Category: Epistemology

Prior to Trump’s first victory mainstream Republicans attacked and criticized. His victory not only silenced almost all his conservative critics most became fawning Trump loyalists. Lindsey Graham provides an excellent example of Trump’s transformative power: he was polymorphed from a savage attacker to Trump’s attack dog. Few dared oppose him during his first term, such as John McCain and Mitt Romney. But the Republicans in congress now act in accord with his will and whims. There are a few surviving conservative critics of Trump, but they have proven politically irrelevant. This does make sense, as Trump is the logical result of decades of GOP strategies and efforts. If the Republican party were a Pokemon, Trump would be the final evolution of the party.

The surrender and assimilation of the Republican leadership was not surprising; the party focused on winning and holding power rather than developing and advancing meaningful policy goals. Whatever ideology once defined the party has become a devotion to power for the sake of power and profit. Under Trump, all talk of a balanced budget, all worries about deficits and have ceased.  What is more interesting is the impact Trump has had on his followers.

When Joe Walsh  made a futile effort to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination. During his effort, he asked Trump supporters if Trump has every lied. They said that he had not. Walsh brought up Trump’s criticism of Obama playing golf and Trump’s claim that he would be too busy as president to play golf. While most people did not care about, some insisted Trump had never played golf as president. His supporters also believed that hundreds of miles of the wall had been built and paid for by Mexico and that the Democrats in congress are treasonous liars.  Walsh closed by noting that he “…realized once and for all that nobody can beat Trump in a Republican primary. Not just because it’s become his party, but because it has become a cult, and he’s a cult leader. He doesn’t have supporters; he has followers. And in their eyes, he can do no wrong.” This raised some interesting philosophical concerns.

Some might respond by saying “what about the Democrats?” and accuse them of being a cult. While one could debate political cults, this “what about” would (as always) be irrelevant. Even if the Democrats were a cult, this would prove or disprove nothing about Republicans. My concern is with looking at the epistemology and thinking of the voters Walsh encountered.

One possible explanation is that Trump voters have normal epistemic abilities and hold to true beliefs but are lying in this case. They believe that Trump lies, that the wall was not paid for by Mexico and so on. People often lie in support of people they like, especially when they think those people are being attacked. This is a matter of ethics: believing that it is right to lie in defense of someone you support especially when speaking their opponent. While subject to moral assessment, this need not be cultish. After all, people will lie to defend their friends.

A second explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have always been defective and they are unusually bad at forming true beliefs and critically assessing claims. This could be due to various biases and the usual reasons people fall victim to fallacies and rhetoric. But this need not be cultish since believing false things because of epistemic defects or failures in critical thinking is a common occurrence. On this explanation, Trump supporters are wrong, but they are not wrong because of being cultists. Rather, they are following Trump because they are wrong.

A third explanation is that these voters’ epistemic abilities and critical thinking skills have been corrupted by Trump’s influence. That is, they reject the rational methods of forming beliefs and critical thinking in favor of believing in Trump because Trump tells them to believe in him. They are wrong because they are following Trump. In this case, they might be cultists. They would be accepting a “Trump command theory” in what Trump says is true is true because Trump says so and what Trump says is false because Trump says so. If this explanation is correct, Trump is shaping the perceived reality of his followers. They are not lying to defend him or themselves, they are true believers in Trump’s false description of the world. That is, they are a cult with a charismatic leader.

 

In philosophy, there are many varieties of skepticism which are distinguished mainly by their degree of doubt. A relatively mild case of skepticism usually involves doubts about metaphysical claims. A rabid skeptic would doubt everything, even their own existence.

While philosophers have attempted to defeat skepticism, these attempts seem to have failed. This is not surprising as skepticism seems unbreakable. The arguments for skepticism have an ancient pedigree and can be distilled into two simple arguments.

The first addresses the possibility of justifying a belief and attacks the view that knowledge requires a belief that is true and justified. If a standard of justification is presented, then there is the question of what justifies this standard. If an answer is given, the question can be raised to infinity and beyond. If no justification is offered, then there is no reason to accept the standard. Either way, skepticism remains undefeated.

