Politics,governance and the ethics of belief

Abstract

In matters of governance, is believing subject to ethical standards? If so, what are the criteria how relevant are they in our personal and political culture today? The really important matters in politics and governance necessitate a confidence that our beliefs will lead dependably to predictable and verifiable outcomes. Accordingly, it is unethical to hold a belief that is founded on insufficient evidence or based on hearsay or blind acceptance. In this paper, we demonstrate that the pragmatist concept of truth best meets this standard for ethically held belief in matters of politics and governance. Currently, these standards are abused by the gaslighting and distortion characteristics of the often social media driven ‘misinformation society’. The legitimacy and trust in our institutions and leadership that is requisite for good governance is challenged thereby, threatening the viability of our republic.

Keywords

pragmatism belief truth alt truth misinformation language games

1. Introduction

In matters of governance, is believing subject to ethical standards? Are there right and wrong ways of holding beliefs? If so, what are the criteria and how relevant are they our culture today? Some suggest that while, ‘the good man is so called in virtue of a single absolute excellence, there cannot be a single absolute excellence of the good citizen’ (Aristotle 340 BC). Hence, governance is a place apart and there are different standards of ethics in matters of life than in politics and governance. Others champion an a-moral approach to politics, judging acts of governance against the benchmark of necessity. Still others opt for a contextual ethics giving legitimacy to deceit and guile for proper purposes at proper times (Berlin 1980, 25–229). All cases, however, suggest differing orbits centred around a desideratum (e.g. behaviour that is responsible, necessary or in interest of states). Each holds some behaviour desirable, implying an ethics that ‘is the enquiry into what is good … valuable … [or] really important … In fact, the word good in the relative sense simply means coming up to a certain predetermined standard’ (Wittgenstein 1929, 1). In matters of politics and governance, those things that qualify as ‘really important’ include beliefs that produce language and actions that affect or have the potential to affect the course of events are highly influential and originate from someone in a position of actual or perceived authority. So, the questions become, ‘What are the standards for holding beliefs in the really important matters of politics and governance, and what difference does conformance make?’

We argue that the really important matters in politics and governance necessitate a confidence that our beliefs will lead dependably to predictable outcomes. Accordingly, it is unethical to hold a belief that is founded on insufficient evidence of dependability, and the necessary standard for dependable belief is warranted assertability grounded in experience, research, collaboration and current events. In this paper, we demonstrate that the pragmatist concept of truth meets this standard for ethically held belief in matters of politics and governance (e.g. policy-making and administration) best. Currently, these standards are abused by the gaslighting and distortion characteristic of ‘the misinformation society’ (Pikard 2016). The legitimacy and trust in our institutions and leadership that is requisite for good governance is challenged thereby, threatening the viability of our republic.

2. Politics, governance and the ethics of belief

Politics and governance regulate the interactions among the members of a given polity and between those members and their government. This regulation is embodied in laws, policies and practices that elicit certain ‘habitualized modes of behavior with normative implications concerning the collective conduct of life’ (Jaeggi 2014, 77). Fundamentally at stake is the polity’s maintenance, its beneficial adaptation to circumstance and the realization of those goals that cannot be achieved other than collectively. Consequently, it is imperative to get things right empirically when it comes to beliefs that may dependably advance these ends.

When crafting laws, policies and practices, in order to get things right political actors and institutions accrue and elaborate characteristic ways of speaking and acting that consistently prove useful to meet the ends of survival, maintenance and goal attainment. These language-games (concrete social activities involving language use and the actions into which the language is woven) lend meaning to words and facilitate agreement about what is true and false, good and bad (Wittgenstein 1953, 546; see also Austin 1979; Derrida 1976; Fish 1989; Hart 1994). In addition, ‘enforceable political decisions must be formulated in a language that is equally accessible to all citizens, and it must be possible to justify them [verifying whether they are true or false, or good or bad] in this language’ (Habermas 2006). A number of epistemic commitments follow from these principles as necessary to determining what is true and false, and which in turn justify choices in governance and politics.

What is most important to highlight for our purposes is that inherent in the normative implications of these commitments is an ethical obligation to generate and assert a certain kind of knowledge; the kind of knowledge truly believed effective in meeting the really important ends of maintenance, adaptation and goal attainment both accurately and dependably. The language-games of politics and governance, then, include constitutive epistemic norms of belief.

