Can Formal Logic Win the War on Truth?
Climate change, Russian meddling in elections, fake news, and now even impeachment have put philosophy on the front line in the 'the War on Truth.' The war was bleakly declared on the cover of TIME magazine, after its 2017 interview with Donald Trump. Everyone had been expecting the usual picture of the President, but instead it simply asked 'IS TRUTH DEAD?' in red on black. This was the first TIME cover to appear without any image since its founding in 1923, signifying the seriousness of the question, which now extends far beyond Trump into the rapidly evolving 'post truth era.'
Philosophers have so far made no direct public response to TIME's question. Meanwhile truth could be said to have a very bad case of Hemlock poisoning, following the path of Socrates when he was condemned to political exile. But even so, Socrates still upheld the quest for truth as the most noble pursuit, and it has been the primary objective of philosophy ever since.
In December 2019, coinciding with Trump's impeachment, the National Science Foundation officially called philosophy to the front line in the war on truth. It announced grants for philosophers to work with the government, Facebook, schools, and other entities to help end the conflict.
http://dailynous.com/2019/12/17/philosophers-win-nsf-grant-study-false-beliefs/
How can philosophers resurrect truth from its deathbed? How can philosophers find consensus on the best course forward in changing the public mind?
Philosophers have so far made no direct public response to TIME's question. Meanwhile truth could be said to have a very bad case of Hemlock poisoning, following the path of Socrates when he was condemned to political exile. But even so, Socrates still upheld the quest for truth as the most noble pursuit, and it has been the primary objective of philosophy ever since.
In December 2019, coinciding with Trump's impeachment, the National Science Foundation officially called philosophy to the front line in the war on truth. It announced grants for philosophers to work with the government, Facebook, schools, and other entities to help end the conflict.
http://dailynous.com/2019/12/17/philosophers-win-nsf-grant-study-false-beliefs/
How can philosophers resurrect truth from its deathbed? How can philosophers find consensus on the best course forward in changing the public mind?
Comments (98)
When I said truth is dieing of hemlock I wasnt kidding.
Empirical observation and semantic interpretation create an epistemological gap between the statement of a proposition and truth evaluation, during which it could be meaningfully claimed the statement is true without evidence yet being known. This gap can be exploited by those wishing to propagate fake news and false beliefs, by widening the epistemological gap as much as possible, thus enabling more circulation of false claims during longer periods of doubt, and the false claims cannot be reasonably denied during that time.
It's a problem with logic itself. It seems pretty obvious to me of course, and I just think we should be trying to explain it so people suspend belief like they should.
The problem I have is, when I try talking with other philosophers about it, THAT'S when I hear alot of bullshit.
I second this...
That book is spot on!
:smile:
Talk about the obvious everyday statements that are clearly true, and more importantly situate truth where it belongs... as one precipice of all human thought and belief, and thus of all human understanding.
Cultivate the sorts of thoughts that bestow the right amount of value in holding true belief about the world and/or ourselves, and seeking to rid ourselves of believing falsehoods by showing how it impedes our very ability to successfully navigate the world.
You and I seem to be in near complete agreement.
What would it take, what would have to be the case, what would have already had to have happened in order for that particular claim to be true?
What would it take, what would have to be the case, what would have already had to have happened in order for that particular claim to be false?
Honestly though...
As long as people are media puppets, and media dictates the narrative, and media is owned by giant corporations with tremendous political influence, and there are politicians who've been enriching themselves at the same time that they are causing demonstrable financial harm to an entire population and/or swathes thereof, as long as all these things are normal...
there's little hope that what needs to happen will.
The 2018 midterms were promising though... baby steps.
Bernie 2020!
The people's minds that need changed the most will never so be if language like the above is the only tool in the toolbox...
For far too long, the American culture has glorified horrible behaviour towards others. If Mrs. Clinton could possibly feel comfortable enough to call all Trump supporters by some clearly berating derogatory namesake, then that goes to show you what counts as ethics in that community...
Trump's behaviour is the very epitome of obstructing justice.
April 1966 - [b]Is God Dead?[b]
As for a "War on truth" ... well, once upon a time, Holy Mother Church made good coin burning (pagan) science at the stake, but things haven't quite swung back around to that just yet; and probably won't ...
