is similar to the emergence of the concept of "post-truth", and the term "alternative facts" also emerged in the 2016 US election. At the inauguration ceremony of Trump , press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that the number of people participating in the ceremony was the largest in American history. Subsequently, more and more data exposed the lie, and the presidential adviser Kelian Conway responded to it with a light sentence: Spicer was just a statement of alternative facts.
Similar to Conway's defense of fake news is undoubtedly just a drop in the ocean. Since Trump's run, he has been regarded as a typical embodiment of the post-truth era. And his ignorance of knowledge and facts also reflects the increasingly polarized anti-intellectual tendency of American society.
Osa Vickford's new book "Alternative Facts: Knowledge and Its Enemies" is to respond to and reflect on this political legacy left by the Trump era. In the book, she starts from basic philosophical issues and clarifys what knowledge, truth, belief, facts are, and why there is no so-called alternative fact. At the same time, she also analyzed the operating mechanisms of rumors and fake news from the perspective of social psychology and how we resist the rumors and scams of inciteers in the post-truth era.
"Alternative Facts: Knowledge and Its Enemies", [ Swedish ] by Osa Vickfors, translated by Wang Sihan, Xinsi Culture | CITIC Publishing Group, December 2020.
Original author | [Sweden] Osa Vickfors
excerpt | Qingqingzi
facts nihilism and value nihilism
2016 US presidential election made us hear a lot of amazing things. A particularly shocking passage came from Trump's spokesman Scottie Nell Hughes, who was interviewed by NPR: "It's a pity that this kind of thing is no longer there." Her words were in response to Trump's claim that millions of people voted illegally during the November election. Regarding this assertion, no matter Trump or others, there is no evidence to be produced - if there is no fact, what is the use of evidence?
Sweden also has equally shocking examples, which are related to the issue that everyone was discussing in the spring of 2015. At an adult education center in Helsingborg, a substitute teacher was teaching a lesson about the Holocaust. A student asked questions about whether the Holocaust had actually happened. The teacher said that such a problem could not be discussed in class. In the end, the student was invited out of the classroom. After class, the students became more and more angry the more they thought about it, so the teacher was called to the school coordinator to receive inquiries about the situation in class. The teacher probably thought about what would happen, so he recorded the conversation between the two, and the recording was later exposed to the media. The coordinator said, "What we think of history is what we read from books." He also said that as a teacher, when facing students who have read different history books, there is no need to "acquaint with facts."
TV series " Newsroom " Season 1 (2012) Stills.
Of course, it is difficult to know exactly what the meaning behind these words is (I will discuss this issue later). But let us first define the view that the fact does not exist as fact nihilism or denial of facts. Philosophers also discuss what the facts are, and this is their metaphysics. Chapter 1 mentions that facts are a kind of real person, but how should we understand the nature of these real persons? Some philosophers say that facts are an example of attributes: there is a red apple on the table, which means that the two attributes of "red" and "an apple" are exemplified on the object at this place (this time). Other philosophers are skeptical of this view of facts and attributes. Philosophers also discuss how we should understand different types of facts, such as psychological facts and physical facts. When I feel pain, this pain is likely to correspond to a specific neurophysiological process. Is the fact that I feel pain exactly the same as the fact that these neurophysiological processes exist in my brain? The same facts can be described in different ways.For example, you can describe a painting from the perspectives of themes, color block distribution, etc. Psychologists and neurophysiologists can describe the same fact in different terms. This theory has caused a lot of debate, but one thing is clear: few philosophers will completely deny the existence of facts.