2.1. The epistemic norms of belief

Given the purposes and the grammar (standards of correct play) of the language-game, people making assertions have a duty to respond to what they believe to be the realities of a situation (Velleman 1996). As reality is complex, nuanced and changing, and as experiences of its many aspects vary, there is no perspective-free interpretation of what is occurring and most problems are wicked (complex, interconnected, intractable, lacking in clarity and subject to real-world constraints that hinder attempts at solution) (Horst and Webber 1973). Accordingly, in the language-games of politics and governance, public deliberation is often an epistemic norm even in some authoritarian regimes. For example,

… successfully justified repression may even serve the purpose of creating legitimacy … [as] repression in itself may generate support from certain segments of the population and/or from international actors. Thus, legitimation and repression can be perceived as two sides of the same coin (Edel and Josua 2018, 882-883).

Public justification is considered crucial to political discourse and governance in liberal democracies. In such polities, these language-games involve citizen assessment and critique of ‘actions and institutions [by] using shared criteria, and justify[ing] them to one another … on the basis of reasons all accept’ (Freeman 2007, 5–6; see also Nagel 1987, 232; Rawls 1994, 378).

The norm of public deliberation, in other words, implies corollaries concerning what may be asserted ethically in public discourse. Theses corollaries include both a commitment to evidence-based assertations and an accountability and responsiveness to counter-reasoning in order to ensure that deliberations are well anchored in reality (Peter 2020). For example, given what is at stake, holding justified beliefs regarding ‘true and false’ is considered better than having unjustified beliefs. Justified beliefs are those that ‘the proofs they are built upon will warrant’ (Passmore 1968, 95). Warranted beliefs are those that exhibit some predictive power and are supportable empirically by current events, research and experience. Accordingly, determining whether a belief is ‘justified [warranted] tells us whether we should, should not, or may believe and so act [govern] legitimately’ (Passmore 1968, 95).¹ Consequently, the norms of public deliberation (the grammar of the language-game) comprise the ways in which propositions are characterized when engaged in governance and politics. They define what counts as true and legitimate reasoning and, in this sense, define the rules of the game done ethically.

If the grammar of governance and politics legitimizes dependable, evidence-based forms of declaratory statements as necessary to ethical deliberation, it implies, as well, that other kinds of statements should be avoided or placed to one side. What, then, is unethical assertion in public deliberation? Certainly, some beliefs are not considered legitimate (ethical) in the language-games of politics and governance by the vast majority of participants. Few decision-makers seem tempted to either employ or consider appeals to astrological beliefs or beliefs occasioned by casting runes or consulting the I Ching.

Other assorted beliefs, however, do elicit a fair amount of attention and anxiety because they do seem relevant to the conversations of politics and governance as they are enticing, psychologically plausible and employed broadly in common discourse. Accordingly, they often gain a significant number of adherents, and their popularity and familiarity may put pressure on decision-makers attempting to maintain the ethics of belief-assertion in the language-game of politics and governance. These beliefs include, but are not limited to, fundamentalist arguments that depend on deep philosophical premises or comprehensive normative commitments, purely partisan arguments that prefer a social or political group for special treatment without substantial justification, emotional arguments that invoke feelings not integral to the logical structure of the discourse and nearly all propaganda techniques when intended to overcome reason (e.g. bandwagon arguments, slippery slope arguments, arguments form ignorance).

In sum, given the purposes of politics and governance, political language-games must be devised so as to maintain, adapt, advance and improve the polity in ways that cannot be achieved other than collectively. This presupposes that they must, inter alia, assist in delimiting practices that a polity has very good reason to believe constitute promising approaches to mitigating what is put at stake by wicked problems. Consequently, it is unethical to maintain beliefs as true in the political language-game true unless they can be understood in that context it emerges from a process involving such scrutiny as secures dependable and predictable outcomes.

2.2. Belief and fundamentalist language-games

Among the unethical assertions of belief (assertions not meeting the ethical obligation to generate knowledge relevant to meeting the really important ends of maintenance, adaptation and goal attainment both accurately and dependably) assertions of fundamentalist beliefs seem the most enticing. They are both psychologically plausible and employed routinely in the language-games of everyday life. For example, when speaking of belief in the language-games of politics and governance, it is not really possible to talk meaningfully about God, an incorporeal, infinite and timeless being. (Ayer 1952; Weed 2007). Nor is it really possible to speak meaningfully about the metaethical nature of the good, or the purpose of life, or the market as an abstract entity divorced from concrete contexts (Cox 1999). Nevertheless, assertions characterized by a markedly strict literalism and universalization of certain ideals and principles taken as dogma or transcendental and universalizable ideals are made regularly in discourse concerning governance and politics. Most often emphasizing purity of belief and the rejection of diverse of opinion regarding the interpretation of these principles and ideals, these assertions of belief violate the epistemic ethics of belief in political discourse in two ways.

