What's going on with post truth plus postmodernism? A brief layperson's explainer.

Formal and academic discussions about the concepts of post truth and postmodernism are usually inaccessible to lay people due to the dense terminology used by philosophers, philosophers of science, political philosophers, and logicians. Sometimes the discussions are sophistry, and sometimes they are not. Unfortunately the average untrained reader cannot tell the difference.

At the same time, ramblings about post truth in popular media are not only admixed with, and confused by, popular commentaries that have left-right political biases, but are usually too shallow for one to get a grip on what is happening.

Here is one version of a very short basic explainer of the connection between post truth and postmodernism, or postmodern philosophy.

Most people have heard that post truth means that truth does not matter, or is hopelessly flexible to the point of incoherence and intractability. That is more or less correct. Most people have also heard that it is all the fault of those postmodernists. However, few lay people know much about postmodernism beyond post truth coverage in the media, and the movies of Quentin Tarantino.

Postmodern literature and cinema tends to eschew the old fashioned structures of beginning, middle, and end. Tarantino's movies embrace the concept of deconstruction (more of this - but not too much more - later) and are defined by flawed and uncertain narrators, and by throwing the reader or audience into a running story with no background or plot, as if one was just dropped into the mis en scene and story on a kind of magical parachute.

In relation to philosophy, and especially moral and political philosophy, postmodernism (coming after modernism, which is enthusiasm about the aesthetic and political themes, progress, and progressive ideologies of the modern era) also has some specific defining characteristics. Two of the best known and most prominent (but not the only ones) are:

1. Rejection of overarching grand narratives or 'big stories' (also called metanarratives) used to control people's beliefs (familiar to philosophers from the work of Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard) e.g. The Big Lie strategy of the Nazis in WW2.

2. Rejection of logical binaries involving only two options, or binary oppositions. This is related to (but does not necessarily depend upon) the rejection of the idea that things are based on logic that has TRUE and FALSE and nothing in between (logicians call this the law of excluded middle. It's a fancy term for true or false only)

Rejection of logical binaries (M-F, gay-straight, black-white, right-wrong, left-right, good-evil etc.) is embodied in the idea of narrative deconstruction, which is most associated with Jacques Derrida. The idea is that harmful overarching grand narratives (control stories) can

be brought undone by undoing, rejecting, or deconstructing the binary oppositions that they rely upon. If one deconstructs or rejects the binary of good versus evil that the narrative of the Bible relies upon, then one damages and undermines the influence of the biblical over-story.

Why are such narratives seen as harmful by some postmodernist philosophers?

It is a simple idea. If a person is on the wrong side of the binary 'equation' when a powerful institution and narrative is opposed to them, they will suffer and get hurt. That's the central humanistic premise: that grand narratives and rigid binaries hurt vulnerable people. (Like all premises, or propositions that form part of the basis for an argument, this one can be challenged). So, for example, since the biblical narratives are down on unbelief, rejection of the god delusion, sexually and otherwise liberated women, and homosexuality: any persons who have any of those traits are at risk of abuse in an asymmetric power relationship involving the Christian megacult.

Theorists like Michel Foucault and Francois Lyotard (who were anti-grand-narratives) are regarded as neo-Marxist. Marxism and neo-Marxism are not deconstructive on the basis of rejecting binary oppositions: especially if this entails or requires that binary logic is rejected and the concept of truth (True versus false) goes with it. So even though the work of those theorists was seen as heralding in the postmodern era because of their attack on grand narratives, or metanarratives, they needed and embraced a fairly 'standard ' concept of truth and falsity, and facts.

Now, analytic philosophers and logicians of the Anglo-American philosophical tradition have numerous theories of truth (just like moral philosophers and ethicists have numerous 'theories of the good', or 'theories of right action': theories about how to do right acts and be good.)

One such theory of truth - theory of how something is true - is one that many followers of contemporary debates about science will recognise: the correspondence theory of truth. It was a favourite of Bertrand Russell, and of the 17th century British Empiricist philosopher David Hume. It is perhaps also the favourite of Richard Dawkins. Simply stated, it says that any of the following things are true (in the true-false sense) if they correspond to, or 'pick out', some fact or thing in the 'concrete world:

1. Statements

2. Propositions

3. Thoughts

4. Concepts

5. Representations

6. Models (including scientific)

7. A bunch of other similar things

(Many of 1-6 have different names depending upon which philosopher or cognitive scientist one asks, and there are lots of other things that can be considered to be alethic - meaning able to be true or false - like beliefs. To give you an idea of the issues involved, dear reader - beliefs are often considered to be one type of cognitive or mental representation (5).)

Derrida's postmodernism, which is a common target of contemporary intellectuals in the sciences, rejects all power-asymmetric binary oppositions, and along with them most logical binaries (not quite, really, but close enough). That includes the true-false binary of formal logic, which is a specific formal mathematical kind of logic called first order, or classical, logic. Classical logic is (generally) taken to be underwritten by the correspondence theory of truth. It also includes the law of excluded middle, or the principle that there is 'nothing between' true and false.

In postmodernism, the law of excluded middle is often taken to be rejected as part of the rejection of binary oppositional choices. Otherwise it becomes effectively meaningless because truth is not regarded as always immutable, and nor is falsity.

