Politics, truth, and ideology: A syllabus

Democracy, technocracy, Marx, ideology, critical theory, identity politics, standpoint theory, free speech, cancel culture, truth, populism, and post-truth

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Many of our most heated political debates today revolve around what philosophers would annoyingly but accurately call “epistemic” issues. They involve conflicts arising from opposing beliefs about the nature of the political universe—over what is true—and disagreements over how such truths are supposed to be acquired. As Jeffrey Friedman observes,

“Think of the crisis of misinformation, the crisis of disinformation, the crisis of people’s polarization into self-confirming epistemic bubbles. Think of the tendency of many citizens to go down informational rabbit holes such as QAnon, and the tendency of many others to try to “cancel” those who express ideas with which they disagree. Think of the pernicious effects of social media (a concern mainly of the left) and the pernicious effects of mainstream media (a concern mainly of the right).”

Of course, although the language used to describe such issues is often novel, the issues themselves are not. Tribalism, mass delusion, and concerns about such things are as old as politics, as are heated conflicts over political truth:

“Think… of the contempt shown by people in the grip of various political ideologies for those who hold alternative ideas; think of the rage and fear they feel when contemplating a transfer of power to people with ideas they oppose. Each of these crises boils down to a charged disagreement about what is true. These disagreements combine to produce an escalating sense of mutual alienation, hostility, and terror.”

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.

Politics, truth, and ideology

Politics

There are many controversies over what it means for something (an action, attitude, claim, etc.) to be “political”, with some people claiming—unhelpfully—that “everything is political”. Nevertheless, some activities are uncontroversially political, such as voting (e.g., in elections or referenda), running for public office, participating in protests, signing petitions, supporting violent revolutions, engaging in public debate and deliberation, and so on.

As with all intentional action, such political activities are guided by people’s beliefs about the nature of reality. If you believe your society is profoundly unjust—for example, that it’s an exploitative, white supremacist, patriarchal hellscape—that will give rise to very different forms of political behaviour than if you think your society is basically fair and meritocratic. If you believe the Conservative Party is better at running the country than the Labour Party, you will vote differently than if you judged the reverse. If you believe there’s an elaborate Jewish plot to replace white citizens with non-white people, that will lead to very different actions than if you think anti-semitic conspiracy theories are baseless and hateful. And so on.

As these examples illustrate, political activity is partly downstream of people’s political beliefs, which vary enormously between individuals and communities. This disagreement is obvious when considering history and different cultures: the beliefs that prevail in twenty-first-century England differ from those in fifteenth-century England and twenty-first-century Saudi Arabia. However, it’s also obvious within complex, modern societies.

Consider, for example, the following statements:

• "Mass immigration threatens Western civilisation and must be halted."

• "White people today bear moral responsibility for historical colonialism and should pay reparations."

• "Modern feminism has gone too far.”

• "Human-caused climate change poses an existential threat to civilisation within this century."

• "Whether one is a man or a woman is binary, immutable, and determined by biology.”

• “Many of the world’s problems result from capitalism.”

• "Systemic racism is a major factor determining economic and social outcomes in Western societies."

• "COVID-19 lockdowns caused more harm than benefit to society overall."

Sharp disagreements over the truth of these and countless other statements drive profound differences in political behaviour.

Truth

Reflecting on the pervasiveness of political disagreement inevitably raises questions about political truth. If you believe something, you must think it’s true. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it. Likewise, if you disagree with someone, you must think they’re wrong—that their perspective on reality is false or inaccurate in some way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t disagree with them.

Here’s a natural (but not universal) way of thinking about this situation: When forming political beliefs, there’s a difference between reality and people’s representations of reality in thought and language. If a belief or claim accurately corresponds to reality, it’s true. Otherwise, it’s false.

One set of philosophical questions concerns whether this is the right way of thinking about the situation. Another set concerns the relationship between political reality and people’s representations of that reality if it is the right way of thinking about it. That is, in what ways do people’s representations of reality distort or misrepresent it, and what gives rise to such misrepresentations?

