Democracy and Inquiry in the Post-Truth Era: A pragmatist Solution
Abstract
Post-truth has become a commonplace strategy. No longer are objective facts viewed as having evidentiary value; scientific knowledge is on a par with emotions or personal beliefs. We intend to show that in the context of post-truth, those proffering and receiving an assertion do not care about the truth-value of the assertion or about the best way to gather evidence concerning it. Such attitudes raise several questions about how relativism can be a corrupting influence in contemporary democracies. We will analyse Steve Fuller’s use of the term «post-truth» – especially, the political connotations about epistemic democracy that he highlights. Instead, we offer a pragmatist defence of the truth and an alternative meaning of epistemic democracy.
References
Anderson, Elisabeth (2006). «The Epistemology of Democracy». Episteme 3 (1-2): pp. 8-22.
Bacon, Michael (2010). «The politics of truth: A critique of Peircean deliberative democracy». Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (9): pp. 1075-1091.
Baker, Erik and Oreskes, Naomi (2017). «It’s No Game: Post-Truth and the Obligations of Science Studies». Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 6 (8): pp. 1-10.
Bernstein, Richard J. (2010). The Pragmatic Turn. Maleden: Polity.
Bernstein, Richard J. (2012). «Creative democracy—The task still before us». In: The Pragmatic Century: Conversations with Richard J. Bernstein, edited by Sheila G. Davaney & Warren G. Frisina. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, 191-203.
Bernstein, Richard J. (2015). Pragmatic encounters. Routledge.
Calcaterra, Rosa Maria (2011). Idee Concrete: Percorsi Nella Filosofia di John Dewey. Marietti 1820.
Cohen, Jules. (1986). «An epistemic conception of democracy». Ethics 97 (1): pp. 26-38.
Dewey, John (1927). The public and its problems. New York.
Dewey, John (1929/1984), «The Quest for Certainty». In John Dewey: The Later Works (1925-1953). Vol. 4. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, John. (1939/1989). Freedom and Culture. Prometheus.
Dewey, John (1939/1993). The political writings. Hackett Publishing.
Dewey, John (1932/1981-92). Ethics With J. H. Tufts, 2nd edn, In The Later Works. Vol. 7. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, John. (1940). Creative democracy: The task before us. New York: GP Putnam’s Sons, pp. 220-228.
Dewey, John. (1942-48/2008). «Religion and Morality in a Free Society». In John Dewey: The Later Works, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany, Vol. 15, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press: 170-183.
Estlund, David. (1997). «Beyond fairness and deliberation: The epistemic dimension of democratic authority». Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics 173: pp. 173-204.
Femia, Joseph V., & Marshall, Alasdair J. (Eds.) (2012). Vilfredo Pareto: beyond disciplinary boundaries. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Festenstein, Matthew. (1997). Pragmatism and political theory: from Dewey to Rorty, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Festenstein, Matthew. (2004). «Deliberative democracy and two models of pragmatism». European Journal of Social Theory 7 (3): pp. 291-306.
Festenstein, Matthew (2019). «Does Dewey Have an ‘Epistemic Argument’ for Democracy?». Contemporary Pragmatism, Forthcoming.
Frankfurt, Harry G. (2009). On bullshit. Princeton University Press.
Fuller, Steve (2018). Post-truth: Knowledge as a power game. Anthem Press.
Geuss, Raymond, (2001). History and illusion in politics. Cambridge University Press.
Haack, Susan (1993). Evidence and Inquiry. Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Haack, Susan (1996). «Concern for Truth. What it Means, Why it Matters». Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 775 (1): pp. 57- 63.
Haack, Susan (1999). «Staying for an answer. The Untidy Process of Groping for Truth». Times Literary Supplement: pp. 12-14.
Haack, Susan (2002a). «The Untidy Process of Groping for Truth». Think 1 (1): pp. 67-74.
Haack, Susan (2002b). «The same, only different». The Journal of Aesthetic Education 36 (3): pp. 34-39.
Haack, Susan (2005). «The Unity of Truth and the Plurality of Truths». Principia 9 (1–2): pp. 87–109.
Herman, Edward S., & Chomsky, Noam (1989). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Random House.
Higgins, Kathleen. (2016). «Post-truth: a guide for the perplexed». Nature News 540 (7631): p. 9.
Knight, Jack, Landemore, Hélène, Urbinati, Nadia & Viehoff, Daniel. (2016). «Roundtable on Epistemic Democracy and Its Critics». Critical Review (28) 2: pp. 137-170.
Kloppenberg, James (1994). The Virtues of Liberalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Landemore, Hélène (2017). «Beyond the Fact of Disagreement? The Epistemic Turn in Deliberative Democracy». Social Epistemology 31(3): pp. 277-295.
Latour, Bruno (2004). «Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern». Critical inquiry 30 (2): pp. 225-248.
Latour, Bruno, and Woolgar, Steve. (1979) Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press.
McComiskey, Bruce (2017). Post-truth rhetoric and composition. University Press of Colorado.
Misak, Cheryl and Talisse, Robert. (2014). «Pragmatist Epistemology and Democratic Theory». Journal of Political Philosophy 22: pp. 366-76.
Pariser, Eli (2011). The Filter Bubble. New York: The Penguin Press.
Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, Hilary (1989). «A reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy». The Southern California Law Review 63: p. 1671
Putnam, Hilary (1995). Pragmatism. An Open Question. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell
Putnam, Robert D. (2001). Blowing Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Touchstone Books by Simon and Schuster.
Rothstein, Bo. (2019). «Epistemic Democracy and the Quality of Government». European Politics and Society 20 (1): pp. 16-31.
Sawyer, Michael E. (2018). «Post-Truth, Social Media, and the “Real” as Phantasm». In: Relativism and Post-Truth in Contemporary Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.: pp. 55-69
Sismondo, Sergio (2017). «Post-Truth? ». Social Studies of Science 47 (1): pp. 3-6.
Stanley, Jason (2015). How propaganda works. Princeton University Press.
Stich, Stephen (1990). The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press.
Sustein, Cass R. (2007). Republic.com. 2.0. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Zackariasson, Ulf (2018). Introduction: Engaging Relativism and Post-Truth. In Relativism and Post-Truth in Contemporary Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.: p. 1-17.
Copyright (c) 2020 Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
