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Reasons to hope we are in a post truth world: Difference between revisions
Reasons to hope we are in a post truth world (view source)
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{{a|philosophy|}}The defenders of liberal enlightenment | {{a|philosophy|}}The defenders of liberal [[enlightenment]] — surely a worthy cause in our stupid age — are given to blaming our current predicament in the moronic now on our loss of confidence in [[Truth|objective truth]]. | ||
Examples of this: from the liberal left: Helen Pluckrose John Bennet, Kathleen Stock. From the reactionary right: Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson. | Examples of this: from the liberal left: [[Helen Pluckrose]] John Bennet, [[Kathleen Stock]]. From the reactionary right: [[Douglas Murray]], [[Jordan Peterson]]. | ||
Untruthiness is a heresy | ===Untruthiness is a heresy === | ||
“Without truth there is nothing —” | “Without truth there is nothing —” | ||
Even classic untruthists have been at pains to deny it. Darwin, Kuhn, Hume etc such has been the collective fear of the establishment. | Even classic untruthists have been at pains to deny it. Darwin, Kuhn, Hume etc such has been the collective fear of the establishment. | ||
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It is good to challenge our conventional wisdom. The critical theory paradigm has made — and continues to make — the guilds think long and hard about things they haven't. Externalities. Fairness of opportunity, the exclusion from “the guilds” of those at the margins. ''This is how complex systems work''. | It is good to challenge our conventional wisdom. The critical theory paradigm has made — and continues to make — the guilds think long and hard about things they haven't. Externalities. Fairness of opportunity, the exclusion from “the guilds” of those at the margins. ''This is how complex systems work''. | ||
If your sacred cow value is under attack from a conflicting viewpoint from outside your power structure, we would expect you to complain, first, about the post truth world. But | If your sacred cow value is under attack from a conflicting viewpoint from outside your power structure, we would expect you to complain, first, about the post-truth world. But isn’t that to go crying to Matron? Isn't the grown-up thing to do to listen, adjust where necessary and restate your idea in the marketplace of ideas? | ||
These pronouncements authoritative as they are strike one as somewhat desperately clinging onto this idea as the last bulwark against total degeneration as if the world without objective truth can carry no meaning, represent no justice, and deliver no amity. As such arguments tend not to address the merits pro or con, but carry straight on to the obvious and dire consequences of letting them go. | These pronouncements authoritative as they are strike one as somewhat desperately clinging onto this idea as the last bulwark against total degeneration as if the world without objective truth can carry no meaning, represent no justice, and deliver no amity. As such arguments tend not to address the merits pro or con, but carry straight on to the obvious and dire consequences of letting them go. | ||
But, as | But, as ''Let’s Go Europe'' once said of Naples, “Postmodernism has gotten a bad rap”. | ||
Things claimed in its name are usually not, on closer inspection, quite so free of truthiness as they seem. And things we take as articles of enlightenment faith at not quite | Things claimed in its name are usually not, on closer inspection, quite so free of truthiness as they seem. And things we take as articles of enlightenment faith at not quite as truthy as they seem. So let us draw and have a closer inspection. | ||
===Definitions=== | ===Definitions=== | ||
{{D|Truthy||adj|}}Having, or depending on, the quality of being true, for all times and all places, independent of linguistic or cultural context. Being ''transcendentally'' true. | {{D|Truthy||adj|}}Having, or depending on, the quality of being true, for all times and all places, independent of linguistic or cultural context. Being ''transcendentally'' true. | ||
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===Enlightenment common sense=== | ===Enlightenment common sense=== | ||
===No | === No one expects the Spanish Inquisition=== | ||
If we needed a good scheme for transcendental truth, we had one, and we tossed it. | If we needed a good scheme for transcendental truth, we had one, and we tossed it. | ||
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Examples | Examples | ||
===Scarier than the wokesters: the new millenarians | |||
===Scarier than the wokesters: the new millenarians=== | |||
The doomsday cult of data | The doomsday cult of data | ||
Like all evil empires it contains the seeds of its own destruction. | Like all evil empires, it contains the seeds of its own destruction. | ||
==Robust relativism== | ==Robust relativism== | ||