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4 - Truth Will Not Set You Free: Is There a Right to It Anyway?

Elaborating on the Work Public Reason Does In Life 2.0

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2023

Mathias Risse
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

We first explore how damaging untruth can be, especially in digital lifeworlds. In digital lifeworlds information spreads at a pace and volume unheard of in analog contexts. But misinformation and disinformation spread the same way, which enhances how individuals can tell stories about themselves or have them substantiated in echo chambers in the company of likeminded people. These considerations provide support for a right to truth. However, next we see that untruth plays a significant role as an enabler of valued psychological and social dynamics. The considerations that pull into the opposite direction notwithstanding, there can therefore be no comprehensive right to truth. Contrary to a well-known Bible verse, for most people it is anyway not the truth that sets them free. It is acceptance of worldviews in likeminded company that does so (worldviews that tend to contain plenty of untruths), in any event if being set free means having an orientation in the world. But that there can be no such comprehensive right is consistent with there being a right to truth in specific contexts. Still, the moral concern behind truthfulness is in this context not best captured in terms of an actual right to truth.

Type
Chapter
Information
Political Theory of the Digital Age
Where Artificial Intelligence Might Take Us
, pp. 73 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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