First, for the reasons delineates above, the norm of public deliberation includes both a commitment to evidence-based assertations and an accountability and responsiveness to counter-reasoning in order to ensure that deliberations are well anchored in reality (Peter 2020). Second, Following Wittgenstein, fundamentalist language-games may be understood politically in several ways. We must ‘look and see’ what is going on during ordinary linguistic practice. For example, many religious people appear to use religious language to make a variety of historical, existential and metaphysical (supernatural) claims. God exists makes such a claim about some sort of transcendent, perfect being. Similarly, ‘there exists an enduring moral order … made for man; human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent’ (Kirk 1993), and ‘it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings’ (Mill 2001, 59), each violate the ethics of political belief by making abstract, universalist and transcendentalist claims not subject to verification and resistant in practice to counter. Nevertheless, both are employed often by certain sorts of conservatives and liberals respectively to promote and critique policy regardless of context or the nature of the problem.

Alternatively, fundamentalist language-games may be understood politically as declaratory. Rather than assertions of truth, they may be taken as avowals concerning the desirability of particular ways of life. (Ayer 1952; Braithwaite 1955; Clack 1999; Weed 2007). As Wittgenstein observes, just as each language-game has its own rules and purposes determining what can and cannot be done and said, so each context of language has its own rules determining what is and is not meaningful. Accordingly, fundamentalist assertions may be classified as moves in a language-game with its own purposes, rules and practices (e.g. church attendance, praying, bible study, lighting candles, rites and rituals) which are meaningful within their own context. (Wittgenstein 1953, 654; Wittgenstein 1984). Along this line, it may be asserted there are dimensions to the use and significance of some language-games that may be lost on non-adherents. For example, ‘some aspects of religious doctrine and practice may remain closed to one if one is not a religious believer’, and moreover, that ‘there may well be some aspects of religious discourse that will continue to remain opaque to one, quite possibly regardless of whether one is a religious believer or not’ (Schönbaumsfeld 2014, 98–99). Additionally, it is the case often that adherents to fundamentalist beliefs have ‘what you might call an unshakable belief (James, 1940). It will show, not by reasoning or appeal to ordinary grounds for belief but rather by regulating [for] in all his life’.

Given this, it is unreasonable, for example, to try to make religious practices and discourse appear reasonable or unreasonable by employing the empirically based language-games of politics and governance. Nor is it reasonable to employ religious or fundamentalist language-games in policy-making discourse. Religious beliefs are neither based on evidence nor open to rational verification. Rather, they express an attitude toward the world, a way of understanding or relating to the world, rather than a belief that is true or false. More importantly, religious and other fundamentalist language-games violate the ethics of political belief as believing in those language-games is neither epistemic nor open to assessment and critique by way of shared criteria and justification on the basis of reasons all accept (Freeman 2007, 5–6; see also Nagel 1987, 232; Rawls 1994, 378).

Nevertheless, people making fundamentalist assertions of belief in political language-games are not living apart. They, too, are engaged in a polity. To the extent that all such beliefs in all such language-games are unsupportable empirically and experientially, or to the extent that they cannot be understood by non-believers, they are unethical as they do not provide dependable bases for either political practice or policy. This is not to say that faith-based-language aspirations and preferences should be ignored. It is only to say that before they may be taken as dependable foundations for either governing or political action, they require formulation as beliefs that exhibit some predictive power and are supportable empirically by current events, research and experience; they need to meet the norms of discourse in the language-games of politics and governance. At most, they should be accommodated, if reasonably possible without negatively affecting the desired outcomes.

2.3. Belief, partisanship and emotional language-games

Virtually no one disputes the notion that public governance (e.g. policy and law) should not be based on emotional fidelities to particular interests or groups rather than or in addition to a commitment to serving the general good. The avoidance of overt group-based partiality and the embrace of empirical, replicable foundations are ethical norms of public deliberation. Policy-makers’ emotional commitments are unethical grounds for reaching conclusions about the content and value of policy and law.

