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Leitura de 33 min

The strange search for knowledge in the age of post-truth

Summary

In this episode of Philosophy for Our Times, host Ed interviews Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick and a founding figure in social epistemology. Fuller challenges the traditional view that knowledge is produced solely by experts through established institutions and progresses linearly toward a single truth. Instead, he argues that knowledge is a socially dependent process shaped by the communities that produce it.

Fuller traces the history of modern knowledge production to the 17th century, highlighting the establishment of institutions like the Royal Society of London. This period introduced the idea of knowledge as an intergenerational task—a pursuit that extends beyond any single lifetime. This modern conception contrasts with ancient Greek and Eastern traditions, which viewed knowledge as something attainable within one’s lifetime. Fuller connects this historical shift to contemporary doubts about progress, particularly following the 20th century’s mixed legacy of scientific advancement and catastrophic events like world wars and environmental crises.

The discussion then turns to the post-truth condition, which Fuller sees not as a decline but as a recognition of multiple perspectives and directions in knowledge. He argues that social media democratizes knowledge production, allowing people to take validation processes into their own hands. This shift is positive, Fuller suggests, because it reflects an educated populace capable of independent judgment, though it challenges established authorities.

Fuller advocates for early education in digital literacy, including programming, to help people understand how media content is produced and to navigate the information landscape critically. He also addresses the role of AI, like ChatGPT, arguing that it can democratize knowledge by accessing and combining vast amounts of overlooked academic work, potentially redeeming valuable but ignored contributions.

In closing, Fuller previews his upcoming book, Media and the Power of Knowledge, which explores how the medium of knowledge production shapes its content and accessibility. He emphasizes the need for academics to move beyond a text-focused approach and engage with various media to maximize the impact and reach of their work.

Recommendations

Books

  • Media and the Power of Knowledge — Steve Fuller’s upcoming book with Bloomsbury, which addresses how the medium of knowledge production shapes its content and accessibility, particularly in the context of social media and digital technologies.

Concepts

  • Social Epistemology — The field founded by Steve Fuller, defined as the study of the social foundations of knowledge, combining empirical, historical, and normative disciplines.

Institutions

  • Royal Society of London — Cited as a key institution established in 1660 that allowed autonomous knowledge production independent of external authorities, setting a model for scientific inquiry.

Journals

  • Social Epistemology — The journal founded by Steve Fuller in 1987, which serves as a platform for the interdisciplinary study of the social foundations of knowledge.

People

  • Plato and Aristotle — Referenced as ancient Greek philosophers whose views on knowledge differed from modern conceptions, seeing it as something attainable within a lifetime rather than an intergenerational pursuit.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:01:19 — Defining Social Epistemology and Its Importance — Steve Fuller explains social epistemology as the study of the social foundations of knowledge, combining empirical and normative disciplines. He describes it as an interdisciplinary project that examines both how knowledge is produced socially and how it ought to be produced, aiming to understand the nature of knowledge and guide future knowledge production.
  • 00:03:41 — The Scientific Method as the Gold Standard for Knowledge — Fuller discusses how knowledge requires a social process of validation, not just consensus or popularity. He identifies the scientific method—with its emphasis on experimentation, public rational argument, and temporary agreement—as the gold standard for knowledge production. This model, emerging in the 17th century, allowed for autonomous inquiry independent of established authorities.
  • 00:07:00 — Ancient vs. Modern Conceptions of Knowledge — Fuller contrasts ancient Greek and Eastern views of knowledge as something attainable within a lifetime with the modern conception of knowledge as an intergenerational, historical pursuit. He argues that this modern idea, which began in the 17th century, drives science today, even as it is implicated in global problems like wars and environmental crises.
  • 00:10:28 — The 20th Century and Doubts About Progress — Reflecting on the 20th century, Fuller notes that science and technology had profound positive and negative impacts, exemplified by artificial fertilizer and poison gas. This duality led to widespread doubt about progress and the direction of knowledge. These doubts, he argues, underpin the post-truth condition, where people question whether there is a single truth or direction for knowledge.
  • 00:13:02 — Post-Truth as a Positive Recognition of Difference — Fuller argues that the post-truth era is a net positive because it acknowledges multiple perspectives and directions in knowledge. He points to social media, where people critically evaluate content and take validation into their own hands. This reflects an educated populace exercising independent judgment, though it disturbs establishment figures accustomed to controlling knowledge validation.
  • 00:15:07 — Education and Digital Literacy in the Social Media Age — Fuller advocates for early education in digital literacy, including programming, to help people understand how media content is produced. He emphasizes that social media democratizes the means of media production, moving away from a broadcast model. By becoming savvy about production processes, individuals can better navigate and critically engage with information online.
  • 00:19:17 — Technology as a Medium for Knowledge Validation — Fuller discusses the role of technology, particularly writing, in enabling knowledge validation by providing a privileged medium for adjudicating truth. He contrasts oral cultures, which rely on ‘mood music,’ with written cultures, which require precision. Social media, he suggests, radicalizes this by democratizing the authoritativeness of writing, allowing more people to produce and validate content.
  • 00:21:29 — AI and the Democratization of Knowledge Creation — Fuller addresses ChatGPT and AI, arguing that they undo the ‘mystique of creativity’ by combining existing texts in novel ways. He highlights that AI can access the 80% of academic work that goes uncited, potentially redeeming overlooked knowledge. While biases exist, AI lacks the disciplinary prejudices of human academics, offering a more equitable exploration of available information.
  • 00:26:05 — The Importance of Medium in Knowledge Production — Previewing his upcoming book, Fuller stresses that the medium of knowledge production—not just its content—is crucial. He argues that social media forces academics to reconsider how they convey knowledge to make it publicly available. Different media platforms (text, video, etc.) can maximize the impact of content, and academics should study and engage with this array to enhance accessibility.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Philosophy For Our Times
  • Author: IAI
  • Category: Society & Culture Philosophy
  • Published: 2026-03-03T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:28:55

