University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Fallacy as foundation of post-truth knowledge and knowing in LIS

Youngman, Tyler; Patin, Beth

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130765

Description

Title
Fallacy as foundation of post-truth knowledge and knowing in LIS
Author(s)
  • Youngman, Tyler
  • Patin, Beth
Issue Date
2024-10-16
Keyword(s)
  • Epistemicide
  • Epistemology
  • Fallacy
  • Philosophy of Information
  • Post-Truth
  • Critical Librarianship
  • Information Ethics
  • Political Economy of the Information Society
  • Social Justice
  • Sociology of Information
Abstract
How can library and information science (LIS) better promote epistemic vigilance and critical ethics toward post-truth (i.e., harmful; false; mis/dis/mal) information? This preliminary critical philosophical investigation argues LIS must go beyond considering mis/dis/mal information, and instead examine how post-truth shapes the process of producing mis/dis/mal epistemology through fallacies. Drawing from insights related to epistemicide and epistemic injustice in LIS, we reconsider post-truth and the modes of justification validating false beliefs as knowledge. We operationalize Fallacy 1 (“deceptively bad arguments”) and Fallacy 2 (“false popular belief”) to consider post-truth knowledge production. LIS faces an immediate pedagogical imperative of preparing information professionals to equitably mitigate fallacious harms inflicted by fake news proliferation, wavering information literacy, and the largely uncritical popularization of AI systems and tools which forcefully facilitate knower interactions with post-truth information. The evolving notions of post-truth information requires a critical ethical revolution for LIS.
Publisher
Association for Library and Information Science Education
Series/Report Name or Number
Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2024
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
  • Conference Paper
  • Presentation
Language
eng
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130765
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2024.1696
Copyright and License Information
  • Copyright 2024 Tyler Youngman, Beth Patin
  • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Owning Collections

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference: ALISE 2024 PRIMARY
The Ethics and Evolution of Truth and Information