What philosophers call nihilism is usually related to value - good and evil, beauty and ugliness. When we speak, we treat value as an objective existence without caring. Killing is wrong, the Parthenon is beautiful. When we say that, we often feel that we express our opinions about what things look like—what we say is either true or false, just like when we talked about the number of murders in Sweden last year and the location of the Parthenon. However, it is still difficult to say whether moral or aesthetic facts really exist. Some philosophers argue that believing in the existence of moral or aesthetic facts is a great illusion. There is no objectively good or evil, beautiful or ugly. Some people also advocate that the use of the words "killing is wrong" to describe the world is also an illusion: we believe that we are making factual statements about good and evil, we think we are saying things that are true or false, but in fact, we are just expressing our emotions, such as "Eliminate murder!". In other words, no knowledge can be obtained in this way: there is no moral belief or true condition (only feeling), no evidence, and no truth. Among those who advocate value nihilism, one of the most famous ones is the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
Value nihilism has not been widely accepted. Many philosophers believe that moral facts exist (there are not so many people who believe that aesthetic facts exist). For example, objectively, murdering a child is wrong, and it has nothing to do with whom it thinks. Moral knowledge can be obtained even if it is different from ordinary knowledge about the outside world. There is a very influential point of view, which is that we can gain moral knowledge by finding some balance between our moral intuition (right and wrong at a glance) and critical thinking. Whatever your point of view on value nihilism, fact nihilism is obviously much more radical. Value nihilists usually presuppose that there is a clear line between factual statements and value-based statements, factual statements are either true or false (“Parthenon is in Athens”), and value-based statements express only emotions (“Parthenon is beautiful”).
In other words, value nihilists assume that there is a type of statement that is either true or false, and facts exist because of this. They then argue that moral statements do not fall into this category. Fact nihilism is completely different, and its basis is the fundamental denial of the existence of factual statements (statements about the world that are true or false). If you think about its meaning, you will soon hesitate. The earth is round, and if the apple will fall if it releases your hand, my left knee is painful now. If this happens, it should be a statement of facts, right? There is another problem, that is, thorough factual nihilism may not be integrated. It is a contradiction to the fact that the fact nihilists call the fact that "the fact does not exist" true, right? Of course, nihilists can try to say that it doesn't matter whether the spear is contradictory. But the question is, what are there left to discuss this issue? Fact nihilism is the weapon of mass destruction of philosophy .
Therefore, let us put absolute factualism aside and discuss some theories closely related to it, which question the practice of saying "how the facts" without reflection. Stills from the movie "The Truth" (2015). Does
have objective truth?
In some things, there seems to be undeniable subjectivity, which does not match the assumption that facts exist independently of us. For example, how I feel seems to depend on my subjective perspective and my subjective perspective. In daily life, we sometimes say “To me… it’s true.” Is this statement considered a mess?
I think it is quite easy to understand what we say in this case. You and I are probably discussing something we both experienced not long ago.I think things are very distressing and you don't think it's necessary to be upset about it. Next I might say, "I'll tell you the truth." What happened just now is very distressing, at least it's true for me. What I mean by saying this is that I feel that the situation is very distressing - I am very distressing. Is there a reason to be distressed? It's another matter. This self-expression is common and completely reasonable. Sometimes the key question is how we view this matter, not how it actually is.
This also applies to the truth about a person's life. I'm afraid it's hard to have a book that is more misleading than an autobiography. There may not be that obvious factual error in the autobiography about where the author did what. But autobiography is a story, a narrative, and the complex events that make up this person's life have been interpreted and filtered from a subjective perspective. The main line of the narrative seems to be unfolding independently. This may make some sense from a post-action perspective, but in fact, when things happen, the main line is unlikely to be as clear as written in the book. In the autobiography, it seems that everything this person does has a purpose, ultimately leading it to success and honor, but this is too simple to put the situation. Memory research also shows that we are often deceived by our own memories, and even some very important events in our childhood may be reinterpreted and distorted. When a person tells his life, there is no reason to emphasize that this is her "truth", her story, not a life account with accurate every detail.
"A statement is objectively true, which means that its truth or falseness does not depend on our beliefs."
So, what do we mean by objective truth and objective facts? There is a lot to talk about. Here I want to emphasize an important aspect of objectivity: an statement is objectively true, meaning that its authenticity does not depend on our beliefs. No matter what Trump thinks, it is true that it rained in Washington, DC on January 20, 2017. The facts about the weather are independent of not only his beliefs, but also of all people. In this sense, a large part of our usual empirical statements about objects and events are objectively true or false. What happened in my childhood, what was in my refrigerator, the size of the audience, the number of murders in Sweden in 2019, climate change, life on a distant planet, is objectively true or false—their authenticity does not depend on the beliefs that anyone happens to hold. However, there are several types of statements that are true or false depending on our relevant beliefs. For example: Melania Trump The dress worn by the presidential inauguration is the most fashionable. What determines the authenticity of this statement? In this matter, it seems that some people’s beliefs are the deciding factor. If no one thinks her dress is fashionable (even fashionistas don't think so), then her dress is not fashionable. The fact about fashion belongs to what philosophers call "judgement dependent": we (or at least the cooler among us) believe that something is fashionable, and this thing becomes fashionable. Therefore, strictly speaking, statements about fashion are not objectively true or false, because they are true or false depending on the beliefs some happen to hold about the matter. This is not to say that fashion is entirely subjective. If I were to judge that skinny jeans weren't fashionable (because I was uncomfortable wearing), it would be a shame that it didn't make skinny jeans unfashionable. Perhaps the statement about color is similar. I said that the apple is red, and I might be wrong (maybe the light is not right, making the yellow apple look red). Is it possible for everyone to make mistakes? Some philosophers say that the statement "apple is red" is not completely independent of people's thoughts, because color is not a completely objective attribute, but has a subjective component.
