Taking its inspiration from the name of the recent ‘#FeesMustFall’ movement on South African university campuses, this paper takes stock of the apparent disrepute into which truth, facts and also rationality have fallen in recent times. In the post-truth world, the blurring of borders between truth and deception, truthfulness and dishonesty, and non-fiction and fiction has become a habit – and also an educational challenge. I argue that truth matters, in education as elsewhere, and in ways not often acknowledged by (...) constructivist, postmodernist and postcolonialist positions. (shrink)

Traditionally, the investigation of truth has been anchored in a priori reasoning. Cognitive science deviates from this tradition by adding empirical data on how people understand and use concepts. Building on psychophysics and machine learning methods, we introduce conceptual scaling, an approach to map people's understanding of abstract concepts. This approach, allows computing participant-specific conceptual maps from obtained ordinal comparison data, thereby quantifying perceived similarities among abstract concepts. Using this approach, we investigated individual's alignment with philosophical theories on truth and (...) the predictive capacity of conceptual maps. The obtained results indicated that, while people's understanding of truth is multifaceted and encapsulates notions of coherence and authenticity, alignment is best for the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, conceptual maps allowed predicting individual outcomes with an accuracy of roughly 70%. This research demonstrates that conceptual scaling offers accurate descriptions of individual's understanding of abstract concepts, behavioral predictions, and quantification of alignment with theoretical perspectives. (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-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 present study investigates and thematizes the interrelation between face masking, concealment, and deceit. It starts from the premise that the significance of disguise and deceit in the history of ideas should be reversed as these methods of the management of human appearance are not only regarded as coercive methods to manipulate and exert power over others but also as tactics skillfully used by the weak in order to outmaneuver those who are in a position of power. The study traces (...) the matrix of simulation and dissimulation as forming the structure of deceit, it reviews some of the main theories of disguise within the field of semiotics, and it singles out two main dimensions of disguise, one geared upon dynamism and the other based on the static features of the face. This study suggests that classifications of masks elaborated in semiotic theory hitherto are useful but insufficient to encompass the full scope of such phenomenon. For this reason, the study provides a new typology of masks. (shrink)

Within any adversarial rule-governed system, it often takes time for strategically motivated agents to discover effective exploits. Once discovered, these strategies will soon be copied by all other participants. Unless it is possible to adjust the rules to preclude them, the result will be a degradation of the performance of the system. This is essentially what has happened to public political discourse in democratic states. Political actors have discovered, not just that the norm of truth can be violated in specific (...) ways, but that many of the norms governing rational deliberation can also be violated, not just without penalty, but often for significant political gain. As a result, the level of noise has come to drown out the signal. The post-truth political condition is the cumulative result of innovations developed by actors who adopt an essentially strategic orientation toward political communications. (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)

This study examines the potential of fake news to produce effects on social media engagement as well as the moderating role of education and government approval. We report on a 2x2x2 online experiment conducted in Romania (N=813), in which we manipulated the level of facticity of a news story, its valence, and intention to deceive. Results show that ideologically driven news with a negative valence (rather than fabricated news or other genres, such as satire and parody) have a greater virality (...) potential. However, neither the level of education nor government approval moderate this effect. Additionally, both positive and negative ideologically driven news stories enhance the probability that people will sign a document to support the government (i. e., potential for political engagement on social media). These latter effects are moderated by government approval: Lower levels of government approval lead to less support for the government on social media, as a consequence of fake news exposure. (shrink)

The central claim of this article is that post-truth requires a political and socio-economical perspective, rather than a moral or epistemological one. The article consists of two parts. The first part offers a critical examination of the dominant analyses of post-truth in terms of shifting standards of the origin and the evaluation of facts. Moreover, the claim that postmodernism is the cause of post-truth is examined and refuted. In the second part an alternative perspective is developed, centring around the notion (...) of gatekeepers. Rather than linking post-truth to bullshit and postmodernism, it should be understood as a symptom of a contemporary shift in the gatekeepers of truth and knowledge. Knowledge and truth are always mediated in society through the hands of gatekeeping institutions such as journalism or science. Post-truth is a symptom of a broader transformation of the gatekeeping institutions of our current society. It therefore requires a political philosophy of these institutional shifts and the new risks they involve. (shrink)