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] But if you actually go back to the Greeks and look at what they thought they were doing,

[00:00:04] it’s quite different from what we’re doing.

[00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing you the world’s leading thinkers

[00:00:12] on today’s biggest ideas.

[00:00:14] It’s just Ed here today, and I’m introducing the episode, The Strange Search for Knowledge

[00:00:18] in the Age of Post-Truth.

[00:00:20] So this is an interview with Steve Fuller, who’s a professor of sociology at the University

[00:00:24] of Warwick and also a founding figure in the field of social epistemology.

[00:00:28] So in this talk, he challenges the notion that knowledge is produced by experts through

[00:00:33] established institutions, and also that it progresses over time towards a single truth.

[00:00:37] And instead, Steve argues that our contemporary post-truth order correctly recognizes that

[00:00:42] the pursuit of knowledge is actually a socially dependent process, which is kind of shaped

[00:00:47] by the communities that produce it.

[00:00:56] Hello, Steve Fuller.

[00:00:58] Welcome to How the Light Gets Him.

[00:01:00] Thank you.

[00:01:01] Thank you for having me.

[00:01:02] So you are a philosopher known for your work across a variety of topics, from transhumanism

[00:01:08] to the philosophy of science.

[00:01:10] You also helped spearhead the discipline of social epistemology.

[00:01:15] Could you tell us what that is and why it’s important in your opinion?

[00:01:19] Well, social epistemology is basically, at the most basic level, the social foundations

[00:01:28] of knowledge.

[00:01:29] And that can be understood in a couple of ways.

[00:01:31] One way is to understand how knowledge is actually produced socially, but also how we

[00:01:38] ought to produce knowledge socially.

[00:01:40] And so in that sense, it combines a lot of the empirical and historical disciplines which

[00:01:45] have studied how knowledge has been produced with philosophy, economics, these more kind

[00:01:52] of normative disciplines, you might say, that are concerned with how knowledge ought to

[00:01:56] be produced.

[00:01:58] And I founded the journal called Social Epistemology in 1987, wrote the first book called Social

[00:02:04] Epistemology the following year, basically with that kind of idea in mind.

[00:02:09] And it’s obviously a kind of interdisciplinary project because none of the specific disciplines,

[00:02:15] whether we’re talking about philosophy or the humanities or the social sciences, actually

[00:02:19] deals directly with this matter.

[00:02:22] And social epistemology is meant to sort of put them all together into this project of

[00:02:26] trying to figure out.

[00:02:28] Not only what the nature of knowledge is, but how we should be producing knowledge in

[00:02:33] the future.

[00:02:34] Okay.

[00:02:35] Let’s break this down.