It is necessary to point out here that no philosopher would believe that there is an objective truth for everything. I mentioned before that there are two areas where philosophers are still discussing whether truth exists: morality and aesthetics. You can't kill anyone, is this statement true? The Parthenon is beautiful, is this statement true? An example of a very close relationship is the way of interpreting literary texts.Is there any only correct interpretation of Hamlet? If so, why hasn't anyone found that correct answer, and so many ways to interpret it that are incompatible with each other? There are many facts about Hamlet: facts about what Shakespeare wants to convey, facts about the literal meaning of words in the play (including the meaning of these words in the age of the play creation and in the contemporary era - after all, the meaning of meaning changed a lot later), facts about how people from all generations view it, etc. The question is whether there is a reason to think that some of these facts determine the correct way to interpret Hamlet. There are many different but equally well-founded interpretation methods for this text at the same time, and we judge a certain interpretation method based on a series of somewhat subjective standards. Isn’t this the case? For example, we want interesting interpretations - hope to hear something new. These things are not completely subjective, and some interpretations are obviously unreasonable, regardless of the interpreter's opinion. However, it is difficult to stand firm to say that a literary work (especially a rich work like Hamlet) has only one correct way of interpretation.
Stills from the TV series "News Room" Season 1 (2012).
Another noteworthy example is related to the statement about taste. Is it an objective fact that freshly ground espresso tastes better than instant coffee? broccoli is delicious, is this an objective fact? Facing this situation, few philosophers will be willing to defend objectivism. I like broccoli and you don't, it doesn't mean that one of us is wrong. Some people interpret this as the statements related to taste are neither true nor false, but are just expressing feelings. In other words, the meaning of "bruclid is delicious" is similar to "wonderful, broccoli!". Some people have also suggested that there is some relative truth in such a statement. According to this view, when I say "brucles are delicious", I mean "brucles are delicious by my taste", so when I say this, the statement is true, and when you say it, the statement is false (because broccoli is not delicious at all by your taste).
A common objection is that discussions about objective truths are always associated with a certain kind of dogmatism and absolute certainty. For example, in Till relativismens frsvar, Bosse Holmqvist, (Professor of History of Thought) writes that the similarity between knowledge, politics and religion is that in these areas, "rejecting relativism is simply a dogma." Holmquist believes that absolutists or objectivists are content with the status quo and believe that criticism is “negative, divisive” (p. 264). Absoluteists do not consider their social and political consequences when proclaiming universal and eternal truths - they underestimate the harm of monopoly knowledge and almost bring an authoritarian mindset. Stills from the movie "Horror Live" (2013).
In the News Today, Dr. Maria Wolrath-S derberg, associate professor of rhetoric, put forward a similar view in an article, saying that the consequence of "advocating truth" is to deepen the division between different absolute certainties. While opposing relativism, she resorted to the belief in the Truth with a capital T, believing that certainty is only found in mathematics, and as for social sciences, we have to accept that they "have nothing to do with the truth of understanding, discussion, and critical evaluation." Similar concepts can also be seen in postmodernism's criticism of objectivity. It is said that objectivity and absolute certainty are related, and they also have the meaning of power: certain knowledge does not exist, and people who claim to have certain knowledge are just showing their own power.
"It is precisely because the truth is objective that we cannot be absolutely sure."