... so, like the "Dark Ages" in the wake of Rome's collapse and the subsequent Catholic Inquistion's reign of terror which, besides pogroms of heretics, "witches", Jews, Muslims, et al, (e.g.) prohibited autopsies for medical research, burned Bruno at the stake for his Copernicanism and silenced Galileo in every way possible ..., this too shall pass. 'Anti-intellectualism', broadly speaking, is as American as baseball, apple-pie, conspiracy theories & lynchings. But I don't think it's controversial to say the predominant trends in philosophy are post-postmodern (i.e. we've moved past dada/kitsch-like obscurant paeans to meta-antimeta - so-called "deconstructive" - relativisms :roll: (à la Frankfurter's bullshit) which had been a mid-20th century onanistic "war on truth" parlor game that's no longer fashionable ...)
Edit: Pfhorrest beat me to the Frankfurter reference before I could post. :up:
[quote=ernestm]How can philosophers resurrect truth from its deathbed? [/quote]
'Corrupt the youth' by using humor (comedy) to expose the self-refuting nature of anti-truth claims. Debates or lectures posted on video sites and social media. And script writing or consulting for shows like Family Guy, True Detective,,etc.
[quote=ernestm]How can philosophers find consensus on the best course forward in changing the public mind?[/quote]
Leave the ivory tower and 'become' (e.g.) activists, politricksters or (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert et al -like) talk-show hosts ... to counter all the self-help woo, televangelical grifting, and wingnut agitprop (e.g. cluster-FOX'd Noise) drowning public spaces in mindrotting bile. And forming "consensus ... in ... the public mind", however, isn't what philosophers (are supposed to) do; the best are, so to speak, born posthumously.
:up: FeelTheBern! :cool:
Nothing's Shocking.
I hope it will pass... like a bad case of Trumpian gas!
Should everything work out for the better, it will be a boost to the American form of government. I'm afraid that political change is often said to be slow... especially by those looking to have it slowed.
Don't believe it!
Bernie 2020!
A game, a school activity, element of literature curriculum, the possibilities are endless.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
A child's game.
A computer game could be a success.
That's not at all true regarding the second article. The first is a shiny object. You've been distracted by it. Don't be. Watch the congressional testimony concerning the second article. The public denouncing of the clearly outlined constitutional process, the refusal to allow several witnesses to testify under oath, not obeying the very rules which are meant to govern all politicians behaviours, etc.
Everyone is equal under the law, and is bound by it, including the president.
We need to hear the testimony of several individuals which Trump refused to allow to honor their subpoena. We need to know all of the relevant facts.
Seems as highly likely as any other in this day and age!
:smile:
I think it is no accident that philosophers are made fun of.
It's not only politically biased... but it's also financially biased. As long as people are more prone to watch train wrecks, they will show nothing but.
Rodeo-clowns' occupational hazard, ain't it?
The human, all too human predicament: Train wrecker is as train wrecker does.
Perhaps, but the rodeo clown is not expected to have much to say about the rest of the rodeo...
Anyone who watches Bernie Sanders speak in a debate format will soon find out what proper debate looks like. All one needs to do with Bernie is remind everyone of all the different pieces of legislation which resulted in financially harming the average everyday citizen, and then look to see how he voted at the time...
Sometimes the only nay!
Guess who got it right?
Concur, without reservation. Problem is, human understanding can be....and usually is....influenced by a posteriori conditions not of its own making.
Case in point, this very opening comment, where the link talking about philosophers being granted resources “...to study how false beliefs take flight and what this means for public understanding of science....”**, is informed by “...coinciding with Trump’s impeachment...”.
Or......how to put forth one thing, supplemented with a tacit implication for something entirely different yet not rationally deductible from it, in an attempt to sway understanding into a connection that doesn’t exist. That such influence is incorporated into the opening comment defeats the fundamental philosophy of truth itself, that being, situate truth where it belongs.
That this cognitive device is rampant is not in question, but is blatantly obvious, insofar the conversation immediately went off on the impeachment, rather than remaining with the content of the link and its concern with false beliefs with respect to science alone.
“....Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, mmm, mmm, mm-mm-mmm...”
——————————-
Rhetorically, for you in particular, as groundwork only, whether granted or not:
“....The old question with which people sought to push logicians into a corner, so that they must either have recourse to pitiful sophisms or confess their ignorance, and consequently the vanity of their whole art, is this: "What is truth?" The definition of the word truth, to wit, "the accordance of the cognition with its object," is presupposed in the question; but we desire to be told, in the answer to it, what is the universal and secure criterion of the truth of every cognition....(...)
