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Patrick Parrinder: How Lenin foresaw the Space Programme

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Patrick Parrinder: How Lenin foresaw the Space Programme

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A possible case of fake news?

Lenin had a conversation with HG Wells in 1920, which Wells mentioned in Russia In the Shadows. Lenin described as 'the dreamer in the Kremlin'. According to Trotsky, Lenin was contemptuous of HG Wells, but we only have Trotsky's word for it. According to Mark Steven, Lenin speculated about 'making contact with other planets' and how this would throw doubt on all our ideas, including presumably Leninism. Another source said Lenin was simply responding to the Time Machine. Chain of scholarly references becomes accepted historical knowledge. However, another source had already claimed the quotation was bogus (and this was translated from a French source by Well's ex-lover). It is also claimed that Lenin dismissed his own speculation. How can we sort out true and false here?

Quote later recycled in a French newspaper on the same day the Soviet space programme was launched. No source given though. A Russian source said the quotation had no basis. PP has now repeated it. The original note by Wells has never been found. Lenin told Clare Sheridan he had never read any of Wells's work (and indeed the Time Machine does not cover interplanetary travel).

Was the whole thing made up by the Soviet propaganda machine? (but this would not be consistent behaviour if they later refuted it)

Still has an obscure afterlife on the internet.

Always question your sources!

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Lee Dickson: Medieval Post-Truth, Crusader Anti-Muslim sentiment

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Lee Dickson: Medieval Post-Truth, Crusader Anti-Muslim sentiment

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Convincing contemporary narratives of medieval massacres, etc, that never actually happened. Some people accepted them as true. Can post-truth be applied to such cases?

Some parallels between today and the world of 1095 - national instability, anti-Muslim sentiment, people travelling abroad to fight Crusades/Jihad? However, we have an incomplete historical record for 1095.

Is post-truth just a new word for an old phenomenon?

Similar inflammatory anti-Muslim invective used by several different writers (in spite of peaceful coexistence in some cities), eventually ran out of the control of the Pope.

The idea of all Christians reuniting against a common enemy.

LD has devised a spectrum that goes from 'Semi-post-truth' and 'Pure post-truth'.

"There is a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth." (Maya Angelou).

Truth and truthful to (God) ?

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Barney Riggs: Kierkegaard & subjectivity

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Barney Riggs: Kierkegaard & subjectivity

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Does not see K's statement 'Truth is a subjectivity' as a version of post-truth, or K as a postmodernist.
Wrote under a series of pseudonyms - did not want his philosophy to be seen as a coherent system.

Claims of historical/contingent truth are always an approximation; we can't go back and check. Without internalizing the truth, the truth is not really known, it becomes a sort of behavioural reflex. Sometimes it is a comparative question: Which statement is more true?
The important thing is *how* we relate to objective truth. Tension between the implacable nature of the universe and the human desire for knowledge. Truth is 'appropriated' (in a double sense) by humans. But our reasoning capacity has limits (this is in itself a rational idea).

'We should try to be as subjective as we can'. The world only gains meaning when it means something to me.

Truth = Subjectivity is not the same as post-truth, because it is an ethical statement rather than epistemological. We need to consider our collective responsibility to each other. This will allow us to critique certain 'post-truths'.

The claim to access unmediated objective truth is dangerous. We need to focus on the 'how' rather than the 'what'.

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Jake Parkins: Post-Truth & R D Laing's "Mystification

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Jake Parkins: Post-Truth & R D Laing's "Mystification

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Post-truth seems to imply that only one party is implicated in it, the other party deals in 'facts'.

Deviations from ambient 'grand narrative' of neoliberalism often described as 'post-truth'.

We can understand these developments by using Laing's concept of 'mystification', which JP sees as inherent to the neoliberal system - eg the mystified concept of 'diversity' as a cover for the lowering of wages through immigration. Critiques his own university mission statement from this point of view.

The idea that social events are impersonal/inevitable (processes), whereas they are always authored (practices).

Post-truth - an inevitable narrative that someone invents to live an unlivable situation.