[00:02:37] What is knowledge?

[00:02:39] Well, this is an interesting question.

[00:02:41] I mean, I think in a sense, the easiest way to talk about it is kind of what gets recognized

[00:02:49] as knowledge.

[00:02:51] And that is clearly sociological because there’s a sense in which if you and I have certain

[00:02:57] ideas.

[00:02:58] We say certain things that by itself doesn’t make it knowledge, right?

[00:03:02] You need some kind of audience, some kind of reception for it.

[00:03:06] And then the question becomes, well, what’s a good and bad reception, right?

[00:03:11] Because we also understand ideas like people will say things that a lot of people believe,

[00:03:17] but which turn out to be false or unfounded.

[00:03:19] And it’s just catering to what the people already believe, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:03:23] Or it might be based on mis misleading premises and stuff like that.

[00:03:26] Yeah.

[00:03:27] Yeah.

[00:03:28] Yeah.

[00:03:29] So there’s a sense in which you need a certain kind of social process, right?

[00:03:33] Not just any old social process, right?

[00:03:35] So it’s not just automatic consensus.

[00:03:37] It’s not just a popularity contest to what knowledge is.

[00:03:41] So the question then becomes what is the form of organization by which you kind of combine

[00:03:47] opinions and test opinions to then determine that something is knowledge.

[00:03:52] And that’s what the scientific method in the modern period has been mainly about.

[00:03:57] And that’s why it still provides, to this day, we’re talking about maybe 400 years later,

[00:04:03] the gold standard for what counts as knowledge in society.

[00:04:07] So experimentation, the ability to test things, to be able to rationally argue them publicly

[00:04:15] where all sorts of people can disagree.

[00:04:18] And then in some sense, coming up to at least a temporary agreement, but one that’s not

[00:04:23] seen as completely there forever.

[00:04:26] Yeah.

[00:04:27] So that’s basically, in a general kind of way, what the social epistemology is and what

[00:04:34] social epistemology of knowledge is about.

[00:04:37] So there’s almost like a methodological component, which is a scientific method, and a political

[00:04:42] component almost.

[00:04:43] That’s right.

[00:04:44] Because you have to think about how do you organize people to actually get to that point?

[00:04:49] And this is why, I mean, the West has a very distinctive kind of history with regard to

[00:04:54] the production of knowledge.

[00:04:56] And, you know, you might argue is part of what actually made the West kind of the supreme

[00:05:01] global power afterwards.

[00:05:04] But what you start to get in the 17th century is a kind of autonomous production of knowledge

[00:05:10] that in a way is not dependent on what established authorities already thought, but rather allowed

[00:05:15] to go their own way and then feed back into the established authorities.

[00:05:21] And so, you know, if you’re thinking about the English speaking world, right, the Royal

[00:05:25] Society of London.

[00:05:26] When it was established in 1660, that would be kind of an important moment, right?

[00:05:32] Because what you had are the people who recognized each other as, you know, knowledge producers

[00:05:37] and inquirers and so forth.

[00:05:40] They gathered together and they decided to come up with an institution that would just

[00:05:44] pursue, you know, ideas and hypotheses wherever they may go, independent of the external authorities.

[00:05:53] But then when they actually…

[00:05:54] Yeah.

[00:05:55] When they actually came up with something, they made it available publicly, which then

[00:06:00] the external authorities could use.

[00:06:02] And I think that kind of model of the role of science in society, at least until now,

[00:06:10] has been kind of the dominant one, and it has been responsible for knowledge production

[00:06:16] being expedited and progressed in the way it has over the past almost 400 years.

[00:06:22] Okay.

[00:06:23] Let’s put this on a timeline.

[00:06:25] Does the history of knowledge begin in the 17th century or was there knowledge before

[00:06:29] then?

[00:06:30] No, no.

[00:06:31] Of course there was knowledge before then.

[00:06:32] But I think the idea…

[00:06:34] So if you go back to the ancient Greeks, Plato, Aristotle, all those guys, right, obviously

[00:06:40] their ideas are very important for the production of knowledge in the sense that they provide

[00:06:46] inspiration.

[00:06:47] But if you actually go back to the Greeks and look at what they were…

[00:06:50] You know, when they produced the ideas, they did what they thought they were doing.

[00:06:54] It’s quite different from what we’re doing, because they didn’t think of knowledge or

[00:07:00] science as an intergenerational task.

