Post-Truth and the Epistemological Crisis

Abstract

The polarization and charges of "post-truth" that mark contemporary politics may have its source, ultimately, in a crisis of epistemology, which is characterized by a tension between different forms of naïve realism-the view that reality appears to us directly, unmediated by interpretation.Perhaps too schematically, those on the right tend to be first-person naïve realists in treating economic and social realities as accessible to the ordinary political participant by simple common sense, while those on the left tend to be third-person naïve realists in treating credentialed experts as forming a consensus-a new common sense.In treating reality as transparent enough to be legible either to oneself or to a group of experts, both sides tend to treat disagreement as a motivational problem-a problem of bad faith, motivated reasoning, perversity, and refusal to see the truth-rather than as an epistemic problem caused by the possibility that each side may hold a different set of interpretive frameworks that determines how and what it sees of reality.In obviating the possibility of genuine disagreement, the epistemological crisis is quite naturally transformed into a political crisis.

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