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the demands he makes on his audience, as well as the risks he takes as a commentator all work to qualify his speech as “fearless.” His satire is aimed at media as well as viewers, who are complicit in the poor quality of political dialogue in America. This is the kind of critique that makes it nearly impossible to view “actual” news media in the same way ever again. In this respect Colbert’s style of political satire has the function of critique. “The WØRD” segment makes this clear: Colbert exposes the collusion between media practitioners and politicians who frame news and information in ways that subverts access to truth in politics. Colbert forcefully exposes viewers’ and voters’ responsibility to critically assess the quality, sources, and motivations of media practitioners and politicians.

And that’s “The WØRD.”

9

Philosophy in the Age of Truthiness

DAVID DETMER

We live in an age of advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. It seems that the cynical manipulation of belief is increasingly replacing rational fact-and-evidence-based discussion as the dominant form of discourse in all areas of public life. The result is not pretty. The President of the United States makes false claims about weapons of mass destruction; the mainstream media play along and decline to challenge him; the country wages war as a result; and the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly successfully masquerade as serious political analysts despite their utter contempt for factual accuracy and total disregard for even the most minimal standards of logical cogency, intellectual honesty, and simple fairness.

One of Stephen Colbert’s greatest achievements is to have satirized this phenomenon brilliantly by coining the term “truthiness.” Whereas a claim is “true,” in the old-fashioned sense, only if it accurately states the way things actually are (as determined by a careful and scrupulous examination of the relevant evidence), truthiness has nothing to do with facts, evidence, reason, logic, or correspondence with the way things really are. Rather, truthiness has to do with what is “felt in the gut.” If you believe something strongly enough, even if that belief is merely based on wishful thinking, then it is true (or, rather, “truthy”). The old-fashioned belief in objective truth is rejected as oppressive and bullying. As Colbert puts it, “Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say that he didn’t, that’s my right” (The Colbert Report, July 31st, 2006).

In a rare, out-of-character interview, Colbert has made it clear (perhaps for the benefit of those who don’t quite “get” satire), that he deplores truthiness, indeed that he thinks that “truthiness is tearing apart our country.”128 Philosophers, who generally see themselves as champions of logic and reason, should applaud. And they certainly must see themselves as exempt from Colbert’s critique.

But are they? Many philosophers rely rather heavily on “intuition.” That is, they claim that some truths are self-evident, and can be known simply on the basis of direct inspection of them, without the intermediary of evidence or reasons. For example, in ethics, theories are often “tested” by seeing how well they conform to what we allegedly know intuitively to be true (for example, that torturing young children for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong). Is this reliance on “intuition” really any different from what Colbert so deftly skewers as “truthiness”?

The Age of Truthiness: How Did We Get Here?

Before turning to that, however, let’s consider a bit of history. The twentieth century brought two innovations that have helped to usher in the age of truthiness: (1) the application of scientific methods to the practice of manipulating opinions and attitudes (leading to more effective techniques in advertising, public relations, marketing, and political propaganda) and (2) the development of electronic media, such as radio, television, and the internet (facilitating the rapid and prolific distribution of the