[00:07:04] They thought of it as something that in a sense you could acquire in your lifetime,

[00:07:07] right?

[00:07:08] So in that sense, if you look at guys like Plato and even Aristotle, who’s a much more

[00:07:12] practical guy than Plato, you have something actually, I think, there that’s closer to

[00:07:17] the Eastern religions with regard to the understanding of science as something that…

[00:07:24] You know, knowledge is something you can get in your lifetime if you put yourself in the

[00:07:28] right frame of mind, right?

[00:07:31] But the whole point of science in the modern era is something different, because in a sense,

[00:07:38] it kind of, in a way, forces you to think that you might not actually get knowledge

[00:07:45] in your lifetime, right?

[00:07:47] That you might get part of the puzzle, you might get some of the way, but there’s always

[00:07:52] something more which the future generates.

[00:07:54] Right?

[00:07:54] That’s something that generations are going to pursue.

[00:07:56] And I think that’s sort of, you know, what I would call historicity to knowledge, right?

[00:08:01] The fact that knowledge is not something that can be entirely acquired in one’s lifetime,

[00:08:06] but actually requires several lifetimes and who knows how many lifetimes.

[00:08:11] That is a very distinctive modern conception that begins in the 17th century.

[00:08:15] And I think that’s a driving force of science today, right?

[00:08:19] And that’s why people today, even when they see all the problems that there are in the

[00:08:24] world, they recognize that science, in a sense, is responsible for a lot of them.

[00:08:28] You think about the wars, the world wars, right?

[00:08:31] The nuclear stuff, all this stuff, environmental crisis, in a sense, science is implicated

[00:08:35] in all these things.

[00:08:37] But they also believe that science is part of the solution, right?

[00:08:41] Because they believe that the quest goes on.

[00:08:43] Now, you see, that whole way of thinking about the production of knowledge would be completely

[00:08:47] alien to the ancients in the Western tradition, who were much more like the Eastern tradition,

[00:08:53] in that regard, where they say, in a sense, the knowledge you want is the knowledge for

[00:08:57] your lifetime, the knowledge you can live with, and in a sense, the next generation

[00:09:02] will have to figure this out for themselves.

[00:09:05] Do you think in the contemporary age, this modern process towards knowledge has been

[00:09:11] interrupted in any way?

[00:09:12] Well, yes.

[00:09:14] I think a lot of people have doubts about it.

[00:09:15] I mean, I think that’s the basic issue, right?

[00:09:17] I mean, I think in a sense, you know, so…

[00:09:23] In my…

[00:09:25] When I was a student in the late 1970s, right, everybody believed in progress.

[00:09:32] That was kind of an unquestioned term.

[00:09:35] But then, very shortly afterwards, it started to be questioned very severely, right?

[00:09:41] So in a sense, when I became, you know, went into my professional life as an academic,

[00:09:48] we began the postmodern period.

[00:09:50] And people were wondering, you know, is there one truth?

[00:09:53] You know, and so even if we are telling narratives about how we’ve been progressing over all

[00:09:59] these centuries, whether there’s just one to be told or are there many to be told, especially

[00:10:04] since if one looks at the evidence of the 20th century, I mean, and the 20th century

[00:10:10] I think is quite important here, because it’s the century where you see science and technology

[00:10:17] making the most difference to people’s lives ever, both positively and negatively.

[00:10:22] Right?

[00:10:23] So, for example, you can look at stuff like artificial fertilizer, which is responsible

[00:10:28] for the possibility that the world has as many people as they are, and they’re able

[00:10:32] to sustain themselves.

[00:10:33] But if you just change a couple of atoms in the molecules that are responsible for artificial

[00:10:39] fertilizer, you get poison gas, and you get the poison gas that gassed millions of people

[00:10:45] in Auschwitz.

[00:10:46] Okay?

[00:10:47] It’s the same molecule being turned around.

[00:10:50] And so after World War II, and this, of course, persisted in the Cold War.

[00:10:52] Right?

[00:10:53] People began to wonder, well, is this where we really want to go?

[00:10:59] We have this kind of knowledge, yes, we’re producing it, and it is giving us more power,

[00:11:04] but the power can take us in many different directions, and maybe it’s kind of a mistake

[00:11:10] to just allow it to go on in the hope that it’ll be on balance for the good rather than

[00:11:17] the bad.

