https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2833-4451
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ABSTRACT
Analyses of so-called ‘post-truth’ discourse in populist politics have so far largely focussed on sorting it into cases of lying, bullshitting, bubble-like epistemic constraints, or alternative epistemic norms flouting objective truth. We review these proposals and point out problems with each. Some scholars, however, have recently drawn attention to how apparent assertions of facts in these contexts seem to be functionally entangled with expressing or affirming social identities. To get a clearer picture of what such an explanation might amount to, we differentiate four different ways in which social identities might be connected to apparently assertive discourse: signalling, expressive affirmation, dissonance reduction, and identity grounding. Distinguishing and deciding among these will matter not only for providing an accurate analysis of post-truth discourse, but also for determining the exact grounds on which it merits criticism and for what might be done about it.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Own translation.
2 We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for pressing us on this point.
3 In Section 4.5, we shall return to how these ends pursued in bullshitting can sometimes require an identity-based analysis even if the speech in question may appear to be plain bullshit when examined in isolation.
4 Finlayson (Citation2019, 72–74) provides some discussion of such contentions yet finds them so puzzling as to prefer to collapse them into echo-chamber accounts.
5 Of course, there are ways of grouping people that trace epistemic authority that obtains on grounds other than mere group membership. Crucially, though, we do not see any such epistemically relevant property in the present juxtaposition and such theories of populism precisely highlight that none is postulated by populists.
6 For present purposes, we review contributions from the broadly philosophical literature. Tracing developments in social psychology, which provides extant empirical research on identity, not least following Tajfel and Turner’s (Citation1986) seminal proposal of Social Identity Theory, would provide ample material for a paper of its own. We do not have the space to do so here, nor would it substantially impact the aims of this paper.
7 Incidentally, Finlayson subsequently turns our present proposal on its head in holding that the label post-truth ‘is first and foremost a slur word: it serves to smear its referents, but without contributing to an understanding of their nature or significance’ (2019, 79).
8 Also, consider a Trump tweet that Harry Frankfurt (Citation2016) deemed a prime example of bullshitting: ‘The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!’ We agree with Frankfurt that here, Trump was obviously not in the business of making a warranted contribution to a discussion of the global ranking of restaurants serving taco bowls. Yet it seems to us that rather than plainly glossing the tweet as bullshit, it is better accounted for as expressing allegiance with an identity group (Hispanics) by means of expressing personal affiliation with food that he deems intricately tied up with that identity (taco bowls).
9 Pollsters and social scientists have long faced the problem of determining whether survey responses accurately measure a participant’s beliefs or are provided on some ulterior basis. A prominent version of the latter has been labelled expressive responding, “whereby individuals intentionally provide misinformation to survey researchers as a way of showing support for their political viewpoint” (Schaffner and Luks Citation2018, 136; see also Prior, Sood, and Khanna Citation2015; Bullock et al. Citation2013). This has led some political scientists to assume that surveys which study post-truth discourse by measuring the prevalence of particular false beliefs do not, in fact, show that respondents hold false beliefs, but instead that they engage in “partisan cheerleading” vis-à-vis the pollsters (Schaffner and Luks Citation2018, 135). The prevalence of this form of expressive survey response is, however, subject to some debate (for contrary evidence, see Berinsky Citation2018). Two factors further limit the purchase this strand of research has for our present aims: First, the focus of the aforementioned studies is specifically on the issue of what is being measured in survey responses, not on post-truth discourse in general. Second, there is little in the way of systematic conceptual elaboration as to what expressive responding amounts to or how respondents come to pick the beliefs in question as a means of cheering, and for what exactly.
10 In a similar vein, note how people often curse to vent their anger without anybody present to acknowledge it (Green Citation2007, 31).
11 This mechanism seems to be presupposed by some empirical researchers studying expressive survey responses: because a world in which the economy is thriving under the incumbent government would be better from the perspective of its supporters, they see reporting a rosier perception of objective economic conditions in survey settings as a way of cheering for the government (Prior, Sood, and Khanna Citation2015).
12 Philosophers may well be inclined to see echoes of Quinean coherentism in such contentions: ‘Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.’ (Quine Citation1951, 40)
13 In this case, cognitive dissonance reduction comes very close to what social psychologists have in turn dubbed directionally motivated reasoning (Kunda Citation1990). In an article advancing the link between motivated reasoning and misinformation, Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler (Citation2017, 133) note that “[p]olitical facts often implicate long-standing, personally important identities such as partisanship” and thus suggest political identities as one driving factor of motivated reasoning. Unfortunately, though, they provide little clarification as to how identities “implicate” particular empirical beliefs.
14 See, for instance, Swire et al. (Citation2017) for empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis.
15 In fact, so may Donald Trump himself.
16 Epstein (Citation2015, chaps 6–7) provides insightful discussions of these kinds of dynamic anchor principles for social facts.
17 We are very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing us towards this distinct uptake dynamic.
18 Importantly, this is not limited to cases in which identity commitments in fact make epistemic outcomes worse. If, for instance, being a Democrat would require believing whatever the Center for Disease Control says about COVID-19, this may in ordinary circumstances be perfectly conducive to forming true (and even justified) beliefs. Yet it would still be a case of an epistemically overreaching political identity: One should defer to the CDC if and because such deference is epistemically justified – not because one’s identity compels it, whether it is epistemically justified or not.