"What philosophers sometimes call “political epistemology” is the area of intellectual inquiry that attempts to understand and evaluate these interactions between politics, knowledge, ignorance, and misperceptions. Most of my recent published research and articles on this blog fall within this area. For example, I’ve written about:
- How group allegiances distort political cognition (e.g., here, here, and here)
- How political tribes coordinate to promote, protect, and rationalise shared narratives (e.g., here, here, here, and here)
- In what ways political thought and communication are biased (e.g., here and here)
- The sources of political ignorance and misperceptions (and, more puzzlingly, knowledge) (here and here)
- Why many influential analyses of our political-epistemic problems in terms of “misinformation” and “disinformation” are confused and objectionable (e.g., here, here, here, and here)
Recently, I’ve also had the chance to design an advanced undergraduate course on ‘Politics, truth, and ideology’. The course only has seven weeks of content, meaning it must be highly selective in which topics it covers. Moreover, it’s intended for philosophy students, so it mostly ignores relevant empirical research in political psychology and social science. Nevertheless, I hope it provides a helpful introduction to some foundational issues and debates that might interest some readers.
In this post, I will briefly describe some core underlying themes of the course and the main topics and debates it covers. I will also provide the essential readings I’ve assigned."
https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/politics-truth-and-ideology-a-syllabus
#Politics #Ideology #Democracy #Technocracy #Marx #Critical Theory #IdentityPolitics #FreeSpeech #CancelCulture #Truth #Populism #PostTruth