In social life, however, arguments based on emotion are pervasive and effective. For just this reason, the founders were dedicated to the idea that ‘it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government’. Law and policy ‘could never be expected to turn on the true merits of the question’ so much as on the partisanship of ‘the very men who had been agents in, or opponents of, the measures to which the decision would relate’ (Hamilton or Madison, 1788, no. 49). This norm extends to all areas of governance and politics more or less rigidly. Personal storytelling with an emotional cast is a familiar genre of political campaigning, legislative and Congressional floor speeches, filibusters and social movements seeking reform, all of which give voice frequently to passionately held commitments. However, as such appeals violate the ethics of political belief ethical politicians, advocates, and lawmakers who invoke their feelings strive to show that their support for policy and law do not depend upon them.

3. Pragmatism, governance, politics and the ethics of belief

Many schools of Pragmatist thinking are ‘problem oriented and concerned with reflecting upon a particular context that crucially determines the success of a particular conclusion and resolution. This is true across the pragmatist spectrum’ (Cojocaru 2020, 33). Core to its problem-solving is the idea that all facts are beliefs that we have very good reasons for acting upon. To Peirce, for example, facts are beliefs that we can depend upon when acting in the face of all future challenges. Our problems regarding what is true “would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that [we] want to know the ‘Truth,' [we] were simply to say that [we] want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt” (Peirce 1905, 168). To James, truths are beliefs that are dependable and useful. He asserts that, “Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labour; is true for just so much” (James 1907, p. 34). Dewey, convinced that truth, knowledge and belief are too ambiguous, opted to employ warranted assertability in their stead (Dewey 1918, 9; 1938, 15–16). ‘Warranted assertibility’ is a ‘definition of the nature of knowledge in the honorific sense according to which only true beliefs are knowledge’. Putnam adds the nuance that under some conditions “being true [is consistent] with being warrantedly assertible under ideal conditions.” More specifically, it might demand ‘that truth is independent of justification here and now, but not independent of all justification’ (Putnam 1981, 56). In all cases, however, pragmatists are concerned with ‘how we ought to act in the light of experience’ (Liszka 2012, 80).

The pragmatists’ epistemic commitments follow from this orientation. They include, ‘following reasons and evidence, rather than self-interest’, ‘taking your views to be fallible’, ‘willingness to listen to the views of others’, ‘willingness to uphold the deliberative process, no matter the difficulties encountered’ (Misak 2008, 103; 2004) and engaging seriously with those whose experiences differ from our own, such as interpersonal norms of ‘equality, participation, recognition, and inclusion’ (Talisse 2014, 127).

3.1. Pragmatism and the ethics of belief

Pragmatists tend to consider traditional ethical standards (deontological, consequentialist, virtuous) as grounded in a ‘silly pretense of critical examination’ (Peirce 1994, section 1.573), as hindrances to understanding how ‘moral difficulties and uncertainties could arise’, and as borne out by ‘oversimplification’. Pragmatism does, however, offer insights into ‘how we ought to act in the light of experience’ (Liszka 2012, 80). This presupposes that pragmatism can offer some assistance in solving particular ethical problems that must be addressed whenever something important is ‘at stake’. (Peirce 1994, Vol. 1, 630).

Regarding belief, the ethical issue seems to be drawn clearly. Clifford asserts that, ‘It is wrong [epistemically] always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’ (Clifford 1877, 183; Feldman 2006). Belief begins as a proposition that is then vetted and verified and then subject to ongoing, self-correcting processes of enquiry (Dewey 1918) and treated as a matter of conformity to current practice (Rorty 2007). Conversely, asserts that it is not epistemically wrong to make a passional decision under specified conditions.

Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open’, is itself a passional decision – just like deciding yes or no – and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.

The specified condition James has in mind is exemplified by what is styled as the religious hypothesis; that a god exists and that we are better off if we so believe. As James puts it, ‘best things are the more eternal things’ and ‘[t]he more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form’. This belief is a forced option as ‘our nonintellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief’. In other words, it is a fundamental fact about us that whenever faced by a decision that ‘cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds’ we repair to ‘our passional and volitional nature [which] lay at the root of all our convictions’.

