Ancient Greeks’ Guide to Rejecting Propaganda and Disinformation

[Dill]

(04-26-2024, 06:55 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Who questions the questioners or do we accept what they say as fact?  People have to determine for themselves because ultimately there is no way for each individual to directly question a President or a congressperson on social media.  At some point you have to rely on someone or do it yourself. A fact checker can easily be manipulated by their own beliefs. They can manipulate which references they use and which they omit. If they provide references.  Or they could not fact check other things from a similar ideology.

Thanks for replying, Mike.  Not sure whom you mean by "the questioners."

Seems like you are positing or imagining an individual sorting it all out for himself.
And the key or goal is "direct questioning," of which a key component is "fact checking."

As I understood the article, the authors were emphasizing "phronesis," which is a dialogical process of arriving
at consensus about truth through discussion and argument governed by reason and based on evidence.

WE are the questioners on that model, which locates political power with informed, interested citizens.

They also distinguish between the civic model of Aristotle and propaganda, primarily on the criterion of transparency.

Their primary concern appears to be the problem of disinformation, which has become so organized, targeted, and
pervasive with the rise of social media and the internet. I took an interest in the article because it has always
seemed to me that if people were more aware of and embraced that Platonic/Aristotelian model, that might
be a sufficient dam against it. There would be more dialogue, and when disagreement occurred, it would
not end dialogue but rather improve the results.