Constructed Truths: Truth and Knowledge in a Post-truth World

✍ Scribed by Thomas Zoglauer

• Publisher: Springer Vieweg
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 160
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In a world in which more and more fake news is being spread, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from lies, knowledge from opinion. Disinformation campaigns are not only perceived as a political problem, but the fake news debate is also about fundamental philosophical questions: What is truth? How can we recognize it? Is there such a thing as objective facts or

is everything socially constructed? This book explains how echo chambers and alternative worldviews emerge, it blames post-factual thinking for the current truth crisis, and it shows how we can escape the threat of truth relativism.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
Introduction
1: Post-Truth Phenomenology
1.1 The Brave New World of the Internet
1.2 The Google Universe
1.3 The Blogosphere
1.4 Polarization
1.5 Framing and Narratives
1.6 Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers
1.7 Conspiracy Theories
1.8 Science Denial and Pseudoscience
1.9 Fake News
1.10 Democracy and Truth
1.11 Post-Truth
2: Post-Truth Epistemology
2.1 Friedrich Nietzsche: Perspectivism as Post-Factualism
2.2 Relativism and Incommensurability
2.3 Cultural Relativism
2.4 Social Constructivism
2.5 Scientific Constructivism
2.6 Objectivity in Science
2.7 Objectivity in Journalism
3: Facticity and Truth
3.1 The Correspondence Theory of Truth
3.2 Approximate Truth
3.3 The Pragmatic Theory of Truth
3.4 The Deflationary Theory of Truth
3.5 The Coherence Theory of Truth
3.6 Perspectival Realism
4: Information and Knowledge
4.1 Information Ecology
4.2 Semantic Information
4.3 Misinformation and Disinformation
4.4 Knowledge in Context
4.5 Degrees of Knowledge
4.6 Second-Hand Knowledge
4.7 Internet Knowledge: Is Google a Good Informant?
4.8 The End of Enlightenment?
References