Fake Nous: Knowing What We Don’t Know

It’s arguably getting harder and harder to know what’s true.  Fake news is in the news, but what if fake nous—a problem with mind, rationality, and epistemology themselves—is the problem?  Surely, knowing what we don’t know becomes the first step toward a corrective.  Lorraine Code (York University), the most important voice in contemporary feminist epistemology, investigates “manufactured uncertainty” and how male-oriented ways of knowing have obscured truth rather than uncovered it.  Angie Blumberg (DHC Visiting Fellow) looks at fake records in history, thus challenging our understanding of our past as well as our present.  And Andrew Shtulman (Occidental College) explains why common sense often leads us to false scientific conclusions about the world.  Nothing is necessarily what it seems as the DHC investigates what it means to know truth and to know truly!