In order to be exercised meaningfully, political freedom requires the capacity to actually identify available policy options. To ensure this, society ought to engage in deliberation as a discussion oriented towards mutual learning. In order to highlight this issue, I define deliberation in terms of the participants’ openness to preference change, i.e. the deliberative stance. In the context of the systemic approach to deliberative theory, I find several factors causing the atrophy of such a deliberative stance. I note that this (...) state can occur not only when debaters are representatives or are in the presence of an audience, but also when they face the prospect of a binding decision. It is the latter effect that is a serious challenge to the micro-deliberative strategy, one that strives towards decisional powers being granted to deliberative minipublics. Presenting my findings, I propose—as an alternative to the power-oriented ‘ladder of participation’—a distinction between traditional co-decision and deliberative consultation, the latter one being an environment that is more conducive to deliberative stance. This new typology highlights factors that lead to preference petrification and allows for the appreciation of the non-decisional character of micro-deliberation. All of it leads to the conclusion that, in order to preserve their deliberative character in the systemic context, deliberative minipublics should not always be required to have decision-making powers. (shrink)

This article aims to systematize different alternatives for the conceptualization of lying, in order to clarify the meaning of contemporary post-truth. Given the limitations of a historical reconstruction of the meanings of lying devised by the philosophical tradition, and because conceptual analysis risks of fetishizing the lying assertion, we aim to enrich the conceptualization of lying through the lexicographical description of the prototypical sense and the variants of our idiomatic vocabulary for lying. By distinguishing the formal conditions of telling a (...) lie and the situational nuances of the realization of lying, one can recognize a new regime of lies in contemporary post-truth. (shrink)

This monograph sets out from the idea of an obscure and perverted relationship between environmentalism, understood as a 21 st century green and popular movement, and pornography, understood as a traditionalist and conservative art form. Both sides seem to come together in the interest of what has been called the Anthropocene. Somehow the same groups that rely on a fierce defense of the planet and demand a collective awareness of the risk the entire humanity faces do not do it any (...) longer on behalf of an unknown future or revolutionary goal, but for the conservation of a still image of Earth: a positive conviction on how the future is going to look like. This aporia is dissolved into an oxymoron when environmentalist practices are put at work. (shrink)

This essay seeks to show the divergence of real and virtual communication codes by means of analyzing Charlie Brooker’s dystopian series Black Mirror, in respect of the influence of new communication technologies and gadgets in the form of bodily extensions. It draws on both recent sociopolitical phenomena and sociological findings to undermine why and how the speculative fiction of Black Mirror displays the characters’ engagement in their environs as inherently obscene, and at same time mirrors the recent developments that are (...) looming ahead in the future which makes the series prophetical rather than merely dystopian in its outlook. (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.

Według wielu uczestników dyskursu publicznego obecnie w Polsce dokonuje się przebudowa państwa i społeczeństwa, które z aksjologii demokracji liberalnej przeobraża się instytucjonalnie i mentalnie w państwo i społeczeństwo o orientacji konserwatywno-narodowej. Partia rządząca wykorzystuje różne techniki propagandowe i socjotechniczne dla uzasadniania wprowadzanych zmian, tworzenia nowej polityki historycznej, budowania mitologii „wstawania z kolan”. Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie profilu toksycznych polityków, w odniesieniu do istniejącego w literaturze modelu osobowości makiawelicznej i osobowości autorytarnej oraz charakterystyki syndromu paranoi politycznej. Analiza wykorzystuje literaturę przedmiotu, stanowi (...) wstępną próbę charakterystyki zjawiska. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPoliticians, hate groups, counterpublics of science, and even socially-minded critics use bots to pad their numbers, spread information, and engage in social critique. This article pursues the ethics of bots beyond the automated or not question that dominates the literature and offers the concept of bot civility. Machinic and social bot strategies are discussed with regard for the manufacture of social capital—bot incivility. The analysis suggests that bots, which do not trick persons into thinking they are human, are not necessarily (...) morally neutral and that some bots that emulate persons can actually be ethically sensible. (shrink)