Actually, this observation does not conflict necessary with Clifford’s view about what is wrong ethically in deciding what to believe. To the extent that there appears to be a contradiction, it is one consistent with the pragmatic mode of thought. Pragmatism rebuffs any suggestion that it is ever necessary to ground our beliefs in either eternal principles or essential characteristics (Cotter 1996). Rather, situation-specific ethics are constructed from equally contingent and context-specific categories, concepts and values (Tamanaha 1996). Useful ways of thinking and valuing are discovered by way of problem-solving praxis in situ as it is the situation alone that serves to ‘disconnect the whirring machinery of philosophical abstraction from practical business’ (Posner 1995, 463). Perhaps most importantly, grounding our deliberations in the situation allows us to ‘arrest the postmodern tendency toward detached symbolic hyperreality’ (Fox and Miller 1995, 9). So, for the pragmatist, our praxis in particular contexts is constitutive of our values and so the characteristics of ethical practice (e.g. how to come to belief ethically).

3.2. Politics, governance and the ethics of belief

In the contexts of governance and politics which method of coming to a belief is ethical, the passional or the warranted? As it turns out, James resolves whatever dilemma we might perceive. For James (1907, 0.29), the pragmatic method dissolves disputes over belief and other ‘metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable’ by clarifying our understanding of that belief. Following Peirce and consistent with Clifford, his clarification is accomplished by considering the effects following each principle might have (Peirce 1878). Unless some practical difference follows from one or the other side’s being correct, the dispute is idle.

[T]he tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare (James 1907, 29).

Pragmatists such as Dewey and Addams turned pragmatist philosophy explicitly towards politics as a means of social improvement, But the question is, ‘What epistemic norms of belief are developed in the practice of politics and governance?’ Although denying final, absolute ethical standards, pragmatists are not perniciously relativistic. While they consider the ‘pretenses’ of the traditional ethical theories as oversimplifications and hindrances, they do not deny the reality of ethical principles as more or less useful social constructs. As they see it, there are context appropriate ethical principles emergent from the crucible of experience, not through the proclamations of something or someone outside of culture, society, polity, time and place. Just as ideas only prove their superiority in dialogue and in conflict with other ideas, ethical principles prove their worth in dialogue and conflict with other ideas and experiences. Hence, some range of moral disagreement and some amount of different action is not something to bemoan. Ethical theories cannot provide final answers, but situationally useful principles or standards may arise out of the messy tasks of life and of doing battle in the marketplace of ideas.

4. Pragmatism, belief and governance in an alt-truth world

The importance of national discourse grounded a pragmatist ethics of belief cannot be overstated. Clifford stopped short in his assertation ‘that we have duties to form our beliefs on the basis of evidence, not only for our own personal sakes, also because of their effects on others’ (Uribe 2018.) The impacts of embracing, and more so promoting unfounded, misleading and patently false beliefs as ‘alt-truth’, and as moral truth, has had and continues to have deleterious effects on not just us as individuals, but also on local and global governance. One only need look to recent national elections and the subsequent storming of our nation’s Capital for illustrations of some of those results. While determining the truth of a belief may be open to interpretation and debate (e.g. selection of differing data sources and interpretations, or interpretation of current events), the foundation for that debate must be real and verifiable.

The occurrences of fake news, misinformation and media manipulation to ‘inform’ and sway the public’s beliefs in politics and governance, while perhaps at its peak in current times, are not a contemporary phenomenon. Misinformation and propaganda, whether disseminated by public (consider the government’s campaigns regarding the Vietnam conflict or the ‘cold war’, for example) or private sources, have been promoted by the media, unwittingly or as partners to deception, for as long as we have been an independent nation. “The growth of ‘hyperpartisan' news and commentary also may be viewed as an alternative fact or knowledge infrastructure, contributing to discussions of a post-truth condition and the contention that established institutions are under threat” (Rogers and Neiderer 2020). This is evidenced by the social and political divides in audience share for networks such as FOX and MSNBC, and the rise of internet sites and blogs devoted to inflammatory political dogma.

The expansion of social media has moved the spread of misinformation and propaganda beyond our TVs and computers to smart phones and tablets, enabling us to stay constantly engaged for anywhere and everywhere, creating, in effect, voluntary brainwashing.

‘But the profound media power residing in one monopolistic platform arguably presents a unique threat. Even as Facebook is coming under increased public pressure to be held accountable for the misinformation it purveys and from which it profits, the core problem is often overlooked: the proliferation of fake news is symptomatic of an unregulated news monopoly, one that is governed solely by profit imperatives’ (Pickard 2016).