[00:11:18] And I think that’s kind of where we are now, and that’s why, for example, we’ve got this

[00:11:22] so-called post-truth condition, is because all of this doubt, reflecting on, let’s say,

[00:11:30] the last hundred years, that are leading people to wonder, well, are we going in the right

[00:11:36] direction?

[00:11:37] Why is it post-truth and not post-knowledge, for instance?

[00:11:40] Well, I think the idea, see, the reason why it gets called post-truth is because

[00:11:45] truth suggests that there’s kind of one goal, right?

[00:11:49] And that there’s one form of knowledge.

[00:11:51] And I think part of what happened when we moved into post-modernism in the late 20th

[00:11:58] century was that people began to wonder whether that’s really the case, right?

[00:12:04] In other words, it’s not like we all are heading in the same direction, actually, right?

[00:12:10] And I think if you look at the kind of critiques of Western knowledge from a post-colonial

[00:12:15] perspective and, you know, other kind of non-mainstream perspectives, it becomes very clear that,

[00:12:21] you know, that not everybody is talking about, not everybody is assuming that we’re heading

[00:12:26] in the same direction.

[00:12:27] We’re heading in different directions.

[00:12:28] And then the issue becomes managing the difference.

[00:12:33] And that’s always what post-modernism was about, right?

[00:12:35] Was the recognition of difference and then somehow managing it.

[00:12:39] But that’s very different from, you know, what I had been talking about before, where

[00:12:43] we’re talking about knowledge progressing and carrying on indefinitely and, you know,

[00:12:48] and even if bad stuff happens, the good stuff outweighs it.

[00:12:51] So is post-truth a net positive in a sense that we are allowing multiple perspectives

[00:12:57] and directions?

[00:12:58] I think so.

[00:12:59] And I think the bottom line is we’re going to have to live with it, right?

[00:13:02] So regardless of whether you like the flavor of post-truth, what, you know, because I think

[00:13:07] the way you see post-truth, to be honest, right, is if you look at social media and

[00:13:13] you look at the different sort of standards of truth that people are kind of presuming

[00:13:17] and the kinds of things they’re saying and the sorts of things they’re presenting as

[00:13:21] evidence.

[00:13:21] Right.

[00:13:22] Uh, and, and then, and, and people have become quite savvy and critical about the way in

[00:13:28] which stuff gets presented on social media.

[00:13:30] So, so in terms of videos and stuff, as soon as somebody presents something that seems

[00:13:35] completely convincing, somebody else says, no, this is a fraud.

[00:13:38] We get community notes on Twitter, something like that right now.

[00:13:43] I think that’s actually positive.

[00:13:44] All that I think is positive in the sense that people are sharp.

[00:13:48] They’re kind of wising up, they’re sharpening up.

[00:13:50] And, but, but the thing that I think.

[00:13:51] Disturbs a lot of establishment people, um, is that in a sense, people are taking the

[00:13:58] validation process into their own hands.

[00:14:01] Right.

[00:14:02] So in other words, and, and it’s, and, and I don’t think there’s a problem with that

[00:14:06] per se, because we are living in a world where we have the most educated people ever.

[00:14:11] So in other words, um, if we’re imagining that education is supposed to emancipate people’s

[00:14:17] minds, which is of course the classical progressive view of education.

[00:14:20] It’s.

[00:14:21] We want everyone to have education that, that in a sense, if part of what that emancipation

[00:14:26] involves is being able to take an independent judgment, then you shouldn’t be surprised

[00:14:32] that people will start questioning a lot of things that other people have been taken for

[00:14:36] granted for a long time.

[00:14:38] And this is what we see all the time happening on social media.

[00:14:42] We just don’t have a good way of kind of regulating it or moderating it or something like that.

[00:14:48] But the sheer phenomena of the disagreement is not itself.

[00:14:51] It’s a problem.

[00:14:52] You said that social epistemology also concerns a kind of how we should approach knowledge,

[00:14:58] not just how we are.

[00:15:00] Um, how should we in this is education still the emancipatory force?

[00:15:05] I’m a big believer in education.

[00:15:07] And in fact, I would say that, um, very early on, uh, kids should learn about this medium,

[00:15:16] uh, this, uh, you know, um, internet, social media, all the rest of it.