However, this inference is reversed.We believe that objective truth exists, but it does not have certainty because of this - in fact, the opposite is true: precisely because truth is objective and does not depend on us and our views, we cannot be absolutely certain. No matter how confident I am, I may go wrong. This is the key to opposing dogmatism: there is an objective truth needed to exist. As emphasized in the previous article, the possibility of making mistakes does not mean that I do not have knowledge (if I am right and my reason is sufficient, then I have knowledge). But I may make mistakes, so I need to be humble and should be willing to accept rebuttals, as long as these rebuttals do constitute arguments against my position. However, there is no need to be so humble when it comes to purely subjective issues. I don't think the broccoli tastes wrong. On this issue, I can be absolutely sure, and the reason is precisely because even if there is truth about this matter, it is completely subjective. If, as Maria Wallat-Zedberg said, social issues have nothing to argue, there is nothing to argue, nothing to be critically evaluated through social debate. Debate and critical assessment are intended to determine whether we have sufficient reason to believe a statement, which can be true or false.
You may ask, what does "capital truth" mean by people who criticize the objective theory of truth? I said that the earth is round, and this statement is true - is this true in the sense of capital truth? I have to say that I don't understand what they mean. Perhaps, they object to the idea that there is a “universal, eternal” truth (to borrow Holmquist’s term). However, the meaning of words such as "universal" and "eternal" is not clear. The earth is round, is this the universal and eternal truth? It can be said that it is a universal truth because its authenticity has nothing to do with whom the person who said the statement is; it can also be said that it is an eternal truth because its authenticity has nothing to do with when the statement is made. Whether in the Middle Ages or now, no matter who says the earth is flat, it is wrong. I suspect that when they talk about "capital truth", they are not discussing truth, but certainty. They think that belief in objective truths and absolute certainty are the same, but as we have said before, this inference is reversed.
It is necessary to pay attention to the claim that objective truth exists and claim that we as individuals are objective. The two cannot be confused. To be objective, we must base our beliefs on evidence—think all available evidence carefully and evaluate them correctly. It is not objective to judge based on emotions, or to ignore part of the evidence and only choose the evidence you want. The next chapter will talk about it, it is often not easy to be objective. However, this does not mean that objective truth does not exist. Even if everyone is subjective and hopeless when forming beliefs, some of the statements we say will still be objectively true or false.
Therefore, objective truths are characterized by that they do not depend on any person's opinion on the matter. In this regard, the vast majority of empirical statements (as well as mathematical and logical statements) are objectively true or false. However, there are truths that are not completely objective (such as fashion), and perhaps those that can only be described as subjective, which depend entirely on a person's perspective (such as taste). Of course, universal relativism cannot be derived from here, that is, the view that all truths depend on perspectives; that requires a different method of reasoning. Is the concept of
purely socially constructed?
We have recognized that knowledge is a true belief with sufficient reason. We also recognize that belief is a psychological state with ideological content that may be true or false. What does the ideological content mentioned here mean? It is often said that beliefs express the world through the concepts contained in it. If I had no concept of "cow", I could not believe that the animal in front of me was a cow. If I hadn't the concept of "beer", I could not believe that beer would be drunk. These are all common concepts we use to categorize things.With a universal concept, I can point to something and apply it: Elliott is a dog with beer in the cup. If this thing has the attributes I think it has, then the content of my belief is true.
So, where does our concept come from? Can we only use these existing categories to classify? Isn’t this an example of building the world through social customs and human ways? Our concept is associated with our language, and language is obviously a human construction. So, how can we say that truth is objective?
These are all related to a central concept of postmodernism : Since the concept we use to describe the world is the construction of human beings, then a kind of perspectiveism is born, that is, the truth is always truth from a certain established (and arbitrarily) perspective. For example, sociologist Bruno Latour said that Ramses II could not die from tuberculosis , because the disease had not been discovered when he died in 1223 BC. Latour proposed that it was not until people later excavated the remains of Ramses and examined them with modern technical means such as X-ray, that Ramses II died of tuberculosis became a fact. Only with our existing concepts and techniques can we bring that bacteria back in time and give his body a new attribute: tuberculosis. Nietzsche is obviously a pioneer in this regard. In Nietzsche's view, the world is actually a mess, and the apparent order is brought about by our arbitrary customs and interests. Objective truth does not exist, it only exists in the perspective we add to the world (the perspective of the strong plays a decisive role). We invent concepts like "mammals" (classification methods), then check a camel and proudly say, "Look, mammal!" Nietzsche said that this is completely anthropomorphic truth and has nothing to do with the world as it is. A true artist will see through all this, free himself from all categories and meet chaos.