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Aresi: Post-truth & Ovid's House of Fame

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Aresi: Post-truth & Ovid's House of Fame

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Augustan Rome wanted to close the cultural gap between themselves and the Greeks. Ovid's Metamorphoses were a major part of this.

Ovid breaks with tradition by appealing to Fama (Rumour) rather than the Muses. Fama has total disrespect for this truth. Represents a politics of language and a contestation of authority. Implied critique of Roman politics. Presents his readers with what they already know, in a new guise. Tension between the power of the free-thinking intellectual and Rome's inexorable destiny (Fatum). Ovid sees Fama as victorious (he was later exiled).

Postmodernism - denies any absolute claims to truth; Post-truth - there are a variety of competing truths.

The 5-star Movement in Rome officially revoked Ovid's exile in 2017. Ovid didn't really consider the degradation of truth.

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Post-truth is here to stay (even if the word frequency is in decline).
OED puts a spin on post-truth, ie it is defined negatively (ie, a post-truth definition of post-truth).
No agreed definition of truth in philosophy ('an essentially contested concept'); philosophy lives with this. Rorty (Philosophy as the Mirror of Nature) - this idea needs to be more publicly acknowledged.

Actually, a lot of competing frameworks. There is a 'market' in philosophical ideas. Plato's Republic - How can this situation be resolved into a truth regime? (Hence banning poets (= playwrights) from the Republic - an alternative version of reality).

Modal power - the power over what people think as true and false; to communicate the idea that things cannot be done any other way.

Pareto - lions and foxes:
the Lions are the established authorities, with an established narrative, eg progress; they don't want things to change and will 'raise the level of risk' ('Project Fear').
the Foxes - use the idea that the Lions are established as an argument against them; the risk is bogus, the future is open. But as foxes, they cannot form a stable government --> internal conflict that eventually produces a new set of lions.

Plato wanted this cycle to stop, to have a permanent set of lions.

Dawn of PR, post-WW1, eventually produced alternative versions of the news, alternative frames of reference; technology has accelerated this --> the post-truth condition

It's easy to show the errors of the Lions, not so easy to point out the errors of the Foxes

We can't go back to old sources of trusting.

We need to become critical readers of media & discourse. Academics have a responsibility here.

Science is a good example of a truth regime.

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Harry Frankfurt 'On Bullshit'
Bullshit --> the speaker doesn't have any concern for truth
Lying --> speaker knows what the truth is -> is 'bound' to the truth

Trump and Farage are bullshitters --> no convincing attempts to provide proof or evidence (cf lying about the Iraq War).

Liar : needs to situate his lie among accepted facts
Bullshitter is free to invent a whole context, to 'go big'; can tap into audience's confirmation bias

Bullshitting politicians appeal to 'authenticity', replacing the value 'truthfulness'

Lying is a craft; bullshit is an art. Bullshit shows a greater degree of originality. We tend to be more tolerant of bullshitters than liars.

Bullshitters situate themselves outside the rules of the game, and thereby are less liable to punishment within those rules.

The distinction with post-truth: with post-truth, audiences have no concern for facts either.

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Unfair to blame postmod philosophers for the 'demise' of truth and the slide to totaliarianism
We can live our lives quite happily without constantly questioning the status of truth. We still care about truth.
What remains of truth when we dispense with the notion of absolute truth?
Kierkegaard: Truth is subjectivity, or the subjective appropriation of an objectivity
Derrida: 'Il faut la vérité'. Ambiguous - epistemic or deontic?

Absolute truth may not exist, but there are interpretations everywhere. We can select the facts that suit us from all the facts that are available.

But is post-truth particularly new?

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They look like assertions, but are not assertions. So what is their pragmatic force?

Hypotheses:
Re-utterable; no speaker responsibility; effective in spite of hearer disbelief (eg, the Brexit £350 million claim)
Re-utterable = imputes the right to make the claim to the discourse community in general (eg. 'Obama was born in Kenya') and constrains the possibilities for making other assertions

Effective explained by 'Presupposed social meaning' , which compensates for the lack of truth value of the assertion (eg, 'A black person cannot be president').