The second argument is that any reasonable argument that we can have knowledge can be countered by an equally reasonable argument against it.  Some folks, such as Chisholm, have contended we should assume we have knowledge and begin epistemology from that point. However, this seems to be on par with grabbing the first-place trophy without bothering to compete. But perhaps he is right and the only way to “beat” the skeptic is to assume they are wrong.

Like most philosophers, I tend to follow David Hume’s approach to skepticism in the normal parts of my life. I am not a skeptic when I am doing my taxes, suffering through a committee meeting, or eating pizza. However, like a useless friend, skepticism shows up when it is not needed. It would be nice if skepticism could be defeated or a least rendered irrelevant.

Our good dead friend John Locke has an interesting approach to skepticism. While, like Descartes, he wanted certainty, he settled for a practical approach to skepticism. After acknowledging that our faculties cannot provide certainty, he asserted that what matters is being able to use our faculties for our preservation and wellbeing.

Jokingly, he challenges “the dreamer” to put his hand into a furnace. This would, he claims, wake him “to a certainty greater than he could wish.” More seriously, Locke contends that our concern is not with achieving epistemic certainty. Rather, what matters is our happiness and misery. While Locke can be accused of taking an easy out rather than engaging the skeptic in a battle of certainty or death, his approach is appealing. As I have accumulated numerous injuries that I feel while running, I will use them to illustrate my view.

When I set out on a run, I can feel all the damage I’ve accumulated over the years. While I cannot be certain that I have a body with a spine and nerves, no amount of skeptical doubt makes the pain go away. In terms of feeling the pain, it does not matter whether I am a pained brain in a philosophical vat, being deceived by a demon, stuck in the Matrix or really a runner in the real world. In all these scenarios, I would be in pain, and this is what matters. I also enjoy running; the pain is mild and fades quickly.

When I run, it seems I am moving in a three-dimensional world. Since I live in Florida (or what seems to be Florida) I usually feel warm and get that Florida feel on the run. I will also eventually be thirsty and some fatigue. Once again, it does not seem to matter much if this is real. Whether I am really bathed in sweat or a brain bathed in some sort of nutrient fluid, the run will feel the same to me. As I run, I take pains to avoid cars, trees and debris. While I do not know if they are real, I have experienced what it is like to be hit by a car (or as if I was hit by a car) and experience involving falling (or the appearance of falling). In terms of navigating through my runs, it does not matter whether it was real. If I knew for sure that my run was really real for real that would not change the run. If I somehow knew it was all an illusion that I could never escape, I would still run for the sake of the experience of running. After all, even in the Matrix I would still have time to fill. As such, while skepticism cannot be defeated, it does not matter in terms of how I would live my life.

My view that skepticism does not matter might seem a odd. After all, when the hero (or victim) of a story finds out that they are in a virtual reality what usually follows is disillusionment and despair. Intuitively, it does matter whether the skeptic is right because if what I do is not real, it does not matter.

One way to support this view is to use the illustration of a dream: if I dream that I won a gold medal in the Olympics, this means nothing. I have not really won, and it would be bizarre to brag about winning a medal in a dream. They would refute my prideful boasting with the obvious counter: you did not win for real.

As another illustration, imagine that I am see a baby being swept away in a flood. I rush into the water and save the baby, only to find out that it is a realistic plastic doll. While I could be said to have acted bravely (albeit in ignorance), if I claimed I saved a child, I would be dismissed. Retrieving the plastic might make me an eco-hero, but it would not make me a hero because the “baby” was not real.

So, if my life is not real, everything I do is like that Olympic dream and all my good deeds are like rescuing that piece of plastic. So, the skeptic must be defeated if life is to have any meaning. This, shows that it does matter whether skepticism is right. While this objection is formidable, there is a reasonable reply.

My view of what matters in life has been shaped by years of gaming. These include tabletop games (BattleTech, Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc.) and video games (Zork, Doom, Starcraft, Warcraft, Destiny, Halo, Diablo, etc.). When I am pretending to be a paladin, the Master Chief, or a Guardian, I know I am doing something that is not really real for real. However, the game can be enjoyable or unpleasant. This enjoyment or suffering is as real as enjoyment or suffering caused by what is supposed to be really real for real—though I believe these are just games game. Knowing that I am “just” playing games does not diminish the value of the experience, although I concede that what I do in a game does not make me heroic or a “winner” in the “real” world.

