Will post-truth politics put an end to the Enlightenment?

Journalists and politicians have introduced the expressions ‘post-truth world’ and ‘post-truth politics’. Some post-modernists have welcomed this new era. It will, they enthusiastically proclaim, put an end to the Enlightenment Project. This is correct. For the Enlightenment was committed to the pursuit of truth in the face of religious dogma and political bigotry. It advocated empirical science and its methods as opposed to religious judgments based on the Bible or on the authority of the church. It demanded reasons and rational justifications for social institutions inimical to human felicity. And it fought for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the face of religious and political censorship.

The misleading and misguided expressions ‘post-truth world’ and ‘post-truth politics’ arose out of the 2016 debates over the British referendum on membership of the European Union and the US presidential election. In both, blatant lies were advanced by politicians and journalists. Lies, also known as ‘alternative facts’, became legitimate political currency. Many a politician canvassing for votes was not the least concerned with arguing from established facts and well-supported truths to sound conclusions. All that mattered was obtaining the votes to enable them to attain office or to achieve their objectives –– no matter how great the lies and how extensive the distortion of the facts.

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"The inevitable price for disregarding facts is yet to be paid. But the bills are starting to come in"
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Post-factual politics is the pursuit of goals in politics irrespective of the facts and of the available evidence. The judgements of experts, international and constitutional lawyers, climate scientists and conservationists, economists and political scientists, were brushed aside on the grounds that experts sometimes make mistakes – which is true. But how post-factual assertions by ill-informed and ignorant politicians and journalists can achieve immunity to error was never explained. Evidence was irrelevant. What replaced it were the blunt assertions of populist and charismatic politicians and of journalists for whom allegiance to opinionated, self-interested press-barons far outweighed any concern with truth or reason. The inevitable price for disregarding facts, brushing aside educated and scientific judgement, and for dismissing well-grounded, reasonable predictions is yet to be paid. But the bills are starting to come in. Two long term costs are patent – the damage done to the spirit of representative democracy, and the blurring of the distinction between democratic rule and demotic rule.

How do we define truth?

It is what is said by human beings that may be true or false. Hence the thoughts, beliefs, suspicions, hunches and guesses of human beings, who can express them in what they say, may likewise be true or false. Something said (asserted, stated, declared, announced) is true if things are as they have been said to be. It is false if things are not as they have been said to be. There is no such thing as relative empirical truth, no such thing as ‘true for me’ or ‘true for you’. Only opinion, the truth of which awaits confirmation by reference to the facts, and preference, which may or may not be rationally justified, can be subjective in this way. Roughly speaking, something is a fact if it has been established by observation or experiment. It is something from which one may safely argue, and to which it is no longer necessary to argue. The denial of a fact does not state an alternative fact, but a falsehood.

Is being reasonable the same as being rational?