To make America think again: Truth is more than just fact

Comment published in New York Times blog, in response to news article, “Ahead of midterms, disinformation is even more intractable,” October 21, 2022:

The experience of Trump's presidency sensitized us to the need for honesty in information. Which Trump sabotaged by systematically telling blatant lies and making clear that the status of the person speaking determines the 'truth' of statements. As if to say, "Believe what I am telling you to do, not what I say is true."

Behind this is the broad commercialization of information that allows 'facts' to be decided as such by the purposes of marketing, be they financial, ideological, or both.

To counter this and return to a semantic and epistemic normalcy, we need not only more reliable decisions on what are the true facts. The truth of statements turns on three things: the veracity of represented observations (one 'sees' a 'fact', that something or other is the case); fidelity in rigor in applying canons of inference (narrowly, logic, and broadly, everything that can be called 'thinking'); and judgments of relevance to some concern shared by speaker and audience. Journalism does not just represent facts, as science never does; it invents models that explain them. No useful conclusion is ever made about anything of importance without the work of thinking, which is a combination of creative imagination and disciplined reasoning. American culture loves creativity as well as blunt realism, but undervalues logical thinking. Our schools overuse multiple choice tests instead of essays, as in France where they are central. What will it take to make America think again?