Of course, such questions are complicated by the fact that we can never step back and comprehensively compare our own representation of reality to reality. For any given individual, there’s an important sense in which reality simply is how they represent it to be. So, questions about political representation and reality—about the relationship between political beliefs and truth—inevitably arise within the context of specific attempts to represent reality.

Here’s another natural thought: Successful political action depends on whether people’s representations of political reality are accurate. In other words, if you don’t know the truth in politics—if you’re ignorant or hold false beliefs—you will likely act in ways that are counterproductive, harmful, or otherwise bad.

Consider non-political actions: If you cross the road and don’t know a car is hurtling towards you, you’ll probably be killed. If you invest money based on delusional wishful thinking, you’ll become destitute. If you marry an awful person you mistakenly think is kind and trustworthy, you’ll be miserable.

It seems plausible that this generalises to politics. If you believe your society is profoundly unjust and it’s not, you’ll act in ways that frustrate your interests in justice. If you believe racism is a significant force in your society and you’re wrong, you’ll support bad policies. If you think the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles and this perspective is simplistic or mistaken, you might support disastrous political revolutions. And so on.

Another set of philosophical questions concerns whether this is the right way of thinking about the situation. To what extent are “bad” political decisions—and, more generally, bad societies and institutions—downstream of pervasive misrepresentations of political reality? As many theorists have claimed, could it rather be that this perspective reverses the arrow of causation—that systematic misunderstandings and cognitive distortions are better understood as symptoms rather than causes of problems and pathologies in society?

Ideology

Finally, and relatedly, there’s the question of understanding the nature and functions of people’s political perspectives. To many philosophers and social theorists (although not all), it has seemed plausible that people’s representations of political reality don’t take the form of an arbitrary set of unconnected judgements. Instead, they hang together in a more coherent and organised way. Moreover, these organised perspectives are very rarely idiosyncratic. They’re typically shared among members of a community.

Although significant controversy exists over what “ideology” should mean, one influential use of the term is reserved for identifying such worldviews. Understood this way, ideologies unify communities around shared understandings of the political universe. They tie together specific attitudes, beliefs, categories, and values, providing simplified frameworks for describing, explaining, and evaluating society.

This observation gives rise to a wide range of additional questions. How are such shared worldviews organised? In what ways, if any, do they misrepresent or distort political reality? How do people’s social positions—their identities and place within various social hierarchies—influence their access to certain truths and the ideologies they find attractive or appealing? Perhaps most fundamentally, is it possible to “escape” ideology, whatever that might mean?

The syllabus

These very broad themes and questions provide the background for the course, which covers the following seven topics:

1. Week 1: The truth is not self-evident: Epistemic complexity, democracy, and technocracy

2. Week 2: False consciousness and the dominant ideology thesis

3. Week 3: Identity, ignorance, and social position

4. Week 4: Free speech, self-censorship, and cancel culture

5. Week 5: Partisanship, polarisation, and echo chambers

6. Week 6: The case against democracy

7. Week 7: Politics, populism, truth, and post-truth

Week 1: The truth is not self-evident: Epistemic complexity, democracy, and technocracy

The first week explores a radical argument advanced by Walter Lippmann in 1922: that the modern world is too vast, complex, and inaccessible for ordinary citizens to understand. Given this, he argued that more power and influence should be assigned to technical experts allegedly capable of overcoming the epistemic limitations of ordinary citizens. These claims led to a highly significant “debate” with the American philosopher John Dewey over democracy and technocracy. (Given that Lippmann never responded to Dewey’s arguments, “debate” isn’t quite the right word).

Readers of this blog will know that I think Lippmann’s ‘Public Opinion’ is the most important work of political epistemology ever written. Although much discussion of the book focuses on its critique of democracy (at least as democracy has traditionally been understood), its implications are much broader and more profound. It raises deep questions about whether any member of any conceivable political system is in a position to understand the modern world, including experts (as Lippmann would later acknowledge).

