The Roots of the 'Post-Truth' Era

Philosopher Lee McIntyre, research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School and author of Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, 2018), argues that to push back on the "post-truth" phenomenon, seen in climate change denials, birtherism and inauguration crowd size claims, it's necessary to acknowledge its origins in post-modernism and Derrida's contention that there's no such thing as "objective truth" and gender and cultural experience, plus politics influence claims of fact.  He also sees connections to industry's 1950-s "science-denying" of the links between smoking and lung disease, for example.

→Excerpt from Post-Truth: "Fighting Post-Truth" (The Humanist, 2/28/2018)