True Enough by Catherine Z. Elgin
Learning to Live in a Post-Factual World
The author argues that what matters in public life is not an abstract, absolute correspondence to reality but whether beliefs, models, and narratives are reliable enough for our purposes and promote understanding; knowledge is fundamentally social, dependent on trustworthy practices, institutions, and the cultivation of intellectual virtues, so fighting misinformation requires more than fact-checking — it requires improving the social processes by which evidence is gathered, interpreted, and shared. The book explains how cognitive biases, partisan incentives, and persuasive rhetoric undermine shared judgment, and it offers pragmatic strategies for fostering better public reasoning: clearer standards for evidence, better education in critical inquiry, and institutional reforms that reward honesty and accountability. Overall it defends a pragmatic, normative account of truth and knowledge aimed at sustaining democratic discourse in a “post-fact” culture.
- Published
- 1997
- Nationality
- American
- Length
- Unknown
- Pages
- Unknown
- Original Language
- English
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- Alternate Titles
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