Essential readings:

• The World Outside And The Pictures In Our Heads (Walter Lippmann)

• Lippmann and Dewey: The Unjoined Debate (Jeffrey Friedman)

• (I’ve also written an accessible introduction to Lippmann’s views).

Week 2: False consciousness and the dominant ideology thesis

Nobody has been more influential in thinking about ideology than Marx. For Marx and many intellectual traditions heavily influenced by Marx (e.g., critical theorists), the term ‘ideology’ is inherently pejorative. Very roughly, it denotes belief systems that systematically misrepresent or misinterpret reality in ways that support exploitative or oppressive social systems. This analysis raises multiple deep questions of enduring significance. In what ways are popular belief systems shaped by more fundamental “material” features of society? Can large numbers of people and perhaps whole societies adopt beliefs or worldviews that are systematically mistaken in ways that lead them to act against their interests? To what extent does talk about a “dominant” ideology make sense? Can theorists plausibly claim to escape the sources of error that they identify in explaining why other people systematically misrepresent reality?

Essential readings:

• Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Karl Marx)

• The Problem of Ideology (Michael Rosen & Jonathan Wolff)

• Ideology, Irrationality and Collectively Self-defeating Behavior (Joseph Heath)

Week 3: Identity, ignorance, and social position

Whereas Marx’s analysis of how social position influences and distorts people’s understanding of reality focused on economic class, much subsequent theorising about this topic within the radical-left intellectual tradition has extended the analysis of group-based domination to consider other identities (e.g., race, gender, and disability) and their complex intersections. This week looks (i) at Charles Mills’ analysis of ‘white ignorance’ in his discussion of how white supremacist forms of social organisation lead to systematic forms of error and misperception and (ii) modern work on ‘standpoint theory’, according to which members of marginalised or oppressed groups are better-positioned to acquire certain forms of political knowledge than other members of society. It will explore both the abstract philosophical and epistemological questions raised by these ideas and their real-world deployment in modern identity politics.

Essential readings:

• White Ignorance (Charles W. Mills)

• Recent Work in Standpoint Epistemology (Briana Toole)

Week 4: Free speech, self-censorship, and cancel culture

This week explores debates about free speech, censorship, self-censorship, and “cancel culture”, examining both classical liberal defences of free speech and contemporary debates surrounding social pressure, political correctness, and ideological conformity.

Essential readings (well, materials):

• Free Speech Lets Me Know My Enemy (Killer Mike)

• Reith Lecture on Free Speech (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

• Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion (John Stuart Mill)

Week 5: Partisanship, polarisation, and echo chambers

Week 5 explores how partisan allegiances and group dynamics shape and distort political beliefs and ideology, focusing on political and epistemological questions connected to phenomena such as polarisation, political “tribalism”, and echo chambers.

Essential readings:

• Fake News and Partisan Epistemology (Regina Rini)

• What Are the Chances You're Right About Everything? (Hrishikesh Joshi)

Week 6: The case against democracy

This week returns to the topic of whether democracy confronts insurmountable epistemic challenges. It considers arguments by Jason Brennan and others that democracies create incentives that reward ignorance and irrationality, and it explores whether alternative political systems are likely to avoid such problems.

Essential readings:

• Debating Democracy: Do We Need More or Less? (Jason Brennan & Hélène Landemore)

Week 7: Politics, populism, truth, and post-truth

Finally, this week explores foundational questions surrounding the role of truth in politics before scrutinising the highly influential concept of ‘post-truth’ in connection with debates about populism and an alleged ‘crisis of expertise’ affecting many societies.

• Truth and Politics (Hannah Arendt)

• What to Do with Post-Truth (Lorna Finlayson)

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Hopefully, these brief descriptions and reading recommendations are enough to go on for anybody interested in jumping into these topics. As I teach these topics, my aim is to write accompanying blog posts summarising the core debates each week and giving my own (objective and always 100% correct) take on them.