[00:15:21] They should learn programming in a sense, right.

[00:15:23] And, and, you know, not, not necessarily very deep programming programming enough to be

[00:15:28] able to understand how the things they are, that they are witnessing, that they’re exposed

[00:15:34] to have been produced.

[00:15:36] And I think we’re, you know, in a sense, this is not as hard as it sounds because one of

[00:15:42] the consequences of social media, and one of the reasons why social media is so powerful

[00:15:46] is because for the first time you actually have, um,

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:51] You know, relatively ordinary people being able to take control of the means of production

[00:15:56] of the media.

[00:15:57] It’s no longer a broadcasting function, right.

[00:16:00] Broadcasting presupposes that there’s, you know, like a few channels or a few, you know,

[00:16:05] uh, you know, vehicles by which all of media is produced and everybody has to receive it

[00:16:11] in some way, right.

[00:16:13] It’s it, you know, it’s like the, the, the, the signal from the radio tower, right.

[00:16:17] There’s only a few of them and everybody receives it.

[00:16:20] But social media.

[00:16:21] It democratizes the process of production.

[00:16:24] And so what, what, what kids need to learn is how that works exactly.

[00:16:28] Not just at the level of the, uh, user-friendly apps that they have in their smartphones that

[00:16:33] enable them to access stuff, but also what goes into the programming.

[00:16:38] And that could be something that could be introduced as a part of basic literacy.

[00:16:43] And I think a lot of people in fact, acquire this over time and it gets easier and easier

[00:16:47] to acquire actually.

[00:16:49] So, so I don’t think this is a big stretch.

[00:16:50] To be perfectly honest.

[00:16:52] And I think, you know, so, so in other words, you can have people saying all kinds of things

[00:16:56] on social media, but if you have a receivership that is sufficiently savvy about how this

[00:17:02] stuff is done, they won’t be taken in, or they’ll be able at least to respond in kind.

[00:17:09] And then I think that’s kind of where we’re going.

[00:17:13] Doesn’t it concern you that, uh, social media is run by tech billionaires?

[00:17:17] Yeah.

[00:17:18] Yeah.

[00:17:19] No.

[00:17:20] In one sense.

[00:17:22] But it’s also very interesting the extent to which, uh, you know, anonymous hackers and

[00:17:28] people like that who in a sense have a lot of the basic skills can really run, you know,

[00:17:34] run rampant in this kind of system.

[00:17:36] Right.

[00:17:37] So there’s a sense in which that problem is not a problem of competence, but it’s rather

[00:17:42] about a problem of the concentration of capital.

[00:17:45] It’s a different kind of problem.

[00:17:46] It’s not a competence problem.

[00:17:48] It’s not like the guys in Google and Microsoft and all that.

[00:17:50] the rest of them know more than the hackers do. No, it’s just they have more power than they do.

[00:17:56] So that’s a different problem. That’s a problem of political economy. And so a lot of the issues

[00:18:00] about monopoly and antitrust and all that, that we know about, that’s where you settle that problem.

[00:18:06] But in terms of the competence, the competence is pretty evenly distributed.

[00:18:11] You’ve written about transhumanism, as I said, would you call yourself a techno-optimist?

[00:18:17] In general, yes. I mean, and if you look at the people in the Enlightenment back in the late

[00:18:23] 18th century, right, we usually see this period as kind of the golden age of progressive

[00:18:29] thinking, which then gets unleashed into the rest of the world. If you look at those guys,

[00:18:35] including even guys like Voltaire, they always had a kind of mixed attitude. They thought it

[00:18:41] was going to be better in the long term, but there’ll be a lot of problems in between.

[00:18:47] And that’s kind of my view. My view is that things are going to get better, but, you know,

[00:18:54] blood will be spilled, damage will be done. But I do think, yeah, I do think things will get better.

[00:19:01] What is the relationship between technology and knowledge? Because, for instance,

[00:19:05] Heidegger might say that technology is an epistemology itself.

[00:19:10] Yes. Okay. Well, look, I think in terms of what we call knowledge, in terms of something that we can

[00:19:17] actually…

[00:19:17] adjudicate and say what’s true and false and so forth, it requires a privileged medium of

[00:19:26] communication. And this is where writing, writing as a technology becomes very important in the

[00:19:32] whole idea that we can actually nail stuff down and we can say, this is true, this is false.

