Post-Truth And Correspondence Theory Analysis

The inauguration of our 45th president, Donald Trump, in January of 2017 marked a pivotal point in American history where post-truth and subjective realities claimed hold of the populace over objective facts. Post-truth, which was named the 2016 word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, is the idea that emotions and feelings are more important than factual evidence in society. For example, one who believes that subjectivity is the best way to know the truth about reality would argue that interpretations and a general consensus among like-minded peers would enable one to achieve a higher level of understanding than a person who believes in facts and science. This poses many problems in areas such as morality, politics, and science because each

Correspondence theory claims that a belief is true when it corresponds to facts or states of affairs. To illustrate this point the belief that the sky is blue is true because the sky is blue. One can raise objections to this type of theory as it works well with empirical facts but does not bode well for non-empirical facts such as cases of morality. For example a postmodernist would argue that one cannot say that the claim you should keep your promises is true since it may not always be backed up by reality. Coherence theory says that a belief is true when it fits in with all of our other beliefs. This theory is better for non-empirical truth claims thus better at moral truths. Coherence theory would say that I know I should keep my promises because it is incoherent with my other beliefs about being honest and respecting others. Objective truth mainly relies on these two theories because these are things that can be proven. A post-truth thinker might object to this and say that correspondence theory is incorrect since it operates under the assumption that there are facts that are not biased or related to a power struggle. However, objective truth is objective for a reason. These are things that have been proven by facts and evidence so whether or not it comes from a person in power should not matter as long as it follows a logical criteria. Pragmatic theory is often employed by post modernists as it states that a belief is only true if it solves a real life problem. If it does not then it is a pseudo-problem. For instance, the belief that eating healthy is good for you is true because it solves a real problem of obesity in America. Pragmatic theory, however, fails to recognize that something can be true without fixing a problem. Furthermore, this theory also relies on empirical data to prove that a problem was fixed thus leading back to an objective truth. The main problem with objective truth is