Abstract
It’s a commonplace that we ought to be truthful people. This chapter takes some steps to explaining why that’s so. Instead of focusing on value inherent to believing the truth or being sincere in one’s assertions, it develops an account of “Truthfulness” as a democratic virtue. To be truthful is, roughly, to want, to an appropriate degree, what is true to be believed and what is believed to be true. Democratic virtues are traits that promote the flourishing of democratic societies as democratic societies. I argue that Truthfulness is such a virtue on several grounds. It promotes epistemic justice, as well as the trust among citizens that democracies need. It also helps to guard against populism and polarization, each of which is a self-destructive force in democratic societies.
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Notes
- 1.
Societies can be “democratic” to varying degrees, and I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. By “democratic societies,” I mean those with reasonably robust institutions of self-rule and protections of minority rights. See section “Truthfulness and Democracy” below.
- 2.
This account is controversial, but it shouldn’t be controversial that we have reason to cultivate traits that promote the good better than their rivals. Readers who prefer not to call such traits “virtues” are welcome to substitute another term.
- 3.
This is not to say that a trait is virtuous in some contexts of action but not others. “Context” here is the conversational context. Whether a trait qualifies as virtuous, in a given conversational context, depends on what alternatives are relevant to the conversation.
- 4.
See also Peterson (2019).
- 5.
Gregory Peterson (2019) characterizes democratic virtues as virtues that “directly or indirectly support democratic institutions,” and he claims that the category overlaps with the categories of civic, intellectual, and moral virtues.
- 6.
More technically, and more explicitly in line with Bradley’s definition of “virtue”: The expected value of a nearest world where democratic citizens exercise Truthfulness exceeds the expected value of a nearest world where they exercise traits in the natural contrast class of Truthfulness.
- 7.
Michael Lynch identifies valuing truth with having intellectually virtuous dispositions. By identifying valuing truth with intellectual virtue, his approach begs the question of whether valuing truth is virtuous.
- 8.
An “appropriate degree” is neither too much nor too little. In this chapter, I focus on the contrast between Truthfulness and valuing truth too little, but valuing truth to excess can also be bad. Think of a person who is obsessive in pursuing trivial truths, or over-scrupulous in applying strict epistemic standards to matters of little consequence. Or think of someone who objects when you say, at 7:01:15 pm that it is 7:00, or who has a “Well, actually” ready whenever there’s the slightest hint that someone might be in error. There are at least two ways to incorporate these traits into the present account. One is to treat them, not as excesses in valuing truth, but as deficiencies in valuing other things. Another is to characterize Truthfulness as valuing truth in moderation, contrasting with these traits along with Untruthfulness. I don’t have space here to pursue either approach in the detail it deserves.
- 9.
Philosophers have proposed a variety of things that, perhaps, we ought to value more than truth or instead of it. Some of those alternatives include empirical adequacy (Van Fraassen 1980), the ability to justify beliefs to ever-more-inclusive audiences (Rorty 1995), and conduciveness to good outcomes (Stich 1990). Although these proposals are problematic, we need not address them here. The alternative values those philosophers propose are not what ordinary contexts presuppose as the rivals to Truthfulness. In ordinary contexts, Truthfulness contrasts with traits such as the vices described above.
- 10.
- 11.
An alternative idea of democratic flourishing might focus on attitudes and outcomes rather than institutions: Democracy flourishes in a society to the extent its members engage in politics as a collaborative pursuit of the good of all, and they are at least justified in believing that political outcomes reflect the collective best judgment of what best promotes the good of all. It is plausible that this kind of flourishing works hand in glove with the flourishing of democratic institutions I emphasize. The institutional approach, however, connects more directly to work in political science on democratization and its opposite, and so I have adopted it here.
- 12.
See Lynch (2019) for excellent discussion of how intellectual viciousness, especially arrogance, impedes democracy. Also see Watson (this volume) for discussion of the dangers of a defective epistemic environment.
- 13.
For reasons I don’t have space to describe here, Fricker thinks testimonial and hermeneutical injustice involve a kind of wrong that goes beyond injustice in the distribution of epistemic goods. That view, however, requires that we not think of credibility and interpretive resources as epistemic goods. I do count them as epistemic goods, and that is why I’m content to think of epistemic justice as concerning the just distribution of such goods.
- 14.
More generally, a Truthful person wants people to have access to information by default, whether they “deserve” it or not. I mention desert here only because of the connection between justice and permitting people the goods they deserve.
- 15.
- 16.
Populism per se is not a political ideology, but a style. It occurs on both ends of the left/right spectrum. In the United States, left populists are likely to focus on the struggle of “Wall Street vs. Main Street.” Right populists are likely to focus on the struggle between “real America” (an idealized rural America of the South and the interior) against the political establishment and coastal elites.
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Wrenn, C. (2022). Truthfulness as a Democratic Virtue. In: Peterson, G.R., Berhow, M.C., Tsakiridis, G. (eds) Engaging Populism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05785-4_6
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