Is our concept a human construction? This question is very complicated. Before constructing what, you must have a concept. Therefore, under the action of the stimulant, we first see a ball of indiscriminate things, and then decide to sort them out in some way. This situation is impossible. The philosopher giant and German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), argued that a prerequisite for all thoughts and knowledge is that there are certain basic concepts that can organize the information sent from our senses. For example, the concepts of time and space are what all cognitive creatures (human and non-human) must have: the information sent from our senses needs to be organized according to the concepts of time and space. Kant believes that from this point of view, these concepts are not our construction.
Of course, Kant does not believe that all concepts are necessary. Most terms and ideas are empirical, that is, we get them through experience. What he meant was that if you want to have some experience and gain objective knowledge, you must first have some basic concepts. How and when do we obtain those empirical concepts fall within the scope of developmental psychology research. For example, developmental psychologists will study how children obtain the initial concept, which is the categories that are important to children (father, mother, food). These concepts allow children to start exploring the world and learn language based on this. After children learn language, their concepts will increase rapidly, and their cognitive abilities will also increase rapidly. After learning language, children gain abstract concepts, which are concepts that cannot be pointed out with their hands, such as time and numbers. Finally, children's cognitive ability will develop to the point where they can create new concepts at will. But this technique is hard to obtain and is not the basis of all our concepts.
However, language is constructed by people based on arbitrary customs, right? If language is so important to our concept, isn’t what we think of reality the arbitrary creation of language? People who accept this hypothesis argue that each language creates its own conceptual system, which also creates its own world.If you speak different languages from me (especially when the two languages are not close), we cannot really understand each other, and we do not live in the same world. As a result, a linguistic relativism, commonly known as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", two linguists active in the first half of the 20th century. Wolf mainly studies the languages of the Hopi people, and their languages are very different from those of the Indo-European languages we are familiar with. He concluded that because the Hopi people’s language describes time and space completely differently, they viewed time and space completely differently. Sapir's ideas are similar. For example, he said that the worlds in which different societies live are separated from each other and are not the same world described in different ways.
Now few people agree with the Sapir-Wolf hypothesis. One reason is that the evidence supporting their hypothesis is weak. For example, Wolf did not learn the language by studying how the Hopi people used it, but only learned about it from books. Therefore, based solely on the superficial language differences such as grammar, he believes that there are major differences in worldviews. In recent decades, cognitive scientists have also studied the extent to which language affects thinking and worldview. For example, Eleanor Rosch Heider tested the hypothesis that “the vocabulary that represents color affects how people experience color” in 1972. She studied the language of the Dani in New Guinea, where there are only two words that represent color: mili means dark color and mola means light and bright colors. Her conclusion is that Danes and English speakers can tell colors in a similar way, and their ability to remember them is equally good. Later research proved that the statement that language influences thinking has a certain basis, especially language in terms of abstract concepts (time, space, causality, etc.). It is natural that language differences in abstract concepts have a greater impact on thinking, because we cannot learn abstract concepts through direct contact with our surroundings. For example, people who speak Mandarin Chinese tend to think of time as vertical (from bottom to top, such as "last month" and "next month" rather than horizontal), and few English speakers do. However, there is no evidence that they live in a completely different world and cannot understand the way we view the world. If you take some time to teach the vertical concept of time to English speakers, they can think like those who speak Mandarin Chinese.
So, the difference in language will not make us live in different worlds and cannot understand each other. Concepts are much more universal than language. Even if we use different terms, the differences are not insurmountable if explained and understood. The difference is not that big. Of course, there are many different classification methods for things, but some of these categories are more effective in interpreting and predicting and therefore more universal. This is true for everyday categories (mother, milk, trees, shoes) and scientific categories (such as elements and elementary particles). Some categories have no effect on explanations and predictions, such as "things I bought on Tuesday." I can’t learn anything from what I bought on Tuesday, nor can I make any interesting predictions (“Ahhh! X was bought on Tuesday, which means X is also…”). And if I classify something as a dog, I can immediately know a lot of things: it is a mammal, it can call, it eats meat, it can be trained by humans. There is no denying that there are practical elements here, because purpose must be taken into account, but which categories can serve those purposes are not determined by us.
