The Epistemological Fringe

Is there Objective Truth?

There’s a lot to talk about right now, including the significance of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but I want to discuss a very interesting piece by Damon Linker relating to the rise of conspiracies as an important component of our political landscape. This is not a new problem, but there is a dangerous proliferation of this kind of thinking.

Linker is a political scientist, so there’s a lot of political theory, including references to various intellectuals in his writing. However, it’s worth getting down in the weeds with his thinking. I am drawing his piece, “Shaken and Stirred,” specifically on its last half under the subtitles “Conspiracies ’R’ Us” and “The Rise of Political Mystagogy.”

“…among the most noteworthy trends of our time is the rise of paranoid hyper-rationalism, not just among those lacking a college degree, but also among those who have completed one. Conspiracy theories are founded on the assumption that nothing happens by chance, accident, or spontaneously, that it’s possible to be granted an insight into what’s really going on under the surface-level chaos that surrounds us, and that there’s always an intention at work in the world, controlling seemingly disconnected events from a distance, behind the scenes.”

I’ve never heard the phrase “paranoid hyper-rationalism,” but it makes sense. It’s natural for humans to try to make sense of events, but imputing a causal narrative to random events can create a conspiracy theory out of sync with reality.

Claire Berlinski observes that we live in an emerging “postliterate society where truth and pragmatism have been crowded out by fantasy and folklore.” Digital communication technologies amplify the views of anyone who chooses to engage, raising their credibility to parity with recognized scholars and professional journalists, those scions of “the establishment.” “My truth is as good as your truth.”

This trend represents the marriage of hyper-individualism and post-modernism. The term postmodernism is used in several ways, but I’m referring to the philosophical position that:

· There is no single objective truth

· Subjective experience is central

· Truth arises in a cultural context

· Individual interpretation is determinative

That’s a summary drawn from this short video explaining the concept:

So, the libertarian emphasis on the primacy of individual rights as opposed to group rights combines with the idea that there is no objective truth - to weaken, if not destroy, shared concepts that hold a society together, especially a society as diverse as ours.

Just as the horseshoe theory of ideology posits that left and right blend and merge at the extremes, so it can be the case that extreme rationalism and extreme irrationalism become interchangeable when pushed to their limits. That’s where growing numbers of intellectuals, along with people who are the furthest thing from intellectuals, are ending up these days—on the epistemological fringes.

Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. Hence, the term epistemological fringe is an apt way to describe those on the extremes.

The alternative to both extremes, as always, is consistently applied skepticism and empiricism. Bad things happen in the world without such events being centrally directed by a malevolent antagonist. Often they happen purely by chance. A man can turn his head while giving a speech and narrowly survive an assassination attempt without it having any metaphysical or providential meaning.

One way of understanding what’s happening politically and culturally in our time is that growing numbers of people appear to prefer cutting themselves off from consistently applied skepticism and empiricism in favor of plunging themselves into a world of providentially governed mysteries. The political, cultural, and even civilizational consequences of such a widespread shift could turn out to be enormous.

The siloization of media consumption in our digital age contributes to citizens being cut from consistently applied skepticism and empiricism. It’s confirmation bias on steroids.

Some of my partisan Republican, conservative friends have been insisting for a long time that the rise of post-modernism among Europeans, mainly French intellectuals, formerly Marxists, after WWII gave birth to post-modernism in an intentional effort to subvert Western Civilization. These intellectuals' theories were at least as descriptive as prescriptive. However, these ideas also were very influential on, if not the first cause of what is commonly labeled as wokism.

As a long-standing media analyst for Ad Fontes Media, I have spent hundreds of hours evaluating assertions presented as factual that are incorrect or misleading. False or uncorroborated information can become a conspiracy theory when it is bound up in a narrative.

During the recent presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. When JD Vance, the vice-presidential nominee, was asked about this, he conceded that the story might not be true. Still, they will continue to tell it because that story highlights or gives power to an important issue: many localities in the US are suffering from the large numbers of immigrants who have not assimilated.

The issue is not the impact of immigration on US communities. Rather, the question is do facts, true or untrue, exist mainly to buttress preconceived conclusions, or are facts the building blocks to reach the conclusions? Vance’s argument undermines the application of consistently applied skepticism and empiricism.” I would suggest that his position supports the notion that there is “no single objective truth” just as much as the assertion in the 1619 project that the arrival of slaves in Virginia in 1619 represents our nation’s true founding. Therefore, we can say that post-modernism influences not just the progressive left but the MAGA right as well.

Is your subjective experience of reality just as “true” as mine, or is there some objective reality that is not dependent on either of us?