[00:19:39] Because the problem with speaking, so imagine you have oral cultures, right?

[00:19:42] Oral cultures primarily maintain themselves because people kind of,

[00:19:47] in a sense, they hear the same things, they like the same things, right? They’re not checking the

[00:19:54] details. They’re not checking whether it conforms to something that took place at a certain point

[00:19:59] in time, right? But the point is they like the mood music, right? I mean, oral cultures are all

[00:20:04] about mood music. But when you get to written culture, right, you have to get the notes right.

[00:20:09] You need to know the music theory, as it were, right? And I think that’s where the truth issue

[00:20:16] comes in.

[00:20:17] It comes in actually with that medium, with the written medium. And I think the way you

[00:20:22] have to understand technology is as enhancements of this medium, right? And of course, one of the

[00:20:32] things that we know from the history of literacy is that originally only a few people knew how to

[00:20:37] write. And this is why if you look at Plato’s dialogues, Socrates is a very mixed view about

[00:20:45] writing, right? To a certain extent, he thinks,

[00:20:47] writing falsifies speech, and speech is a more spontaneous way of proceeding and so forth.

[00:20:51] But he also kind of respects the authority that writing has, because once it’s there in the

[00:20:55] pyramid or, you know, cuneiform and Hammurabi’s laws and all that, you know, that it has a kind

[00:21:02] of solidity to it, right? And that’s certainly the way in which we sort of think about texts,

[00:21:07] right? Authoritative texts have that kind of character, and it’s by virtue of the technology

[00:21:11] of writing. And so now we’re in a period of social media.

[00:21:17] Yes.

[00:21:18] And in a big sense the sort of authoritativeness of writing is becoming very radically democratized.

[00:21:24] Well, I have to ask you about chat GPT and AI, isn’t that undoing a lot of knowledge

[00:21:29] creation?

[00:21:31] Well, I think my view about this, okay. That’s interesting, because I get asked a lot about this.

[00:21:37] I think what it’s doing is undoing the mystique of creativity, you know, that in some sense you have

[00:21:45] to have a certain kind of mind to be able to inspiration thinking. So, for me, sort of what’s happening in

[00:21:46] book linear thinking is more or less looking at how to work in writing, you know? Those types of, you

[00:21:46] mind to be able to produce original stuff, because chat GPT and generative AI generally

[00:21:52] is about combining words in certain probable patterns that will then produce a certain kind

[00:21:59] of effect. That’s really what it’s about. And it’s drawing on the database of all the stuff

[00:22:05] that’s already been published, right? Now, what I would say about that, which I think is perfectly

[00:22:12] fine, is that human beings themselves, who are the producers of all these texts that chat GPT

[00:22:19] feeds on, they have not fully exploited all the possibilities in those texts. And I’ve made this

[00:22:31] point several times before, that in fact, when we’re talking about all the, let’s just think

[00:22:37] about academia, which is very codified, and we have a lot of, you know, the data tray, you know,

[00:22:42] the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data,

[00:22:42] the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the data, the

[00:22:42] the paper trail is very strong. We find that 80% of the stuff that’s actually published academically

[00:22:49] is not cited, right? Okay. Only 20% is cited to any considerable extent. Now, what was the point

[00:22:59] of that 80% that’s not cited? Now you might say, oh, they were wrong. No, no one’s checking.

[00:23:05] Nobody’s reading. Chat GPT reads it. This is the point. Chat GPT is fed with all of the

[00:23:12] journals, you know, without the prejudice. This is the thing. The reason why we have the 80-20 split

[00:23:19] in terms of, you know, academic publications is because academics are taught only to pay

[00:23:26] attention to certain things of all the stuff that’s written, because those are the things

[00:23:31] that they think are in the cutting edge. But that then ignores a lot of other stuff that, in fact,

[00:23:36] could be quite useful and could involve, in fact, solve lots of problems. Chat GPT does,

[00:23:42] does not have those biases, does not have those prejudices. It can access that stuff and, in fact,

[00:23:47] then come up with more novel combinations and more novel forms of knowledge. Aren’t the biases

[00:23:52] inbuilt in the technology if we’re the ones who created it? Yeah, but the problem is they haven’t

[00:23:58] all, they haven’t all been exploited. Okay. Right, right. Because when we think about the biases in

[00:24:04] technology, we normally think about the biases of the programmer, right? We think about, you know,

[00:24:09] they’ll be sexist, racist, whatever.