(It is salient that Derrida is not the only one with a challenging theory of truth, or a-truth. Analytic philosophers have long debated the idea of the deflationary theory of truth, according to which theory philosophers are wasting their time trying to discover the nature of truth, and most theories of truth are nonsensical.)

Now - returning to anti-grand-narrative guys Foucault and Lyotard for a minute. Foucault attacked all grand narratives that were harmful - including what he thought of as harmful scientific narratives (eugenics, for example.) One of his favourite targets was modern psychiatry. Postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard had the exact same concerns, but did not use the language of narratives. He proposed that our societies are awash in hyperreality. That is to say - all of our representations of reality have replaced the very reality that they are 'supposed to represent'. This is the famous 'Desert of the real' from The Matrix movies (Morpheus etc.) These hyperreal representations - or maps - of reality are what Baudrillard called 'simulacra'. They are inherently dissimulative (they pretend to represent reality, but instead they supplant it.) They embody encoded misinformation.

Neo-Marxists post-structuralists (very early postmodernists) like Foucault needed and believed in the correspondence theory of truth, or in a theory of truth very like it. This would make them in-principle opposed to Derridean deconstruction based upon the rejection of True-VS-False (this is also called the rejection of bivalence.) Thus early postmodern philosophers (who were also called post-structuralists) were not only interested in truth and falsity, but wanted to apply the former to combat institutional misinformation. They weren't post truth.

There's a common parallel or analogical case with Friedrich Nietzsche. People often refer to Nietzsche (who admittedly was not always consistent) as a nihilist (someone who believes in neither truth, meaning, nor morals). However, he was neither a nihilist about truth, nor about morals. Otherwise he would not have called the teaching of the Christian fideist (knowledge comes by faith alone) megacult false, and would not have proposed an Epicurean ideology as a right, and superior, alternative.

Post truth arises from application of a popularised version of Derridean deconstruction combined with a number of other ingredients in various measures:

1. Moral relativism

2. Moral individualism

I am using the term 'moral' here in the broader philosophical sense according to which it refers to both right and wrong, and to theories of truth and knowledge (epistemologies) With respect to moral theory qua ethics, relativism says right and wrong are relative to one's culture and community. Moral individualism is a finer-grained conception, according to which right and wrong are up to the individual based upon their aims, gut intuitions, feelings, and desires. It is most often associated (by philosophers and meta-ethicists) with the moral sentimentalism of Scottish enlightenment philosopher, and British empiricist, David Hume.

It is easy to see how individualism and cultural relativism might become combined with Derridean deconstruction in a country like The United States, where the post truth recipe includes at least the following additional ingredients:

3. Megacult metaphysical individualism (the individual soul is real and is pre-eminent)

4. Neoliberal doctrinaire capitalism

5. 'Market forces' free-market ideology (consumer demand and created wants)

6. Evangelical, delusional Megacult exceptionalism

7. Megacult dominionism (both evangelical and non-evangelical)

Neither Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, nor Derrida would have left these ideologies, or their metanarratives, unopposed. In the US they are significantly (although by no means totally) subsumed under the grand narratives of the Christian megacults (this includes 4 and 5), and are the embodiment of the effort of the megacult institutions to regain control of national metanarratives and the memetic power that goes with them.

Even the lay-philosopher will observe that Christian megacults very much appear to have a bivalent conception of truth, and very much believe in binary oppositions like good versus evil. But - do they? If something imaginary and 'supernatural' is what makes one's statements true, then is that really real? What kind of truth is that? Based upon what kind of fact? Is it a fact about reality? If so - is the objective reality, and fact, in question that fideist megacultists are individually delusional, and group-delusional, and correspondingly mentally ill? The science of evolutionary psychology certainly implies, if not entails, as much.

Christian megacult doctrines are very much opposed to accepting the truths of the corporeal world and its institutions. These issues were long since voiced, in various ways, by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose thought is also regarded as a modernist ancestral root of postmodernism.

To get a better grasp on how complex, yet uniform, the issue is, recall that most sub-sects of the evangelical Christian megacult reject each other's truths. They variously reject and endorse multiple interpretations of their own inherently, blatantly bigoted and deeply prejudiced doctrines. Ask a Baptist or Episcopalian megacultist what they think of the prosperity doctrine of Pentecostals. Ask a Franciscan what they think of Vatican policies. Ask a small 'c' Catholic megacultist about those who reject Vatican II.

As for unbelievers, LGBT, sexually liberated women, strong women, and the godless: ask any megacultist (even really good looking people are Satan - which should give any lay-thinker an idea what is really going on). There will be some duplicitous, specious handwaving about loving enemies and imaginary omnipotent friends, but rest assured that the key term is 'enemy'. Chances are that the term 'anti-Christ', or 'spirit of the anti-Christ' will arise at least once, and it won't be polite usage! (These terms are the Christian megacultist's version of 'f*ck you' when they realise you're not buying the insane, delusional narrative they are programmed with.)

It's okay if one's definition of a strong woman is a woman submits herself to one's imaginary, patriarchal, psychotic, male god friend (thereby betraying all truly liberated women not controlled by the bigoted megacult metanarrative). See how it works?

The institutional war for control of memetic metanarratives goes on unabated. It's an anvil that even the hammer of the theistic, dominionist megacults cannot wear out, although they are old hands at memetic-narratological soft-warfare. Post-truth is a symptom and outcome of that ongoing cultural, and soft, war.

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