This connects another key point. Even if there are any arbitrary components in our concepts, even if they are "constructed" by us, it does not mean that the world is constructed by us. Without the concept of "mammal", we would not have thought that Elliott was a mammal, but this does not mean that whether our ideas are true or false depends on ourselves or just a "perspective" question. Once upon a time, we didn’t think whales were mammals, we thought they were fish.Even if we were the ones who "invented" the concepts of "mammals" and "fish", we were still wrong at that time. Moreover, not all our terms and concepts can be found in reality. Concepts cannot find a realistic correspondence, and there are many such examples in the history of science (such as phlogiston theory and ether) and in society (such as witches). We have a certain degree of freedom in choosing terms (although some categories are completely useless), but we do not have the freedom to decide whether there is anything in the world that can correspond to these terms. Even if accepting language is a social construction, it does not mean that what language refers to (dogs, lemons, electronics, measles, etc.) is a social construction.
Of course, some facts are social construction to a certain extent, which philosophers call "social facts". The characteristics of social facts are based on the existence of human institutions as a prerequisite: Swedish player Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a goal, my car was insured, 8.9 Swedish kroners were exchanged for 1 dollar, without some kind of human institutions and a set of rules, the above facts could not exist. If humans die from the earth, such facts will disappear. But not all facts depend on human institutions and rules: that thing is a dog, a lemon or a measles, and it is not predicated on human institutions. Social facts also require non-social facts. Ibrasimovic's goal depends on facts about his body and how the football is playing in space. Of course, if I don't have language available, I can't describe these facts, and language may be a social construct (although only possible, because it can also be imagined a language spoken by only one person). When humans die from the earth, all descriptions of these facts will disappear, but the facts themselves will not. Even without humans, even if no one has any knowledge about them, dogs, lemons and measles still exist. Ramses II did die of tuberculosis in 1223 BC, even though it was impossible for anyone to know about it at that time, because no one had the concept of "tuberculosis" in that era. Some concepts are confusing because they are not only related to human institutions, but also to our values. It is easy to have problems in places like this - they are natural categories, but obviously are contaminated with our values at the same time. Our concept of gender is a very good example. Our values shape the idea of what is “real” women, affecting the way we categorize people, thus helping maintain harmful structures. The concept of race is a bigger example of the problem: this concept sounds scientifically neutral, but in fact it lacks scientific basis and has penetrated many values. In recent years, philosophers have become interested in these problematic concepts, and new ideas have taken root. If a concept helps maintain oppression and is therefore harmful, then philosophers should judge it and propose newer and better concepts that remove harmful values. Stills from the movie "Focus" (2015).
Postmodern thought and perspective
Knowledge is a matter of power, and the perspective of those with power is dominant. Behind this concept is insight that can be exploited. The world is very complex, and all descriptions of the world will miss something, and what is excluded is often related to power. Historical research is a well-known example. Erik Gustaf Geijer once said that Sweden's history is the history of the king, that is, it is a strong leader who promotes history. For a long time, historical works describe history in this way, but gradually, this angle has received more and more criticism. Focusing on only those with power will simplify complex causal relationships and ignore other important perspectives. Since the 1960s and 1970s, we often say that we should emphasize the perspective of "people". What are the experiences of serfs, workers and farmers? Soon, the "people" included not only white men, but also people of different races, as well as women, children, transgender people, physical and mental disabilities, etc. In this context, the discussion of perspective makes sense. Of course, it is not that this meaning is just to introduce different perspectives and has nothing to do with the truth of history.On the contrary, it is emphasized that there are many different perspectives to allow us to gain more knowledge, understand what slaves, women, children, etc. have experienced, and understand their role in the course of history. No matter how many perspectives appear, the world will not change.
Feminist epistemology also emphasizes that women’s knowledge must be taken seriously. This is not just that men often ignore the experiences of women in history and focus only on men, especially those with power. The problem is that men often ignore women’s knowledge, for example, their knowledge of different forms of oppression. In the 1980s, feminist epistemology made breakthroughs, and now it is a major research area with many directions of focus. An influential direction focuses on the social dimension of knowledge, emphasizing how a person's social status affects the person's knowledge and the way he acquires it. For example, some critics argue that traditionally male-dominated epistemology is too personal to focus enough on knowledge that requires collaboration.
