Essay by In “On the Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance”, Karl Popper identifies a kind of “epistemological optimism”—an optimism about “man’s power to discern truth and to acquire knowledge”—that has played a significant role in the history of philosophy. At the heart of this optimistic view, Popper argues, is the “doctrine that truth is manifest”:
“Truth may perhaps be veiled, and removing the veil may not be easy. But once the naked truth stands revealed before our eyes, we have the power to see it, to distinguish it from falsehood, and to know that it is truth.”
According to Popper, this doctrine inspired the birth of modern science, technology, and liberalism. If the truth is manifest, there is “no need for any man to appeal to authority in matters of truth because each man carried the sources of knowledge in himself”:
“Man can know: thus he can be free. This is the formula which explains the link between epistemological optimism and the ideas of liberalism.”
Although a liberal himself, Popper argues that the doctrine of manifest truth is false. “The simple truth,” he writes, “is that truth is often hard to come by, and that once found it may easily be lost again.” Moreover, he argues that the doctrine is pernicious. If we think the truth is manifest, we create “the need to explain falsehood”:
“Knowledge, the possession of truth, need not be explained. But how can we ever fall into error if truth is manifest? The answer is: through our own sinful refusal to see the manifest truth; or because our minds harbour prejudices inculcated by education and tradition, or other evil influences which have perverted our originally pure and innocent minds.”
In this way, the doctrine of manifest truth inevitably gives rise to “the conspiracy theory of ignorance”…
In previous work, I have criticised how the concept of “misinformation” is applied by researchers and policy-makers. Roughly, I think that narrow applications of the term (e.g., defined in terms of fake news) are legitimate but focus on content that is relatively rare and largely symptomatic of other problems, at least in Western democracies. In contrast, broad definitions inevitably get applied in biased and subjective ways, transforming misinformation research and policy-making into “partisan combat by another name”…(More)”