If I knew that I was trapped in an inescapable virtual reality, then I would simply keep playing the game as gaming is what I do. It would get boring if I stopped playing. If I somehow knew that I was in the really real world for real, I would obviously just keep doing what I am doing.

 Since I might be trapped in a virtual reality or I might not, the rational thing to do is keep playing as if it is really real for real. That is the most sensible option in this dilemma. In practical terms, the reality of the world I think I exist in does not matter. The skeptic does not need to be refuted for life to be meaningful. After all, gaming can be meaningful. The play, as they say, is the thing.

Some of Trump’s followers claim divine intervention saved him during the shooting in which Corey Comperatore died protecting his family. Trump initially credited himself, explaining he had turned his head to look at a chart and thus narrowly avoided death. He soon embraced the narrative that God had saved him. While there are psychological and theological issues here, my focus will be on the philosophical aspects of the issue of whether God saved Trump.

Looked at philosophically, three of the domains of concern are epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. A key epistemic issue is how one would know whether God saved Trump. The metaphysical challenge is sorting out the mechanics of reality and divine intervention. The ethical aspect is the classic problem of evil or, in this case, the problem of good. I will start with epistemology.

The details of the shooting have been reconstructed in detail,  but the key facts are that Trump suffered a minor wound to his ear, Corey Comperatore was fatally wounded, and David Dutch and James Copenhaver were both critically wounded. Assuming the shooter was trying to hit Trump, Trump was lucky to escape with only a minor injury. That is, he survived as a matter of chance. Some of his followers are denying that it was chance and are claiming that God saved Trump. Some are even taking this as a sign that Trump is the chosen of God. From an epistemic standpoint, the key question here is: how do we know that God saved Trump? That is, what evidence is available that would prove divine intervention as opposed to alternative explanations, such as chance? I am asking these as serious epistemic questions.

One approach is to attribute the knowledge to some special epistemic ability possessed by some of Trump’s followers that enabled them to somehow know that God saved Trump.  They cannot point to any empirical evidence in the shooting that would prove this, but they know. They could appeal to divine revelation or other avenues of knowledge. The problem is, of course, that there is no way for anyone other than his epistemically special followers to have such knowledge. Which is certainly adequate for Trump’s purposes. On this view, the way divine intervention is determined is via a special epistemic capacity possessed only by dedicated followers of Trump. But what about everyone else? They would need to rely on more mundane means of discerning divine intervention.

I will assume that evidence of divine intervention would require something unusual that could not be better explained by alternatives. To illustrate this, I will present a few examples of how this process might work. They will also involve shootings.

Imagine that Margorie is at the range and sees that a shooter has set up some cans. The shooter aims at a Diet Coke can. One shot grazes the can and other shots hit nearby cans. Margorie tells you that God intervened to save the Diet Coke can. At first you think she is joking, but she is serious and starts talking about the can being the chosen of God. On the face of it, her claim would be absurd. We know that people often miss what they aim for, and these results are not unusual. They can be explained in purely mundane terms and there is no need to posit divine intervention.

Now imagine that Margorie is at the coast when someone is duck hunting. The hunter shoots at some ducks, grazing one with a pellet, killing another duck and wounding two others. Margorie tells you that, once again, God has intervened. This time, He has chosen to save one duck while letting another die and two more be wounded. She insists that God has chosen the duck. This would be absurd, since the fate of the ducks is explainable in mundane ways that do not require divine intervention.

