Is fake news really that fake?
Election season is upon us and the issue of “fake news” is all the rage once again. But is “fake news” really that “fake”?
Our assumptions about what is or isn’t “fake” is based on our understanding of what makes something true in our society.
Truth, however, is one of the most misunderstood ideas in culture. As much as we’d like to think of truth as a singular rational idea — that which is observable and verifiable — the reality is that our minds don’t quite work in such a rational way. We’re not rational beings, as much as we’d like to appear like we are. So as irrational and emotional beings, we’re often susceptible to perceptions and ideas that we seemingly have little control over. Our beliefs and life experiences dictate the instant judgement of whether what we’re hearing is true.
You see, truth is actually a question of meaning, rather than the presence of empirical evidence. Of course, the question of truth isn’t a new concern. It has been baffling scientific philosophers for hundreds of years. But two theories of truth in particular popularized by the American Pragmatist Philosophers in the early 20th century are of key concern to us in the discussion of “fake news”.
The first theory is what we call the Correspondence Theory. It states that something is true when it has a clear observable phenomenon…
