The Incoherence of Post-Truth

Ostensibly, there has been a recent rise in ‘post-truth’ thinking (Higgins, 2016; Rochlin, 2017; Speed & Mannion, 2017; Suiter, 2016). The Oxford English Dictionary, which made ‘post-truth’ its word of the year for 2016, defines post-truth as “[r]elating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping political debate or public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (“Post-truth,” 2017). Going into more detail, post-truth is described not just the (i) proliferation of false information, but also (ii) the attitude that truth is, at best, a convenient coincidence that can be superseded by ideological, instrumental, and/or emotional concerns and that (iii) acting on certain beliefs, specifically false ones, can be a good in and of itself. While this seems like an apt way of characterizing ‘post-truth’, I argue that (i) post-truth is, at most, a rhetorical strategy, (ii) that it is a concept grounded in vicious circularity, and (iii) that it equivocates between things being true with those that merely pass as true. The very fact that so-called instances of post-truth are under scrutiny and that purveyors of post-truth often have to frame their views in terms of truth claims, provides evidence that truth still has currency in most discourse. The question is whether these truth claims or assertions are, in fact, warranted. The purpose of my talk is to question the widespread use of post-truth as a term and concept. I propose alternative ways of describing and assessing the contemporary situation regarding disinformation and misinformation. Namely, I focus on the role of norms in the act of assertion (e.g., putting factual claims forward) and how clarifying these might help us manage the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon. My contention is that focusing on justification as a norm of assertion, provides useful tools for dealing with disinformation that sidesteps the problematic conceptual issues associated with post-truth. I will end by providing a few examples of how my focus on this justificatory project has influenced my approach to teaching information literacy to students