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Fractured Knowledge: Philosophy Arts & Humanities ︱Jagdish Hattiangadi the freedom of speech and religion, and the rule of law. This analysis of tolerant government was John Locke’s widely admired contribution to political Fractured Knowledge: Philosophy. Within such a liberal democracy, we share and respect a common collection of evolving opinions, and especially scientific discoveries, “Fake News” that we value as knowledge. Common knowledge, which includes general as Prof Jagdish Hattiangadi, rofessor Jagdish Hattiangadi of the is a surprising new threat to future peace. well as specialised scientific knowledge, York University, Canada Department of Philosophy, York Our global economy and institutions is indispensable in resolving local explores how a common P University, Canada examines the were built during the post-World War disputes peacefully, as all parties or shared knowledge base, historical and philosophical roots of the Two era, based upon the philosophy of have a mutually accepted framework including specialised secular recent concept of “fake news”, and government by consent and a theory of reference. science, helped bring peace how facts have now become relative to of knowledge based on a scientific to warring religious factions one’s ideology. Anything that does not method that has its roots in the English However, political movements have in modern liberal democracies. conform to one’s religious, philosophical Reformation, when Catholic and recently become persuasive in denying This interreligious peace is or political ideology can be ignored Protestant Christian Churches clashed. the very possibility of common threatened by a philosophical as irrelevant. This epistemological The different factions of religious knowledge. Each movement declares backlash, with claims and stance was a factor in both the election worship were in constant conflict with its adherence to an alternative reality, Prof Jagdish Hattiangadi examines the historical and philosophical roots of the recent concept of “fake news”, counter claims of fake news, of Donald Trump in the USA, and one another until they adopted a model and to some alternative facts, as its and how facts have now become relative to one’s ideology. thus fracturing the common the Brexit vote in the UK. In both of religiously-tolerant, secular government motto. Common knowledge is seen knowledge base needed for cases the facts that their opponents that would let common knowledge by its new critics as controlled by an dispute resolution. Populist adduced, regardless of veracity, could and secular science be its arbiter. This alien self-interested establishment; set political movements have be dismissed as “fake news” without model was spread from England, by the scientific community, educational Since knowledge is fractured, according relied on appeals to supposed any evidence, and provable lies through the French Enlightenment, institutions, trans-national institutions “alternate” realities to to a widespread understanding of could be accepted by some as truth. which was influential throughout Europe, such as the UN, and experts in specialised get people to take a more This use of alternative facts, he says, and spread to the U.S. where it became fields, and propagated by the “liberal aggressive stance concerning science, the elitist recitation of facts, may even threaten world peace, enshrined in the U.S. constitution elite” of the media in the West, and ongoing disputes. because the facts play an indispensable as one of its underlying principles. represented by the mainstream political even scientific facts, may always role in the resolution of disputes. parties, bureaucracies, and judiciaries. be dismissed as “fake news”. This philosophy of liberal democracy, The new populists reject all this. A FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY as practised in the U.S., separated church that all general claims even in science among physicists who have freely This philosophical failure of supporting from state. Rival religious communities A THREAT TO PEACE are speculative and conjectural. chosen a hypothesis as a true principle. the value of knowledge among the could thus co-exist peacefully within a The threat to peace today, both domestic Michel Foucault later suggested that leading liberal democracies of the neutral, secular society. It may be broadly and global, has to do with two factors: Philosophers have not shown how underlying power structures within modern world, Prof Hattiangadi says, defined as a democracy that protects first, a decline in the credibility of secular we could ever arrive at a common society manifest in the language knowledge claims among its critics, theoretical knowledge of reality. which controls concepts and forms including even the claims of modern Any claim of science is taken to be a of discourse. Thus, it is not that the science, and second, a growing mistrust hypothesis of a kind that lacks proof, case that knowledge is power, but that of secular knowledge as a neutral referee so the claim does not constitute power is knowledge. in resolving religious disputes. knowledge. Following some technical arguments of Paul Feyerabend and Even the facts described in successive In liberal democracies, we have held Thomas Kuhn, it seems that we cannot theories of a science can seem to knowledge derived from science in with justice also claim to be describing be incomparable because the words special regard. By reputation, science reality truly, except, according to in which the facts are stated change produces the best researched and Kuhn, by adopting conventions found their meaning in transition. If we try the best attested of all universal within small, specialist communities to compare the knowledge claims of claims, where knowledge must be of practitioners of science. As Henri two rival communities, even concerning proven through experimentation that Poincaré said earlier in the twentieth plain facts, there seems to be no neutral can be duplicated by anyone and century, when a hypothesis becomes a way of adjudicating between their condensed into theories commanding principle of physics, its proclaimed truth language differences. Certain religions universal approval. But even this kind can be seen more as a generally-agreed and political philosophies on the other of knowledge has been challenged as convention that fits the current facts. hand, claim certainty for their own partisan in a certain manner, and it might It was just as possible that another knowledge claims as they are supposed be argued that part of the blame for working hypothesis could have been to derive from belief in a personal this is that we have given up our belief chosen as the principle of physics. Truth revelation, or in some other supposedly Triumph0828/Depositphotos.com DarioStudios/Depositphotos.com CJHPhotography/Depositphotos.com wrangel/Depositphotos.com in scientific method and supposed of a principle is thus just a convention infallible source of knowledge. www.researchoutreach.org www.researchoutreach.org United Nations building, Geneva, Switzerland. Behind the Research nexus 7/Shutterstock.comnexus Jagdish Hattiangadi E: [email protected] T: 416 736 2100 ext. 7752 W: http://www.yorku.ca/jagdish/ Research Objectives Professor Hattiangadi‘s research explores how scientific knowledge is acquired by using Bacon’s currently misunderstood method of “true induction”, and why it is misunderstood. THE ORIGINS OF CONFLICT shout “death to America,” but it is their pleasures and alternative lifestyles. Personal Response Prof Hattiangadi looks at the turbulent own population they wish to control, It is seen by some religious communities Detail history of science and knowledge not America’s.” as a rival religious system, and one that Jagdish Hattiangadi with two of the Abrahamic religions, is opposed to their own, one that is sinful, S437 Ross, Department of Philosophy How does this affect India, and how does it affect Christianity and Islam, to see where the In each of the two old warring empires, and spread and supported by the York University the non-liberal democracies in the East such as China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Brunei? roots of current conflict come from. When only submissive philosophy was international liberal “elite”. 4700 Keele Street Christianity became the de facto Roman tolerated – or thought that is not free Toronto ON. M6S 2G4 Popular opinion is divided everywhere between state religion under Emperor Constantine, but submissive to orthodoxy. The threat More alarmingly, secular thought religious social conservatism and secular cosmopolitanism. Resistance to secular cosmopolitanism gained power it became a unifying belief among the to free thought and philosophy came, no longer seems to be a neutral referee Bio in India before U.S.A. and U.K. A new Hindu nationalist cultures and peoples of the vast and however, not from the religion, but from of disputes. There is a potent challenge Born in India, Jagdish Hattiangadi studied at Bombay orthodoxy, showing hostility to Muslims, runs counter culturally-diverse empire. Christian the political ideologies of Christianity and in secular Darwinian science to arguments University, London School of Economics and Princeton to the constitution of India, but the government in power orthodoxy became a for the existence of University. He is Professor at the Department of Philosophy is willing to test it out even while losing the support of unifying ideological God, which is among and Division of Natural Science, York University, Toronto. minorities and liberal democrats,
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