The proliferation of social media giants, such as Twitter, Instagram (owned by Facebook) simply serve to extend the monopolistic and unchecked distribution of counterfactual ‘truths’. The free reign of those using social media to advance these beliefs has been curtailed somewhat, as the companies begrudgingly restricted or terminated access to the most extreme participants. ‘After hours of silence while their sites were swarmed with images of rioters breaking Capitol windows and threatening law enforcement, tech platforms including Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR) and YouTube were forced to take increasingly aggressive steps to limit Trump’s online accounts’ (Fung 2021). Initially, companies temporarily suspended the President’s access, but only after intense pressure from organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, as well as a host of media stars, was compounded by continued posts by President Trump and his supporters. “The pressure on tech companies to de-platform Trump .. reached its zenith, coinciding with his attempts to overturn the certified results of an election that made him a one-term president.” Ultimately, the President was permanently banned from all of the social media sites.

4.1. The persistence of alt-truths

One of the ways to determine the truth of an ethical belief is to examine current events and the integration with factual, verifiable, empirical information that correspond to that belief. To counter those methods of determination, as well as the restrictions placed on him by media and social media organizations, Donald Trump created the Trump Media and Technology Group’s (TMTG) to facilitate dissemination of his message. TRUTH, the TMTG’s social media platform, is designed to promote their alternative versions of reality via unique interpretations of current events and political actions. Advertised as “a uniting force for freedom of expression,” the TMTG claim that ‘the mainstream media, and Big Tech have begun to forcibly silence voices that do not align with their woke ideology… TMTG intends to even the playing field by providing people with open media platforms where they can share and create content without fear of reputational ruin’ (Trump Media & Technology Group 2021).

Clifford tells us that believing in a truth (fundamentalist beliefs aside) without sufficient evidence is morally wrong (Uribe 2018). Locke asserts that we have an alethic obligation toward our beliefs when it comes to questions of public importance, when they pertain to politics and governance.

‘alethic obligation is not a general requirement but an attitude towards our beliefs….’It is the duty for each person to try his best ‘to bring it about that for any proposition P he considers, he accepts P if and only if P is true’ (Chisholm 1989). All adult human beings, as intelligent creatures capable of believing and withholding belief from propositions, have such an alethic obligation (Ferretti 2018).

Further, ‘presenting our fellow citizens with non-warranted beliefs corresponds to a form of deceit and manipulation, which offends them as rational beings and as autonomous moral agents. What is more, beliefs that are held against reason and evidence are often recalcitrant to reformation and are often source of intractable conflicts in society’ (Ferretti 2018).

Yet, people continue to embrace beliefs pertaining to politics and governance that have been shown to be empirically invalid. Taken to the extreme, as Locke, Clifford and other observe, these misguided beliefs can create and exacerbate societal conflicts and undermine institutions and long-standing structures of governance, even fomenting riots and insurrections. Why is it that people hold so tightly to these beliefs? Research shows that those who believe in fake news tend to score high on ‘delusionality, dogmatism and religious fundamentalism tests’ (Bronstein et al. 2019), indicating a statistical correlation between the characteristics. Further, repeated exposure to fake news tends to increase the perception of its accuracy (Abdalla, 2020), particularly for those who equate believing in something to its accuracy. I believe, therefore, it is; belief in fake news is stronger when the news aligns with political ideology (Pennycook et al. 2018).

Cognitive processes also factor in seeing the ‘truth’ in fake news. Motivated reasoning theory asserts that the more reasoning ability is used, the more likely preconceived beliefs are strengthened. This may seem counterintuitive, however, ‘…engaging in intense cognitive effort can reinforce our initial ideas. We use this cognitive effort to defend and reinforce our already-held beliefs’ Classical reasoning theory offers a similar explanation. It distinguishes between the analytic process, which is slow and deliberate and requires cognitive effort, all of which make users more sceptical, and intuitive reasoning, which is virtually a rush to judgement, in which users are more reactive and gullible (Pennycook et al. 2019).

5. Pragmatism, truth and responsible belief

‘Given that discerning among genuine and fake news and identifying reliable sources of information is increasingly difficult, is it better to renounce the idea of truth entirely?’ (Ferretti 2018). If we agree that the essential truth of an ethical belief is essential to responsible governance, it follows that what is needed is movement toward responsible belief.

