A Post-truth Theory of Truth
Agnieszka LEKKA-KOWALIK
Department of the Methodology of Science, Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Polandhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4834-318X
Abstract
Against the background of various attempts to understand post-truth, the paper argues that an effort to make an overall intellectual grasp of the concept produces a post-theory of truth. Truth is defined in it as adaequatio intellectus et affectuum meorum, and emotions are both the criterion of the truth-value of a given claim and its truth-maker. This in turn gives the claim “this is true” a performative potential, which has various consequences, such as politicization of truth and invalidation of logic and argumentation, turning dialogue into persuasion, epistemology into ethics, and cognition into construction. What we are dealing here with is a post-theory, because, while it still fulfills the main functions ascribed to “ordinary” theories based on inquiries into reality, it springs, unlike them, from acts of volition which follow emotions.
Keywords:
truth, post-truth, lie, cognition, emotion, post-theoryDepartment of the Methodology of Science, Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4834-318X