I offer two potential diagnoses of the behavioral norms governing post‐truth politics by comparing the view of language, communication, and truth‐telling put forward by David Lewis (extended by game theorists), and John Searle. My first goal is to specify the different ways in which Lewis, and game theorists more generally, in contrast to Searle (in the company of Paul Grice and Jurgen Habermas), go about explaining the normativity of truthfulness within a linguistic community. The main difference is that for Lewis (...) and game theorists, “truthful” signaling follows from an align- ment of interests, and deception follows from mixed motives leading to the calculation that sending false information is better for oneself. Following in the Enlightenment tradition, Searle argues that practical reasoning, which involves mastery of at least one language, requires that actors intend to communicate. This intention includes constraining the content of statements to uphold veracity conditions. After distinguishing between these two accounts, I will artic- ulate the implications for explaining, and even informing actions, constitutive of post‐truth politics. I argue that the strategic view of communication is suffi- cient neither to model everyday conversation nor to reflect a public sphere useful for democratic govern- ment. Both the pedagogy of strategic communication as cheap talk, and its concordance with new digital information technologies, challenge norms of truthful- ness that underlie modern institutions essential to an effective public sphere. (shrink)

This article investigates the social accounts employed by 11 highly paid professionals and managers for neutralizing the moral stigma of losing their job due to resume fraud. This ethnographic study, based on 66 hours of interviews, explores the retrospective sense making used by resume fraudsters to justify, personally pardon and excuse behaviour seen as morally problematic by others. In this study the resume fraudsters sampled were selected because they all found high-paying jobs after their public humiliation, and each one morally (...) disengages. They put their transgressions behind them, not by seeing the light of day or asking for forgiveness, but by pointing to the ubiquity of information distortion in their companies, the victimless nature of their so-called transgression, and, most interesting, a portrayal of themselves and their act of resume fraud as the very type of risk taking required to instil capitalism with a passion and a will to succeed. The article closes with a discussion of how moral disengagement enlarges the zone of indifference in populations and reinforces cultures in which the pursuit of amorality thrives. (shrink)

Käesoleva artikli eesmärgiks on välja töötada olenditeooria mõningad põhimõisted. Olendit määratletakse teatavate eristumisprotsesside lõimimisena ehk "läbivaatusena". Nendel protsessidel on kaks külge, "esi-" ja "isekülg". Esikülg on kõrvutuvuslik, st. paljusus, mille elemendid on üksteise kõrval; isekülg on läbistuvuslik, st. paljusus, mille elemendid läbistavad üksteist. Need kaks külge ei sarnane teineteisega ja nende vahel liikumine kätkeb taandamatut ajalisust, ontogeneesi. Artiklis laiendatakse olendi mõistet "vertikaalis" erinevatele keerukustasanditele (eluline, molekuliline, atomaarne jt) ja "horisontaalis" erinevatele individualiseeritusastmetele. Isekülge käsitletakse liigendatuna piki afekteerimis- ja afekteeritavusviise, mis tähistavad (...) seda, mida olend suudab tajuda ja teostada, ehk seda, milleks ta on võimeline. Lõpuks käsitletakse esi- ja isekülge olemise kui protsessi kahe aspektina, esinemise ja isenemisena. Esinemise ja isenemise ringluste arvukus ja tempo variatiivsus määravad olendi väehulga. A Theory of Beings The paper proposes to work out concepts for describing the individualization of beings on various levels of organization. A being with a certain degree of individuality comes into being when certain processes of differenciation are being integrated together. It is conceived of as having two aspects, self-relation (isekülg) and other-relation (esikülg). The former is a multiplicity where the elements interpenetrate each other and the latter is a multiplicity where the elements are exterior to each other (juxtaposition). The articulations of interpenetrating multiplicity determine how a being can affect its surroundings and be affected by it, and the modes of this articulation can be seen as attractors of the "phase-space" of a being. Ontogenesis is on the one hand the actualization of this virtual phase-space in an actual form with its characteristic ways of spatialization and temporalization. On the other hand, ontogenesis means the revirtualization of juxtaposing elements and processes. The number and intensity of these circuits determines the degree of power of a being. The paper proposes to extend all these notions also to pre-biotic systems.  . (shrink)

Measurement is said to be the basis of exact sciences as the process of assigning numbers to matter (things or their attributes), thus making it possible to apply the mathematically formulated laws of nature to the empirical world. Mathematics and empiria are best accorded to each other in laboratory experiments which function as what Nancy Cartwright calls nomological machine: an arrangement generating (mathematical) regularities. On the basis of accounts of measurement errors and uncertainties, I will argue for two claims: 1) (...) Both fundamental laws of physics, corresponding to ideal nomological machine, and phenomenological laws, corresponding to material nomological machine, lie, being highly idealised relative to the empirical reality; and also laboratory measurement data do not describe properties inherent to the world independently of human understanding of it. 2) Therefore the naive, representational view of measurement and experimentation should be replaced with a more pragmatic or practice-based view. (shrink)