About this item
How we arrived in a post-truth era, when "alternative facts" replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence.Are we living in a post-truth world, where "alternative facts" replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of "fake news," from our psychological blind spots to the publics retreat into "information silos."What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples - claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote - and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didnt begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism - specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth - in its attacks on science and facts.McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.
About the Author
Lee McIntyre is a philosopher from the Boston area who writes fiction and nonfiction aimed at the general public. Though trained as a scholar, his writing seeks to engage a wide audience in philosophical topics that are relevant to current events. He has also edited several anthologies for philosophy teachers and scholars.His most recent book is The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019) . He is also the author of Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018) , Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (Routledge, 2015) , Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006) , and Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences (Westview, 1996) . McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and has taught previously at Colgate, Tufts, Simmons, and Boston University. A black belt martial artist, he lives with two German Shepherds and the rest of his family just outside Boston.
