In a time of disputed truth and statistical ambiguity, there is a need to design the way we communicate information, inclusively across cultures and countries to provide information, data and knowledge on how to prevent harm to individuals and society. Designing for transparency and trust is crucial to help the world design actions to keep everyone safe and build collective resilience and collaborate to protect against new challenges.
MRes Research
Keer Wei and Algernon Falconer
The definition of truth is an age-old problem. From beauty to maths to cultural justification it's been through the works. We're here to hopefully break it down into bitesize junks. Etymologically it emerges from 'faithfulness, constancy'. Merging these concepts, we analyse it from the side of 'objective certainty', whilst recognising its spiritual side - to having faith in the unknowable. Thinking of 'safety' - freedom from harm - we take the long-term biological perspective, equating it with ecosystem sustainability. Whether harm can be conflated to lived experience is up for grabs, but not the focus of our exploration.
Diagram 1: Our first diagram breaks down 'Truth' across 4 dimensions: metaphysics, physics, biology, and culture. Key elements within them are roughly illustrated. From this exploration we isolate three key themes that form our second diagram — the epistemology of ‘truth':
Diagram 2: Epistemology of ‘Truth’
a) the æsthetics of truth via perception
b) the comprehension of 'truth' via cognition which enable
c) the communication of ‘truth’ and give rise to intuitive and planned action.
This brings us to safety. Objective truths might interfere with individual well-being. However, we hypothesise that ‘objective truth’ is best placed to maximise ecosystem sustainability. Thus, the resilience of truth in its dialectic with the world is our key aim.
5 Key Issues
For your exploration:
To what dimension do you think 'truth' should belong?
Is truth objective, or is the only resilient aspect of truth its uncertainty?
Is it right to evaluate and enforce 'truths' for others?
(How) can the human evaluation of 'truth' help ecosystem sustainability?
How can we design truth for unknowable futures?
Reading List
1) To what dimension do you think 'truth' belongs?
- Dawson, N.V., Gregory, F., 2009. Correspondence and coherence in science: A brief historical perspective. Judgment and Decision Making 4, 8. URL http://journal.sjdm.org/ccdg/ccdg.pdf
- Zeki, S., Chén, O.Y., 2020. The Bayesian-Laplacian brain. Eur J Neurosci 51, 1441–1462. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14540
- Friston, K., 2018. Does predictive coding have a future? Nature Neuroscience 21, 1019– 1021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-018-0200-7
- Historia Europa, 2020. Fake for Real: A History of Forgery and Falsification [WWW Document]. URL https://historia-europa.ep.eu/en/fake-real
2) Is truth objective, or is the only resilient aspect of truth its dialectical uncertainty?
- Abbott, A., 2018. How the brain’s face code might unlock the mysteries of perception. Nature 564, 176–179. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07668-4
- Filluga, D., 2011. Introduction to Jean Baudrillard, Module on Simulacra and Simulation [WWW Document]. Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. URL https://cla.purdue.edu/ academic/english/theory/postmodernism/modules/baudrillardsimulation.html
- Altay, S., Hacquin, A.-S., Mercier, H., 2019. Why do so Few People Share Fake News? It Hurts Their Reputation. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/82r6q
3) Is it right to evaluate and enforce 'truths' for others?
- Pollard, C., 2019. Explainer: the ideas of Foucault [WWW Document]. The Conversation. URL http://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-foucault-99758
4) How can the human evaluation of 'truth' help ecosystem sustainability?
- Davies, B., 2020. John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” [WWW Document]. Philosophical Thought. URL https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/ john-rawls-and-the-veil-of-ignorance/
- Ueshima, A., Mercier, H., Kameda, T., 2020. Social deliberation systematically shifts resource allocation decisions by focusing on the fate of the least well-off. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/n4vmb
- Dwyder, C., 2018. 12 Common Biases That Affect How We Make Everyday Decisions [WWW Document]. Psychology Today. URL https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ thoughts-thinking/201809/12-common-biases-affect-how-we-make-everydaydecisions
5) How can we design truth for unknowable futures?
- Mercier, H., Sperber, D., 2019. Précis of The Enigma of Reason, in: The Enigma of Reason. Harvard University Press. https://drive.google.com/file/d/ 1pDtzV7OzH3cnB64EPj1iyk3JUpmWqhOK/view?usp=embed_facebook
- Anderson, J., Rainie, L., 2017. The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. URL https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/ 2017/10/19/the-future-of-truth-and-misinformation-online/
- Charlton, E., 2019. How Finland is fighting fake news in the classroom [WWW Document]. World Economic Forum. URL https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/ how-finland-is-fighting-fake-news-in-the-classroom/
- European Commission, 2020. Tackling online disinformation [WWW Document]. Shaping Europe’s digital future - European Commission. URL https://ec.europa.eu/ digital-single-market/en/tackling-online-disinformation
- Knight, W., 2020. The AI Company Helping the Pentagon Assess Disinfo Campaigns. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-helping-pentagon-assess-disinfo-campaigns/
Further Reading
- Koponen, H.M., Sanomat, H., 2018. Finland remains resistant to “fake news”, disinformation. International Press Institute. URL https://ipi.media/finland-remainsresistant-to-fake-news-disinformation/
- Mercier, H., Boudry, M., Paglieri, F., Trouche, E., 2017. Natural-Born Arguers: Teaching How to Make the Best of Our Reasoning Abilities. Educational Psychologist 52, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1207537
- Mercier, H., Majima, Y., Claidière, N., Léone, J., 2019. Obstacles to the spread of unintuitive beliefs. Evolut. Hum. Sci. 1, e10. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.10
- Altay, S., Mercier, H., 2020. Framing messages for vaccination supporters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000271
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