Now a universal criterion of truth would be that which is valid for all cognitions, without distinction of their objects. But it is evident that since, in the case of such a criterion, we make abstraction of all the content of a cognition (that is, of all relation to its object), and truth relates precisely to this content, it must be utterly absurd to ask for a mark of the truth of this content of cognition; and that, accordingly, a sufficient, and at the same time universal, test of truth cannot possibly be found....(...)
On the other hand, with regard to our cognition in respect of its mere form (excluding all content), it is equally manifest that logic, in so far as it exhibits the universal and necessary laws of the understanding, must in these very laws present us with criteria of truth. Whatever contradicts these rules is false, because thereby the understanding is made to contradict its own universal laws of thought; that is, to contradict itself....”
(1787)
**https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2019/2019-12-16-oconnor-weatherall
I believe a few years ago there was a claim that philosophy was dead and so I guess now truth is supposed to be dead because the publishers at Time think it has gotten that bad?
I guess when you come to think of it, most of what we call the "truth" is merely what the people in power in any given society decide what the truth is and any facts that don't mesh well with their story is easily either ignored or erased one way or another.
Also since the real "truth" is there isn't any truth to begin with (only axioms that we believe are true but are not really the "truth"), the destruction of truth is usually the process of ignoring a certain set of axioms in favor of another set since the non-existing "truth" can not really be altered.
I’m more optimistic. I don’t think we should fear falsity because of its relation to truth. The rise in falsity and misinformation coincides with the rise of social media, which has allowed the populace to avoid the traditional gatekeepers of truth. Perhaps this is why there is now a concerted effort on the part of these gatekeepers to punish anyone who deviates. The “post-truth” era is really the post-media era, and all these efforts are really the flailing of a once-powerful 4th estate in its death throes.
You and your imaginary friends... there are no such 'gatekeepers of truth'. The Church once was... quite unfortunately for everyone's sake afterwards. Many have thrown the baby out with the bathwater...
Plato's Cave
The most recent article also describes my 'epistemolocal gap' in detail. See TOC.
Can Philosophy Win the War on Truth?
One cannot go to war against truth.
Nor is an attempt to replace truth with merit helpful.
Saying things like that is going to get you laughed at, not listened to.
Where?
Here's my take: truth is primitive. It can't be defined as something else, nor replace by some other notion. Declaring 'war on truth' is just telling lies. It's not new, and it doesn't need philosophers to murk it up.
Too quickly. When someone is that defensive, it is usually the case that they are defending nothing of worth.
OK, time for something else.
I amended the introduction to cover prior work rendering direct replt to TIME unnecessary.
https://www.yofiel.com/writing/truth/war-on-truth
If others are interested in discussing inconsistecies or lack of clarity without ridicule I would be glad for the input.
Merit is closer to justification than to truth.
https://www.yofiel.com/writing/truth/war-on-truth
If others are interested in discussing inconsistencies or lack of clarity without ridicule I would be glad for the input.
Do we need philosophers to tell us that?
https://www.yofiel.com/writing/truth/war-on-truth
If others are interested in discussing inconsistencies or lack of clarity without ridicule I would be glad for the input.
Please note the final section has 'merit' in quotes
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7335/on-bullshit
No, it isn't. If it were, it would contain lots of formulae and stuff. I know that, 'cause I've whole books on formal logic, all of them with weird symbols. Yours doesn't, so it's not.
Who are you talking to? Because its not me.
A performative contradiction.
Odd.
Can Formal Logic Win the War on Truth?
Of course to make a more thorough answer, as it is not trivial, it is 5000 words. Thank you for your comments.
:cool:
Good advice.
Due to similar criticisms of your type, please see answer below.
Quoting John Gill
What I did was write a Hegelian dialectic towards a resolution of the issue from the perspective of formal logic, and you can find it, with edits to the intro as per criticisms, here:
Can Formal Logic Win the War on Truth?
Of course to make a more thorough answer, as it is not trivial, it is 5000 words. Thank you for your comments.
Simply put, Trump's 'war on truth' is simply that he lies, or tells half-truths, untruths, and distortions, nearly every time he speaks (or tweets). But because his words purportedly are those of the highest elected official in the commonwealth, and because he is an expert at manipulating public opinion, then of course this creates confusion around what the truth is. But there's only confusion because sufficient people want to believe Trump, and because there is a section of the media that parrots and amplifies his bullshit for political and financial power.
People often say 'Trump is just a symptom' but he's also a cause of this state of affairs. Personally, I think a lot of it has to be attributed to the failure of the public education system, the mendacity of the so-called 'right wing media', and the complete corruption, not to say debasement, of the Republican party. It's scary, it's supremely stoopid, but it's not really very complicated.
