Trying to answer questions like these involves reading between the proverbial lines, and trying to discern things like the intent and meaning of the author strictly by their use of language. It's often a tricky proposition. There are always philosophical caveats when claiming to understand anything with a reasonable degree of certainty when reading into the context of language.
The exercise of trying to extract or read into the words of a story can be very much like a cross between psychoanalysis and trying to predict the future by reading tea leaves. Dead authors who never commented on the intent of their work would probably find the academic field is especially rife with all kinds of wild speculations regarding their "real" intent, as post doctoral students crank out thousands of pages into literary journals, publishing their carefully cultivated theories, or be doomed to perish in the wasteland of academic and professional impotence.
Some academics might object that I'm using an economic and materialistic literary lense to evaluate and summarily write off a large portion of what they see as a legitimate invesitgation and analysis of the truth that makes up the bedrock of most arts and science departments. The short answer is yes, I am. While I agree that literary theories can sometimes yield useful intuition pumps, they fall drastically short in providing useful epistemic models in their attempts to discover the multitude of hidden true meanings within the same fucking text, that has been analyzed and deconstructed a thousand times, in a thousand different ways.
There are many other good reasons we must look critically at carefullly preeened truth models that can only exist when we tacitly agree to accepting a certain level of philosophical bullshit in discourse. There is a staggering range and depth of philosophically broken truth models available for purchase, as societies become increasingly more complex and interconnected, the bullshit gets deeper.
Psychologists and sociologists might classify most of the highly specialzed academic truth models as part of the normal range of mental schemas, that have simply been engineered, tweaked, socially elevated and peer reviewed to the status of literary and philosophical theories that generate the requisite amount of bullshit.
In journalism, you're taught to temper your biases and to keep a story balanced by incorporating different viewpoints of the same set of facts, often by citing multiple sources. The idea behind this approach rests upon the agreed assumption that the truth of a story is independent of the interpretation of the story itself. It incorporates elements of third party verification to ensure the story can hold up to future scrutiny, and to standards of evaluation that we agree are meaningful. Standards like logical consistency and evidential support that have proven to be accurate in forming the knowledge base by which we literally bet our lives and societies on. Much like in politics, in philosophy, voting with your feet and experiencing the results is the only useful way of evaluating the efficacy of our belief systems.
Whenever you read an article, or evaluate an assertion or argument that claims to support X, there is often an epistemic pattern that can be identified in how these claims are made.
From what I've observed, most claims of truth in public discourse fall into at least one of the following schemas that dominate public discourse. With the broader acceptance of psychological compartmentalization, an often confusing multitude of schemas counterintuitively exist in the same individual/discourse, depending on how and when they're applied. The complexties and sublties of individual and social psychology play a large role into how these schemas develop and get expressed.
They can either give rise to nuanced and carefully thought out worldviews, or more often than not, end up a confusing mess of contradiction and disingenuous assertions. It is important that the author defines the epistemic boundaries to which their claim of truth is being made, in proportion to the scope of the assertion. In short, extraordinary claims do not just require extraordinary evidence, but must also be coherent with the rest of what we know.
Truth Parrots
Truth parroting is a name I've given to those who interpret and believe almost everything they read and hear by another authority. These schemas cause individuals to parrot back information to others with little to no individual analysis. Thoughts of checking alternative sources or committing any resources to fact checking or alternative lines of thinking don't enter into the truth equation. Post hoc reasoning (after the fact) is pretty ubiquitous because it's easy (read: lazy). They help create the circle jerks and echo chambers of whoever or whatever is weaving the narrative that's already been accepted as true. Correct easy answers are emphasized, questioning the questions or the authority who defines the questions is strongly discouraged using this model.
Examples:
Your crazy nextdoor neighboor who is always trying to convince you Obama is a secret Muslim, or Jesus is the only way to salvation. Or your other crazy neighboor who is trying to convince you all corporations are all out to kill you and vaccinations cause autism.
Truth Trolls
Truth trolls are a growing demographic, mostly as a result of a post-religious world where disenfranchised believers are left with a bad taste their mouth from being disillusioned. They see all claims of truth as equally meaningless, and all information exists in a kind of solipsistic mind fuck where you can choose your own adventure after you've become disillusioned. This group is a recently growing cultural phenomena that has moved into void where religion used to occupy. The guiding principle is the truth isn't something you'll ever have access to anyhow. The question of meaning is all that really exists, and that's up you and you alone to determine what that is. Correct answers are completely dependent upon your "personal reality", and questioning the questions or authority of the narrative is zealously encouraged, often to the point of absurdity.
Examples: Political pundits, entertainers, comics, academic writers, existentialists.
Truth Police
This group falls into this category are mostly employed and paid to analyze and deliver whatever information they're given under certain rules of engagement. They create the narrative by which we get our media and provide the authoritative mindset by which information ought to be interpreted and processed. It is their job to disseminate and inform the public in a way that's socially acceptable and codified by rules of conduct according to the ontological baggage they're bringing to the table. They invoke authority when convenient, but can delve into the abstract design space of philosophy when confronted by academics with varying degrees of success.
Examples: TV and news journalists, religious leaders, heads of state, scientists and some philosophers.
Truth Miners
Truth mining is a term that describes the process by which one determines the truth status of a possibile truth within the design space. The design space is simply the mathematical representation of all possible truths compared to the potential number of possible falsehoods. That is, we assume the set number of false claims vastly outnumber the set of actual truths that correspond and desribe reality, which we test to the point of pragmatic ubiquitous consistency via independent confirmation.
Stated differently, the major premise of the design space is the number of possible truths far outnumber actual truths instantiated within the universe or multiverse. This means any random claim is likely to be false rather than true, given we agree that possibilities and actualities occupy different categorical states of existence. Sure, it's easy to imagine a unicorn in your mind, but we agree that's an entirely different category of existence when we talk about actual unicorns that exist the same way horses do.
Examples: mathematicians, physicists, philosophers
Consilience
It is my assertion that the truth can best be discerned when you take the patterns of historical truth and incorporate this data within contemporary methods which yield a high degree of accuracy given a clear scope. In short, what is true for the caveperson ought to be true for the post-human in terms of ontological consistency in what we collectively value as true belief.
This is the meeting point of where abstract thought becomes solidfied into our personal lives and defines who we are. It is what makes us unique among the other animals in that we can have some degree of conscious control in how we evolve and grow as a species by stipulating the standard by which we determine the truth within the social contract by which we agree to live by, and define the multitude of standards by which we measure the status of all truth claims.
In short, we have to agree imaginations of the truth and true belief have a useful existential delineation that facilitates understanding across the board. In more simplistic terms, what we believe is true now is amenable to new information as we progress and learn. When debate and discourse allows for any claim to be accepted as "true" without stating why it's true, we've already agreed to swallow an existential poison pill that blurs the line between false and true belief.
The consequences of accepting this position are disastrous on the social contract and corrosive to society at large.
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