[00:24:12] And sometimes there’s evidence to that effect. But I’m talking about the biases in a sense on the

[00:24:18] default readership of the people who would have previously had access to the database.

[00:24:23] In other words, the humans who would have previously accessed the database before Chat GPT

[00:24:30] came on the scene would have been incredibly biased, whereas Chat GPT is not biased in that

[00:24:35] respect because it doesn’t know about the development of disciplines and stuff like that.

[00:24:41] It just knows kind of…

[00:24:42] All the stuff all together. It treats every article equally. It treats every book equally.

[00:24:48] And then it starts to make the combinations, you know, textually.

[00:24:53] Isn’t that the one of the key pieces of epistemology since Aristotle, just making

[00:24:58] distinctions? And if Chat GPT doesn’t do that, is that a positive?

[00:25:03] Well, the issue is what kinds of distinctions do you want to make, right? And I think the kinds

[00:25:09] of distinctions that we’re currently making in the academic world, we’re not going to make.

[00:25:12] We’re already making distinctions. I think they’re actually quite biased. I mean, in a sense,

[00:25:19] if you were a Martian coming down to earth and looking at the way in which academic knowledge

[00:25:23] production occurs, you’d say 80% of the people working in this business are wasting their time.

[00:25:28] You just need to figure out who they are, right? And just tell them to do something else,

[00:25:33] right? I mean, because they’re not being read. They’re writing this stuff. They’re not being

[00:25:37] read. But that doesn’t mean that what they… Just because nobody reads what they write doesn’t mean

[00:25:42] what they write isn’t valuable. It’s just you need some other source to read it. And that might

[00:25:48] be Chat GPT. Chat GPT might be able to redeem a lot of stuff that’s been ignored.

[00:25:55] Can I ask you what you will work on next?

[00:25:59] Well, so I have a book coming out later this year called Media and the Power of Knowledge

[00:26:05] with Bloomsbury. And this book, in a way, partly addresses this issue that we’ve just been talking

[00:26:11] about.

[00:26:12] Because I think the way you have to understand the production of knowledge is through the medium

[00:26:18] through which it’s produced. And so we’ve been talking about writing and we’ve been talking about

[00:26:22] Chat GPT and all the effects that has. And it has a major, major effect, much more so than the

[00:26:29] content of the knowledge, I would say. Because in a sense, the content of knowledge is kind of

[00:26:34] always being reproduced. But unless you have the right medium to access it and to explore it,

[00:26:42] it’ll be ignored, right? So content isn’t really the problem. The problem is the medium and what

[00:26:48] the medium allows you to say and not say. And so this is where crafting the medium becomes very

[00:26:54] important. And I think one of the things that social media has done is it’s forced academics

[00:26:59] and other so-called professional knowledge producers to really reconsider, you know,

[00:27:06] what it is they want to get across and how they get it across so that the full extent of the

[00:27:12] knowledge that they, in fact, are producing will be made publicly available.

[00:27:16] Is social media the right medium then? Is that what you’re saying?

[00:27:19] Social media, look, social media is a lot of things at this point, right? I mean, so I don’t

[00:27:25] have anything against the term social media. I mean, you know, if we think about Facebook and

[00:27:31] Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and all these things, they’re all doing somewhat different

[00:27:36] things, right? They’re all in a way conveying often a lot of the same content.

[00:27:42] In different ways, because some are, you know, you might say some are more biased toward textual,

[00:27:46] some are more biased toward video, right? But nevertheless, the content that they’re drawing

[00:27:51] on is pretty much the same content. And you see the kinds of effects that they have in their

[00:27:57] audiences. And I think what academics need to do is to study this whole array very carefully

[00:28:04] and with an eye to, in a way, maximizing the content that’s already available by finding the

[00:28:12] medium that is best suited for conveying it.

[00:28:16] Okay. And that will depend case by case.

[00:28:18] Yeah. And I think we need to be, but the point is you need to be open to that,

[00:28:22] right? I think at the moment as academics, we are too text focused in a way.

[00:28:28] Well, thank you, Steve.

[00:28:29] Well, thank you, everybody. Yeah.

[00:28:32] All right. Thank you very much for listening to Philosophy for Our Times. Hope you enjoyed the

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