At the end of the day, the source of the corruption is probably that 'the 1%', through their super-pacs and influence peddling, really own the Republican Party, which is now no longer dedicated to upholding the Constitution, but in protecting the interests of the super-rich patrons who really pull the strings, through media conglomerates like Fox/Murdoch.
Trump talked of 'draining the swamp'. Instead he's populated it with new and rapacious predators in a way that would put Jurrasic Park to shame. And pushed the US to the brink of civil war in so doing,
What I try to do here is explain why false beliefs can still be meaningful, because during what I call 'the epistemological gap,' there are times when we do reasonably believe something is true without direct evidence, such as the sun rising tomorrow.
I have commented many times in the Trump thread, that the rule of law is based on respect for fact. Sure that leaves a lot of room for debate - the whole vast area of 'interpretation of facts' - but when you get a national leader who basically says 'damn the facts', then you're dealing with basic venality and corruption, not some abstruse philosophical question.
I suppose I could add that every formal system is based on some assumptions which themselves cannot be proven - they must be assumed. But even that assumes a good faith approach to questions of fact - that we can all agree that left is not, in fact, right, and up is really not down. Trump can't even do that. So there is really no way to reason with such abberant thinking, it's irrational.
Can we take a step back a bit and think how people believe Trump's bullshit in the first place. He couldnt get to be President of the United States if he is obviously wrong to them, and he's not obviously wrong, so there must be some way he is finding to make the bullshit meaningful. That's all Im trying to accomplish here is to understand how that's possible. Im not trying to justify it.
It's called 'Fox News'.
Excellent idea, and timely.
it took me a little while to realize how funny that is.
Traditionally, the short answer has been, no. And that is because formal logic concerns itself with purely the meaning of words (themselves) a priori. (Not to mention sentient Being... .)
One can move words around to manipulate meaning based upon context and get interesting results (contradictions & paradox). Hence, deductive reasoning v. indictive reasoning.
In a pragmatic way, as an alternative, I would recommend the approach of parsing the differences between subjective truth and objective truth.
Unless I'm missing something, there's really no debate or question as to, formal logic= a priori.
But in the context of your OP, accordingly, some crafty politician's and/or otherwise common-folk can perform the usual linguistic/semantic manipulation of words in such a way that its truth/meaning is deceptive. Remember, you asked the question as to whether 'formal logic' can win the war... .
That is one reason why running for public office is not easy, on many levels... . Public speaking; character, integrity, honesty, et al. are important leadership traits.
Cognitive science would say previous behavior is a good indicator of future behavior.
Otherwise, I'm not sure how Philosophy can avert or eradicate the nature of human's viz Propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
For some human thinkers, something can only be true or false if it is open to verification, at least in theory if not also in practice. The truth of something lies at the end of our inquiry into that thing. But as our inquiry can have no end, the truth of something can never be more than our best opinion of that thing. If best opinion is all that we can have or hope for, then best opinion is as good as truth, and truth is a redundant concept. The best opinion is only best because, at least on average, it is closest to the truth, which, as well as instrumental value, has deep intrinsic value.
Then, there is the political self deception/lying to oneself: The very nature self-deception is hard to distinguish from the truth—whether our internal, emotional truth or the external truth. One has to develop and trust one’s instinct: what does it feel like to react in the way that I’m reacting? Does it feel calm, considered, and nuanced, or shallow and knee-jerk? Am I taking the welfare of others into consideration, or is it just all about me? Am I satisfied with, even proud of, my self-conquering effort, or am I left feeling small, anxious, or ashamed?
Self-deception doesn’t ‘add up’ in the grand scheme of things and can easily be brought down by even superficial questioning. Talk to other people and gather their opinions. If they disagree with you, does that make you feel angry, upset, or defensive? The coherence of your reaction speaks volumes about the character of your motives.
:100: Amazing :up:
That said, truth is indestructible and so the only thing we can do, if we dislike its implications, is to conceal it or invent an alternative that is more, let's say, palatable.
Postmodernists observe that logic has often been used to suppress truth and oppress people. Who hasn't had the experience of some authority figure or bureaucracy using logic and rationality to do you some moral wrong? "We're only following the rules."
We live in the midst of populist revolutions going on in many countries. The wise elites who supposedly "know what's best" have been mucking things up badly, and people are starting to notice.
Logic is no guide to truth. Logic only tells you which conclusions follow from the given premises. The question is: Who controls the premises?
That's so kind of you. Really. You saved god by pinning evil down to a bad sense of humor