Harvard Kennedy School of Government
DPI-242
Ignorance, Lies, Hogwash and Humbug:
On Truth and Knowledge in Democracies
Spring, 2012
(updated January 26, 2012)
Instructor: Christopher Robichaud, Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy
Logistics
Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:40-4pm, RG-20
Office Hours: Wednesdays 3-4 and by appointment
Office: Littauer 214
Email: christopher_robichaud@harvard.edu
Phone: (617) 384-8120
Overview
We demand that our politicians tell us the truth and that our government be transparent. We expect policymakers to be knowledgeable and the public to be educated. We anticipate disagreements
and depend on experts to inform our decisions. But are these demands, expectations, anticipations
and dependencies reasonable? What is the value of truth and knowledge in democracies?
This course will subject various problems and policies in the political arena to rigorous philosophical scrutiny, with the goal of discovering the deeper principles and complications underlying them.
Some questions we will explore are i) what is the moral standing of various “pathologies” of public
speech, such as lying, truthiness, spin, and humbug; ii) does free speech in the public sphere promote the acquisition of the truth; iii) what intellectual and moral duties do we have when engaging
in public disagreement; iv) what is a transparent government, and do we have a right to it; v) what
role should expert testimony, especially testimony from the hard and soft sciences, play when informing policy decisions; vi) what are the differences between group knowledge and individual
knowledge, and what is the importance of the difference for policymaking; vii) what is willful ignorance, especially as it relates to racism and sexism, and what is the remedy?
Course Requirements
The assumption of this course is that policymakers will benefit greatly from taking a step back from
their activities in the public arena to consider the foundational issues surrounding the roles that
truth and knowledge play in properly functioning democracies. But benefit how? Partly by acquiring advanced critical thinking skills, skills aimed at deliberating clearly and carefully about abstract
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but nevertheless crucially important matters of public policy, and partly by using the insights gained
from doing this to inform practical political concerns and guide future policy decisions.
As such, students are expected to come to each lecture prepared to discuss the readings for that
day. These readings will often be on foundational matters, but they will also often be linked to public policy cases. Formal requirements are as follows:
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Participation Participating in lecture on a regular basis will count towards 25% of the final grade. Quality of contributions as well as quantity will matter. Participation may include writing some brief one-to-two page responses to some of the readings, and it may include giving a brief presentation of some of the material for one of the classes.
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Paper A twenty page paper will count toward 75% of the final grade. There will be a first
draft of the paper that will be graded and commented upon, and then a final draft that will
be graded and commented upon. The total paper grade will be some combination of these
two grades. Extensive guidance on writing these papers will be provided.
Required Readings
The following books, in addition to a course packet, will be required for this course:
Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Why Leaders Lie, by John J. Mearsheimer
Fool Me Twice, by Shawn Lawrence Otto
The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser
The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, by Steven D. Smith
Going to Extremes, by Cass R. Sunstein
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
Too Big to Know, by David Weinberger
Schedule of Topics and Readings
Truth, Knowledge and Lying: Some Philosophical Preliminaries
Plato, The Apology
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter 2
http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html
Immanuel Kant, selections from Groundwork and Metaphysics of Morals
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16prm/
Augustine, On Lying
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1312.htm
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Virtues and Vices in Thinking
Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman)
Mistakes Were Made (Tavris and Aronson)
Knowledge in the Age of the Internet
Too Big to Know (Weinberger)
The Filter Bubble (Pariser)
Free Speech and Its Problems
Alvin Goldman, “Speech Regulation and the Marketplace of Ideas” in Knowledge in a Social World
Bernard Williams, “Truthfulness, Liberalism, Critique” in Truth and Truthfulness
Jason Stanley, “The Ways of Silencing” in NYT, June 25, 2011
Rae Langton, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” and “Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language
Game” (with Caroline West) in Sexual Solipsism
Truthiness, Humbug, Rumor, Spin, and Lying
Hannah Arendt, “Truth in Politics” and “Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers” in
The Portable Hannah Arendt
Martin Jay, “On Lying in Politics” in The Virtues of Mendacity
C.A.J. Coady, “Pathologies of Testimony” in The Epistemology of Testimony
Bernard Williams, “Sincerity: Lying and Other Styles of Deceit” in Truth and Truthfulness
Harry Frankfurt, “On Bullshit” in The Importance of What We Care About
Why Leaders Lie (Mearsheimer)
Expert Testimony and Policy Decisions
Jennifer Lackey, "Testimony: Acquiring Knowledge from Others" in Social Epistemology
Sanford C. Goldberg , "If that Were True I Would Have Heard It By Now" Chapter 6 of Relying on
Others
Alvin Goldman, "Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?" in Social Epistemology
Miranda Fricker, “Testimonial Injustice” and “Prejudice in the Credibility Economy,” Chapters 1
and 2 of Epistemic Injustice
Policy and the Sciences
Michael Strevens, “Reconsidering Authority: Scientific Expertise, Bounded Rationality, and Epistemic Backtracking” in Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 3
Alexander Rosenberg, “If Economics Isn’t Science, What Is It?” in Readings in the Philosophy of Social
Science
Fool Me Twice (Otto)
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Group Knowledge and Its Risks
Christian List, "Group Knowledge and Group Rationality" in Social Epistemology
Philip Pettit, "Groups with Minds of Their Own" in Social Epistemology
Going to Extremes (Sunstein)
Public Debate and Disagreement
John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” in Collected Papers
Jeffrey Stout, “Religious Reasons in Political Argument” in Democracy and Tradition
Jennifer Lackey, “What Should We Do When We Disagree?” in Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 3.
Stanley Fish, “Mutual Respect as a Device of Exclusion” in Deliberative Politics
David Christensen, “Disagreement as Evidence: The Epistemology of Controversy” in Philosophy
Compass 4
The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Smith)
Willful Ignorance
Linda May Alcoff, “Epistemologies of Ignorance: Three Types”, in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
Alison Bailey, “Strategic Ignorance” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
Lorraine Code, “The Power of Ignorance” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
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