‘There is, however, an aspiration to truth that seems inseparable from the very idea of belief, in the sense that to believe something is to believe that something is true. An aspiration to truth is important component in the structure of our beliefs. In the liberal tradition, the idea of aspiring to truth in our beliefs has also an important political connotation. John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, holds that our political life requires us to be responsible believers. This means that we should do our best to hold well-formed beliefs, which for Locke means the beliefs that are most probably true’ (Ferretti 2018). For example, through the many forms of social networks, users have access to more information than ever before, and so can spread legitimate, verifiable information and alt-news alike, locally, or globally, through the use of a simple emoticon or re-tweet. Developing and sharing responsible beliefs requires time to vet and verify before publishing.

Because governance is a global collaboration as well as a national endeavour, efforts by international partners to curb disinformation and encourage responsible belief may inform national endeavours. One such effort is ‘…the 2017 joint UN declaration on “fake news” [which] emphasized the need for states to enable the participation of all in public debate’ in ways that protect freedom of expression and press while thwarting the spread of fake news (McGonagle 2017 as cited in Rogers and Neiderer 2020).

‘Invest[ing] in civil society “must remain the first shield against information manipulation in liberal, democratic societies”’ (Jeangéne Vilmer et al. 2018, as cited in Rodgers and Neiderer 2020), particularly ‘around events such as elections, in which civil society can be supported through non-legislative, pre-emptive measures and multi-stakeholder collaboration of government with the industry, non-governmental sector, and regional actors’ (Haciyakupoglu et al. 2018, as cited in Rodgers and Neiderer 2020). For example, The Swedish Media Council is a collaboration of politicians and media professionals aligned to counter alt-truths (Brattberg and Mauer 2018, as cited in Rogers and Neiderer 2020); they also offer handbooks designed to counter disinformation to public organizations and, through their media literacy programme, teach young people critical thinking and disinformation detection skills (Rogers and Neiderer, 2020). Finally, France’s public ‘digital hygiene’ programs teach skills needed to “assess the validity of the arguments and the reliability of the source.” ‘This is a public hygiene measure – just as people in the 19th century learned to wash their hands’ (Jeangéne Vilmer et al. 2018, as cited in Rogers and Neiderer 2020).

The ‘rugged individualism’ and belief in constitutional protections embedded in our national psyche add a challenging dimension to political and governance efforts to embrace and encourage responsible beliefs. The hyperpartisanship inherent in our political and governing structures add to conditions wherein, ‘the absence of pragmatism among Democrats is as troubling as the absence of principle among Republicans’ (Thomas Friedman, as quoted in Bokat-Lindell 2021). The continuation of our democracy hinges on the resolution of these factors while simultaneously fostering the promotion of empirical truths and controlling disinformation. It is not hyperbole to say the fate of our country hinges on our ability to foster responsible belief.

6. Conclusion

We have long understood that really important matters in politics and governance necessitate a confidence that our beliefs will reliably lead to predictable and verifiable outcomes. This assumes that it is unethical to hold beliefs that are founded on insufficient or inaccurate evidence, to the extent that belief equals truth. The manipulation of empirical information-these pragmatic truths, and the spread of propaganda have long been part of the fabric of our society, yet the development and integration of social media into all aspects of our lives have effectively enabled extreme interpretations of these fabrications and propaganda-‘alt-truths’-to permeate the very beliefs that ground our personal lives, civic governance and national political culture. Hence, sustainability of the pragmatist standards of truth and ethically held belief in matters of politics and governance are constantly being called into question, thereby challenging the legitimacy and trust in our institutions and leadership that is requisite for good governance. Threats to our societal structure and democratic governance, the very the viability of our republic, all founded on these alt-truths, are become louder and more extreme with each passing day.

Investing in civil society is essential to counter the spread of misinformation. Efforts to connect aspirations to truths that are founded in empirical, verifiable facts often run up against claims of belief based on truths found on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, or re-tweeted by ‘trusted’ users. Efforts in several countries illustrate ways in which the public is being taught and encouraged to question what they see and hear. These are small, but vital steps forward. Are they enough to stem the tide and ultimately turn it around? How might these endeavours translate to a much larger, ‘individualist’ society such as ours? These are important questions that must be explored and answered quickly, and methods devised and implemented while it is still possible to reinvent a republic with stronger commitments to connecting belief with truth.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Karen Kunz

Note

References

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