It could be objected that my examples involve objects and animals, and God does not intervene for them. Given that Aquinas argued that it is no sin to kill animals, this does have appeal.  But we can turn to countless examples of people being slightly wounded rather than killed in situations that might have resulted in their death. This happens all the time in wars but is also something that happens in everyday life with hazards such as falling, vehicle accidents, workplace accidents, falling and so on. On any given day there are probably thousands of people who could have been killed but were only slightly injured. But these are usually not presented as cases of divine intervention. And, presumably, Trump’s followers cannot attribute these cases to divine intervention. After all, if God intervenes so much, then there would be nothing special about Trump’s survival and this would not be proof that he is chosen. It is also worth thinking about people who did not suffer even a slight injury in the shooting. There were many people around Trump who were not hurt at all, yet Trump’s followers do not say that God singled them out to spare them or that they are thus marked as chosen. This is only being applied to Trump, despite their being no evidence that his survival was beyond mundane explanation. On the face of it, the best explanation is that shooters can miss their targets and it just so happened that Trump was grazed while another person died, and two others were badly injured. There seems to be no miracle here. But what would divine intervention look like?

In the bible, divine intervention is usually presented as being clearly outside of the usual workings of the world. Things like the parting of the Red Sea, walking on water, curing of blindness, raising of the dead, destroying cities, and turning people into salt are good examples of divine intervention. As such, it would seem reasonable to expect that if God intervened to save Trump, this would be done in a suitably divine manner. This might have involved turning the shooter into salt or sending an angel to smite him. But nothing like that happened. It can, of course, be countered that God now does low-key interventions that are indistinguishable from cases in which He does not intervene. But the flaw with this response is that we would have no way to distinguish cases of divine intervention and we would be engaged in wishful thinking when attributing it to any outcome. As such, there is no evidence that God intervened to save Trump.

 

Trump and his allies have claimed that the Democrats are engaged in lawfare against him and are even proposing defunding those prosecuting Trump. Republicans have also promised to investigate what they claim is the weaponization of the legal system against Trump. Trump has even claimed that Biden planned to assassinate him. For his part, Trump has publicly stated that he plans to capture the justice department and turn it against Biden and other Democrats, showing that he has no objection to the weaponization of the legal system as such. This situation presents an interesting problem in critical thinking and epistemology.

The basic question is whether the claims about lawfare, assassination and weaponization are true. While I need to rely on publicly available information, I must infer that if Trump’s supporters had access to a smoking gun, then it would be all over Fox News and similar sources.

Let us, for the sake of the discussion, imagine a world in which Trump’s claims about lawfare, the weaponization of the legal system and even the assassination attempt are true. In this alternative reality, what would we expect to see? If Biden and the Democrats were engaged in the sort of lawfare and weaponization claimed, then you would expect that Trump would not be afforded the full due process of the legal system. After all, if they are engaged in the sort of behavior being claimed by Fox News and others, they would have no reason allow Trump to hold press conferences during his trial, the trial would not have been held publicly, he would not have been able to hire his own lawyer and so on. However, Trump was afforded due process and, in fact, was probably given some of the best treatment of any defendant in the history of the legal system.

If Biden planned on assassinating Trump and the FBI was deployed to take the shot, then Trump would be dead. After all, if they were sent to Florida to kill him and he was not there (as they already knew in our reality), they would presumably be willing to travel to him to complete the mission. Unless, of course, we assume the FBI in that reality are bad at knowing where Trump is and are too lazy to try again after failing to find him.

Somewhat ironically, if you reflect even briefly on the claims being advanced by Trump and his allies, then you would need to infer that Biden and the Democrats have no compunctions against using the legal system against Trump. As such, they should be behaving like those Trump and his allies compare them to, such as the Soviet Union and various dictatorships. But they are not. To bring up the most obvious fact, Trump is still free to raise money, conduct rallies, give interviews and so on as he runs for president. That is, he and his allies disprove their claims every day.  

Given that Trump’s allies and supporters are not stupid, I can only infer that they know these claims are false while they pretend they are true. In sum, if the claims about Biden and the Democrats weaponizing the legal system were true, Trump would be in prison and not running for President. If the assassination attempt claim were true, Trump would have not been able to make it because he would have been dead. And he and his allies know this.

