One of the legacy of Trump's election in America and Brexit in the U.K. were that alot of statements were made that were simply not true. Statements that could easily be fact-checked. While its common knowledge that politicians lie, it seems that even the media and especially social media assist in spreading misinformation. RG is not immuned to this phenemenon. Thoughts? Could "alternative facts" (a famous phrase by Kellyanne Conway) be a misnomer for an interpretive/subjective epistemology?
Assuming that we are living in a post-fact and post-trurth world would be assuming that we used to live into fact and truth world. Never been the case. The media have been lying all along. Politicians have been lying all along. Nothing new under the sun.
Ontology is having to do with detecting the type of subsistence of a singularity. When pursuing answers (genuineness) to research questions, we are signifying a specific type of knowledge that exist peripheral to the investigator. It’s the way things are. The converse, epistemology; is about revealing this information (that is external to the investigator) and learn about the here and now (how do we know what is true and how do we distinguish true from false?) Therefore, epistemology is internal to the investigator. It is how the world around the investigator is seen by the investigator. Therefore; "alternative facts" could very much be “an interpretive/subjective epistemology.” However; as far as labeling it a ‘misnomer’; that, is up for debate, as interpretation of how one sees ‘true’ from ‘false’ has a degree of variation, especially when word play comes into the realm of the conversation.
It is not as simple as: Q: Did it rain today? A: Yes, it rained today.
The reason for this is because the rain could have been a mist, a drizzle, a down pour, or torrential. It could have lasted all day, or just for a few minutes with all the varying degrees. All the answers are true; yet, to the person who asked the question, only one of those answers is the ‘absolute’ or 100% truth to them. The rest are indeed ‘alternative facts.’ In an ideal, less complicated world, life would be as easy as either ‘yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt’ or ‘no, without a doubt’, however, that is not what our existence has led us to be, as time & people have become more complicated and less ideal.
Hi @Louis Brassard that is true and I did say that politicians are notorious for being untruthful. However, it seems in the last year or two, some of these lies have gotten very big and there is more people believing in these lies and not fact checking or critical thinking at least, why?
@(Pastor) Debbie Jean Lancaster Thank you for this response, perhaps one could argue it is a misnomer. After all, one of my favorite scholars, Vicente Navarro said that, 'the neoliberal policies of the wealthy are hurting the poor, not because they do it intentionally, but because these were the strategies that worked for them. Thus, they cannot see it another way.' For them, it is their truth that trickle down economics work, while for the working class it is their truth that wages are getting smaller against rising inflation. Sorry, for my complex example, but this is my general subject area. So then, have we always lived in a world with alternative truths, and it took a unified populist vote (in many places) to show us that there is another world and another truth?
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