"When you question your belief in objectivity and truth, you will shake your belief in full basis and reason."
Postmodern thought highlights the importance of different perspectives, and it is difficult to know how many positive and negative impacts this has brought. I think postmodern thought has caused damage in some aspects, especially in the academic world (especially in some areas of humanities and social sciences), but its impact outside the academic world is difficult to determine. The biggest danger is probably not that people have accepted postmodernism and began to question the concept of objective reality, but that emphasizes different perspectives to make it more difficult for us to use the sentence "This is fake!" to deal with propaganda and false information. As the philosopher Timothy Williamson said, postmodern ideas are often adopted by those who tend to be tolerant. They fear offending others and believe that it is intolerant to divide beliefs into true and false. The problem is that this often becomes a smoke screen for inciteers like Trump. If everything is a matter of perspective, then what is wrong with Trump's perspective? In an article in the New York Times philosophy column The Stone, literary scholar Casey Williams attempts to analyze the problem. He pointed out that in recent decades, postmodern thinkers in the fields of humanities and social sciences have claimed that facts and truth are social constructs and advocated that there is no objective knowledge. How will these thinkers respond to Trump? Williams argues that their response is not to return to belief in objectivity and truth, but to emphasize that even if facts are created, not all created facts are equal. This critical approach can be used to question Trump's version of reality: "What we can ask is not whether a statement is true or false, but how it is made, why it is made, and what effect it will have if people feel it is true. Paying attention to how knowledge is created and how it is used can help make leaders like Trump accountable for what they say." This idea is strange, both philosophical and strategic. All facts are socially constructed, but some of them are "better" than others, what does that mean? Of course, it doesn’t hurt to know why Trump makes comments about immigration, unemployment and crime data (for example, to cater to supporters), but the key is to reveal that his statements are unfounded and false. When you question your belief in objectivity and truth, you will shake your belief in sufficient basis and reason, and you will not be able to respond to the statements made by the inciteer. Stills from the movie "The Truth" (2015).
Obviously, postmodern methods will also be used by those with selfish interests, who have their own purposes to shake their belief in knowledge and truth. Some say that Russian propaganda sometimes uses the Western rhetoric of "different perspectives". There is reason to believe that the far right also exploits these ideas. An interview with Mike Cernovich, one of the representatives of the far right in the United States, provides a particularly bad example. He runs Cernovich Media, pushing a lot of right-wing extremist views and alternative "facts" on social media.His blog started out to teach people how to pick up women, and the name of the blog, “Danger and Game”, was inspired by a quote from Nietzsche (a real man wants the most dangerous toy, that is, women). Gradually, this blog became a political blog, and in 2016 it attacked Hillary Clinton. One of the false theories that Senovic spreads is that Hillary has developed advanced Parkinson's disease. He also pushed behind the scenes one of the most sensational fake news of the 2016 election year: Hillary is the leader of a pedophile gang that sexually exploits children. His purpose is to avoid the "narrative" of mainstream media and promote another worldview: men are oppressed by feminists and immigrants are destroying the United States. In the interview, Senovic considered the possibility of lying in mainstream media, and then continued: "How can you know before there is Twitter? You see, I studied postmodern theory when I was in college. If everything is narrative, then we need alternatives beyond mainstream narrative."
My job is to study philosophy, and here I want to point out that postmodernism has never been mainstream in philosophy. The situation is different in different places, but from a global perspective, there is only a small group of philosophers who specialize in studying more important postmodern thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, , and Leota, and most philosophers do not pay attention to them. The mainstream of the discipline of philosophy is analytical philosophy, as well as a series of (continuously expanded) specialized research areas, such as linguistic philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, etc. Postmodernism's influence on the academic community mainly lies in disciplines outside of philosophy. Although postmodern thinking is marginal in philosophy, it is very influential in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Although scholars who have not received philosophy training do not really understand and evaluate these theories, they readily accept radical philosophical theories, which seems strange to me, a philosopher. Taking a cautious attitude towards disciplines that you are not an expert is the scientific method. It is very likely that they adopt a postmodern way of thinking because it seems to be free from the constraints in many ways, but this is not a sufficient reason to believe in a theory.
Original author | [Sweden] Osa Vickfors
excerpt | Qingqingzi
edit | Luodong
introduction part proofreading | Liu Jun
