the key differences that separate it from simple manipulation or lies. I will explain how post-truth characterizes a whole new way of understanding the difference between truth and falsity: a new attitude of indifference to the sharp distinction (...) that moderns and ancients had placed between these two notions. I will contend that this new attitude had been announced by the work of at least three recent philosophers: Harry Frankfurt, Gianni Vattimo and Mario Perniola. They give different names to “post-truth”, though, and attribute it to different causes (from anti-intellectualism to the new media and to sheer carelessness). After that, I will explore how two key aspects of hypermodernity (according to Gilles Lipovetsky), i.e. hyperindividualism and hyperconsumption, cohere with this spread of post-truth. Finally, I will summarily refer to some political and geopolitical events that corroborate the relevance of post-truth in our hypermodern world. (shrink)

Regarding the place of humans in a time of post-media I take into consideration the function of new technology and fictional information on human, embodied, and consequentially emotive forms of evaluating truth and messages conveyed, especially ones sent via the Internet. The main aim of this essay is to argue for the critical role played by post-media understood as digital technology in disseminating and co-creating post-truth conditions mediating human relationships horizontally (peer-to-peer, rather than vertically or (...) from older generations to younger ones) with each other and with information posted online. (shrink)

This article takes a ‘naturalistic’ look at the historically changing nature of the individual and its implications for the terms on which democracy might be realized, starting from classical Athens, moving through early debates in evolutionary theory, to contemporary moral and political thought. Generally speaking, liberal democracy sees individuality as the mark of an evolutionarily mature species, whereas socialist democracy sees it as the mark of an evolutionary immature species. Overall, the individual has been ‘de-naturalized’ over time, resulting in the (...) indeterminate figure who thrives in the post-truth condition. (shrink)

In recent scholarship, a widely agreed upon definition of post-truth has proved elusive, particularly because the term is used in tandem with so-named alternative facts, fake news, misinformation, and references to an anti-expert, anti-intellectual climate. This paper will consider recent educators’ efforts in the Australasian region to address the political and cultural disruption that post-truth has evoked, by inquiring into how their pedagogy mirrors or differs from that used in public spaces by protest movements. In the (...) first section, scholarship on post-truth will be examined for how it constitutes a form of revisionist history, in which the present has been corrupted over time by comparison to a more idealised and distant past. The second section will focus on how theories about the construction of knowledge, such as Latour’s notion of hybridised modernity and notions of historical consciousness, can be used to frame forms of activism as means to educate the public and disrupt the dominant political ideologies. The focus in the last section will be on examining how educators might enable learners’ critical literacy so they can accommodate and overcome the negativity, cynicism, and disempowerment which characterises a post-truth paradigm. (shrink)

Post-truth is a complex phenomenon which could be analysed from a variety of perspectives. In this paper, attention will be paid to the theoretical and practical aspects concerning the role of law in contrasting the fake-news. These are the most important and evident results of the impact of post-truth in the legal and political world. A following focus is dedicated to the new forms of activism aiming at developing a critical conscience. The Author concludes that it (...) is time to promote practices of active citizenship, developed by new technologies, social network and digital platforms, as well as to organize dialogues and discussions in the educational environments and, more broadly, in the neighbourhoods of the city. (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 alleged emergence of a ‘post-truth’ regime links the rise of new forms of social media and the reemergence of political populism. Post-truth has theoretical roots in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies, with sociologists of science arguing that both true and false claims should be explained by the same kinds of social causes. Most STS theorists have sought to deflect blame for post-truth, while at the same time enacting a normative turn, (...) looking to deconstruct truth claims and subject expertise to criticism. Steve Fuller has developed a positive case for post-truth in science, arguing that post-truth democratizes science. I criticize this argument and suggest an alternative approach that draws on the prehistory of the field in the 1930s and 1940s, when philosophers and sociologists sought to define the social conditions necessary for reliable knowledge production that might stem mass media irrationalism. (shrink)