I was out with someone yesterday and we got talking about Brexit, as politically engaged people in Britain are wont to these days. She said she couldn't believe how the Leave campaign got away with blatant lies. I said something which I now feel was pretentious, like "Liberalism is dying, the rules of liberalism don't apply".
What rules are those? A watertight distinction between fact and opinion and a rejection of the viewpoint that facts and opinions are on a spectrum. There is no clearly defined boundary between them. The claim that there is an objective truth which can be represented by a fact, and then overlaid by a subjective view to arrive at an opinion is difficult to sustain. Does that mean that there are no facts in the world? Can we say nothing with certainty? Of course we can (although, if one were to nit-pick, not with absolute certainty). There are some definitions and descriptions which are unanimously agreed upon, such as mass, height, etc. But, such definitions and descriptions are representations of reality and not reality itself which is too complex and messy to be faithfully represented. And any representations or symbols can be contested, although it's not worth our while to contest a majority of representations in our everyday life. So, if you use an agreed upon definition and say that something which matches that definition occurred when it didn't, you are obviously lying.
The other explanation is, of course, that there is a lack of faith in the establishment and the experts. But what caused this collapse of faith? That is, of course, the million-dollar question.
What rules are those? A watertight distinction between fact and opinion and a rejection of the viewpoint that facts and opinions are on a spectrum. There is no clearly defined boundary between them. The claim that there is an objective truth which can be represented by a fact, and then overlaid by a subjective view to arrive at an opinion is difficult to sustain. Does that mean that there are no facts in the world? Can we say nothing with certainty? Of course we can (although, if one were to nit-pick, not with absolute certainty). There are some definitions and descriptions which are unanimously agreed upon, such as mass, height, etc. But, such definitions and descriptions are representations of reality and not reality itself which is too complex and messy to be faithfully represented. And any representations or symbols can be contested, although it's not worth our while to contest a majority of representations in our everyday life. So, if you use an agreed upon definition and say that something which matches that definition occurred when it didn't, you are obviously lying.
The other explanation is, of course, that there is a lack of faith in the establishment and the experts. But what caused this collapse of faith? That is, of course, the million-dollar question.
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