Continuing with our alternative reality, in a world in which Democrats were weaponizing the legal system as Trump and his allies claim, they would obviously not allow the legal system to prosecute important Democrats and would certainly not allow Hunter Biden, the president’s son, to face trial. They would also not allow Bob Menendez to be tried. However, the department of justice seems to be relatively bi-partisan in that Democrats and Republicans are both occasionally tried and convicted. But all this is true in our world, indicating that the Democrats are not doing what Trump and his allies claim. One could respond that Biden and the Democrats are so cunning and evil that they are allowing Trump to run for president and sacrificing Hunter Biden, Bob Menendez and other Democrats as part of a clever plan. But that is obviously absurd. Again, if the Democrats are as bad a Trump and his allies claim, Trump would be in prison (or dead), Hunter Biden would not have faced trial, and important Democrats would be safe from the legal system (well, safer). There is also the obvious fact that if the Democrats were willing and able to do this to Trump, they would also use the legal system against Republicans across the country. For example, Marjorie Taylor Green would presumably also be on trial for something. As such, ever day shows that these claims by Trump and his allies are lies.

As noted earlier, if we infer that Trump’s allies and supporters believe these claims, we will need to conclude that they are incapable of even the most basic inferences from the readily available evidence. As such, the best explanation is that this is political theater—they all know it is make believe, but are playing along and using it to spin narratives and raise money. Given that Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his opponents and enemies, this all could be a rationalization for his planned weaponization, and this is a rationalization his followers and allies could embrace to “justify” when this happens. What is probably the most ironic is that Trump being elected president in 2024 would be the most conclusive proof that he has been lying all along and this seems to be ever more likely.

In politics, it is said that perception is reality. But many philosophers will tell you that what we think is reality is just perception. Very concisely, the notion is that we never directly experience reality, only the ideas in our mind. As such, we do not really perceive people, including Trump and Biden. We just have ideas of them that probably do not match reality. But, laying aside skepticism, we can have ideas that are more or less accurate. Before continuing, I will note that I am a registered Democrat (Florida has closed primaries) and I voted for Joe Biden last election. I’ll be voting for him again. As a philosopher, I’m obligated to present these biases so you can use them to rationally assess my credibility.

Having followed Trump and Biden over the years, I have noticed that Biden supporters tend to have a mostly accurate view of him while Trump supporters tend to be wrong in their beliefs about Trump and Biden, or at least profess to believe false things.

While there are no doubt exceptions, people who voted for Biden seem to have a reasonably realistic view of him. He is an old man, has been in politics a long time, takes moderate positions on almost everything, and is willing to do a few things to make life marginally better for many Americans. He is also consistent in maintaining the foundations of the status quo, such as allowing the fossil fuel industry to do most of what it wants to do. I think that this realism is an important factor in explaining why support for Biden tends to be lukewarm and the most compelling reason to vote for him is that he is not Trump. People are supporting the real Biden, and there isn’t much there to really inspire voters.

While there are exceptions, people who voted for Biden seem to have a mostly accurate view of Trump. He is an old man, there are many issues involving taxes, finances, and mistreatment of women in his past, he tried to stay in power after losing the election, he lies, he is willing to exploit racism and xenophobia, he is primarily interested in enriching himself and his family, and he is now a convicted felon.  These are all compelling reasons to not vote for him. Thus, it is no surprise that most votes for Biden were votes against Trump; people picked the lesser evil.

In contrast, Trump supporters seem to be wrong in their beliefs about Trump and Biden. Their professed conception of Biden seems to match that made up by Fox News and more extreme right-wing outlets. Biden is seen as senile, a socialist or even a communist. He wants to take away our hamburgers, stoves, and cars. He is also seen, by some, as wanting to make children gay or trans. And so on. I am, of course, unsure how many people really believe this and to what extent, if any, they have critically assessed these claims. But this conception of a senile, incompetent mastermind who is making America into a socialist state does give people a good “reason” to vote against this imaginary Joe Biden. This also helps explain the enthusiasm of the opposition: Biden’s supporters see him as a tired old moderate politician, his foes see him as a tired old devil energized to destroy America. This helps to explain the enthusiasm gap.

