Post-truth narratives in the deliberative system: A case for a rhetorical offensive

Post-truth claims such as ‘vaccines cause autism’ or ‘the Earth is flat’ create an underexplored dilemma for democratic deliberation. On the one hand, since they deal with objective falsehoods post truth claims go against core values of democratic deliberation such as reason-giving and justification, reaching correct decisions, and serving an epistemic function. However, as the paper will demonstrate, expressing post truth claims can also enrich democratic deliberation in ways explored by advocates of the deliberative systems view: anti-vaxxers usually tell personal stories as a way of backing up their claims that vaccines cause autism, in line with Young’s demand for including personal narratives in democratic deliberation (Young 1996, p. 126). Similarly, attempts by flat Earthers to design their own experiments such as weather balloons to prove the Earth is flat could be regarded as a form of citizen science, shaking up hierarchies between ivory tower experts on the one hand and ineducable citizens on the other. How should deliberative democrats weigh these opposing considerations? This paper will attempt to answer this challenge by re-assessing the importance of rhetoric in democratic deliberation more generally and the systems approach in particular. The paper will first engage with approaches to post-truth which highlight facts over narratives. Building on the coherence theory of truth in epistemology, I will argue against the interpretation by post-truth scholars of Orwell’s example of modifying the Spanish war records as an early warning about the rise of post-truth (Orwell 1942 in D’Ancona 2016: 3-5) and argue instead that Orwell was merely deploring the way in which ‘regular’ truth on the coherentist view already operates. Secondly, the paper will identify three main discourses among post-truth believers: that trusting experts on their word is being gullible, that science is wilfully misrepresented as being complex, and that ‘experts’ are guided by economic and political interests rather than truth. Thirdly, I show how using rhetoric to combat post-truth does not obfuscate truth but instead can help clarify and justify truth in the coherentist understanding. Specifically, acknowledging the audience is situated (Dryzek 2010, p. 320) helps uncover the structure of misconception for post truth believers. For complex issues where audiences have to make judgments based on their assessments of multiple and opposing views, rhetorical devices might help dispel beliefs in a wrong authority. Just like the narrative of the ozone hole, mobilised negotiation on climate change (Dryzek 2010, p. 326-7), a rhetorical offensive against post-truth focused on the narratives that sustain scientific discovery might be more effective than just throwing facts at the problem. Rhetorical devices conveying e.g. that scientific findings are necessarily complex or that deferring to a trustworthy authority is wise would not obfuscate scientific facts, but enable their absorption among post-truthers. I end by exploring some consequences of including a rhetorical offensive for combating post-truth in the deliberative system, such as relaxing our criteria of consensus and extending protections we usually accord to other types of pluralism to views regarding which facts are true as well.