Some Trump supporters do know what Trump is and before they chose to become his henchmen many of them savagely attacked him. Just look at what his fellow Republicans said about him before he became President. They had an accurate view of Trump and are presumably lying now. The Christian nationalists and racists who hope to benefit from his second term probably grasp what he is (a useful tool), although they usually do not say so openly. For example, Mike Johnson has professed to be so anti-porn that he and his son monitor each other via an app to ensure they are not sneaking a peak at Pornhub. Yet Johnson was at Trump’s trial, supporting a man who committed adultery with a porn star and has lied about it. I don’t think that Johnson is stupid; he knows that Trump is a tool to get what he wants, and so he must bear false witness in praising him.

But I think that many of Trump’s followers are sincere when they claim he is a good Christian, that he is smart, that he is strong, that he cares about them, that the negative claims about Trump are untrue or exaggerated, that he is honest and so on. For the most part, their beliefs are the opposite of reality. Which is fascinating.

The comedian Jordan Klepper has done an excellent job, in a kind way, of getting some Trump supporters into a state of cognitive dissonance involving the facts and their professed beliefs. I don’t think that these people are stupid or foolish. After all, Trump is much better at putting on a show than Biden and Trump has a vast army of people, ranging from Fox News to YouTube grifters, presenting him as a great hero (and Biden as a senile, yet incredibly dangerous, devil). While Biden does have supporters, they are both less enthusiastic and less willing to lie. This helps explain why Trump is doing shockingly well in the polls—his supporters are supporting a Trump that does not exist and opposing a Biden that also does not exist. Biden supporters are, for the most part, reluctantly supporting a mostly accurate conception of Biden and more enthusiastically opposing a mostly realistic view of Trump. In short, Trump is winning the perception war while losing repeatedly in reality. But there is a good chance he will get a second term.

Trump’s defenders might claim that my critical view of Trump is a manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is, of course, no way to effectively counter this rhetorical move with logic. If I offer supporting evidence for my claims, such as that presented in court during Trump’s trial, it will be dismissed as lies and as all part of a witch hunt against Trump. If I argue that my view is based on a calm and rational assessment of Trump and Biden, this will presumably be dismissed, perhaps based on the claim that my derangement is so deep that I am unaware of it. That is, they will need to reject evidence, advance conspiracy theories, and question my sanity to address my claims. To be fair to them, this could be their honest conception of me. And from my perspective, they would have broken free of reality. That is a basic problem with the intentional destruction of the idea of an objective reality; there is little common grounded reality to stand on and talk.

 

Shortly after Trump was elected president for the first time, Scottie Nell Hughes, a Trump surrogate, presented her view of truth on The Diane Rehm Show:

 

Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion. And that’s—on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, ‘No, it’s true.’ And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way—it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.

 

As the claim there are no facts seems absurd, the principle of charity requires considering that she meant something other than what she said. One of the many things I have learned from teaching philosophy is that students often claim to think that everything is a matter of opinion and thus seem to think is no truth. The follow up discussion usually reveals that they do not believe what they think they believe. Rather than thinking that there is no truth, they think people disagree and people have a right to freedom of belief. If the Trumpian “denial” of facts is just that people believe different things and have a right to freedom of belief, then I have no issue with this.  

But perhaps the rejection of facts is not as absurd as it seems as there are philosophical theories embracing this view. One is relativism, which is the view that truth is relative to something. This is typically a culture, though it could be relative to a political affiliation. One version of this is aesthetic relativism in which beauty is claimed to be relative to the culture and objective beauty is denied. Another rejection of facts is subjectivism, which is the idea that truth is relative to the individual. Sticking with an aesthetic example, the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a subjectivist notion. On this view, there is not even a cultural account of beauty, beauty is dependent on the  individual observer. While Hughes did not develop her position, she and other Trump supporters seem to be embracing political relativism or even subjectivism: “And so Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd—a large part of the population—are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some—amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up.”

If it is claimed that truth is relative to the groups (divided by their feelings towards Trump), then this is a relativist position. In this case, each group has its own truth that is made true by the belief of the group. If truth is dependent on the individual, then this is a subjectivist view. In this case, each person has their own truth, but s might happen to have a truth that others also accept.

While some might think this view of truth in politics is new, it dates back at least to the sophists of ancient Greece. The sophists presented themselves as pragmatic and practical and for a fee, they would train a person to sway the masses to gain influence and power. One of the best-known sophists, thanks to Plato, was Protagoras.

The rise of these sophists is easy to explain in terms of the niche that was created for them. Before the sophists arose, the pre-Socratic philosophers argued relentlessly against each other. Thales, for example, argued that the world is water. Heraclitus claimed it was fire. These disputes and the fact the arguments tended to be equally strong for and against any position, gave rise to skepticism, the philosophical view that we (seem to) lack knowledge. Some thinkers embraced this and became skeptics, others went beyond skepticism.

Skepticism often proved to be a gateway drug for relativism. If we cannot know what is true, then it is sensible to infer that truth is relative. If there is no objective truth, then the philosophers and scientists are wasting their time looking for what does not exist. The sincerely religious and the ethical are also wasting their time for there is no true right and no true wrong. But accepting this still leaves twenty-four hours a day to fill, so the question remained about what a person should do in a world without truth and ethics. The sophists offered an answer.

Since searching for truth or goodness would be pointless, the sophists adopted a practical approach. They marketed their ideas to make money and offered, in return, the promise of success. Some of the sophists did accept that there were objective aspects of reality, such as those dealing with physics or biology. They all saw matters of value (such as ethics, politics, and economics) as relative or subjective.

Being practical, they did recognize that the masses tended to profess belief in moral and religious values.  They were also aware that violating these norms could prove problematic when seeking success. Some taught their students to act in accord with the professed values of society. Others, as exemplified by Glaucon’s argument in the Ring of Gyges story of the Republic, taught their students to operate under the mask of morality and social values while achieving success by any means necessary.

Relativism still allows for there to be lies of a certain sort. For those who accept objective truth, a lie is an intentional untruth, usually told with malicious intent. For the relativist, a lie would be intentionally making a claim that is false relative to the group in question, usually with malicious intent. Going back to Trump, for his true believers his’s claims are true because they accept them. The claims that Trump is lying would be lies to them, because they believe that claim is untrue and that Trump doubters are acting with malign intent. The reverse holds for the Trump doubters. They have their truth, and the claims of the Trump believers are lies. This approach has been broadly embraced, with many pundits and politicians claiming that what they disagree with is thus a lie.

Relativism robs the accusation of lying of its sting, at least for those who understand the implications of relativism. On this view a liar is not someone who is intentionally making false claims. A liar is someone you disagree with. This does not mean that relativism is false, it just means that accusations of untruth become rhetorical tools and emotional expressions without any truth behind them. But they serve well as a tool to sway the masses, as Trump keeps showing. He simply accuses those who disagree with him of being liars and many believe him. Or at least purport to do so.  

I have no idea whether Trump has a theory of truth, but his approach remains consistent with sophism. It would also explain why Trump does not bother with research or evidence. These assume there is a truth that can be found and supported. But if there is no objective truth and only success matters, then there is no reason not to say anything that leads to success.

There are, of course, some classic problems for relativism and sophism. Through Socrates, Plato waged a systematic war on relativism and sophism and some exclellent criticisms can be found in his works.

 One concise way to refute relativism is to point out that relativism requires a group to define the truth. But there is no way principled way to keep the definition of what counts as a group of believers from sliding to there being a “group” of one, which is subjectivism. The problem with subjectivism is that if it is claimed that truth is subjective, then there is no truth at all, and we end up with nihilism. An impact of nihilism is the sophists’ claim that success matters is not true. This is not because it is false, it is because there is no truth. Another classic counter is that relativism about truth seems self-refuting: it being true requires that it be false. This argument seems rather too easy and clever by far, but it does make an interesting point for consideration.

In closing, it is fascinating that Hughes so openly presented her relativism (and sophism). Most classic sophists advocated, as noted above, operating under a mask of accepting conventional moral values. But we have seen a new approach to sophism: one that is trying to shift the values of society to openly accepting relativism and embracing sophism. While potentially risky, this could yield considerable political advantages and sophism might claim another triumph in 2024.