Truth / Post-Truth: Introduction

Guide Expert: Dr. Francis Halsall

This guide was made in collaboration with Dr. Francis Halsall, who many of you are familiar with as a lecturer in Critical Cultures and director of the masters Art in the Contemporary World. Dr. Halsall specialises in Systems Theory, Philosophical Aesthetics and the history theory and practices of contemporary art. Dr. Halsall introduces hundreds of NCAD students every year to complex philosophical conceptS, so we are delighted to present this guide on Truth / Post-Truth made with Halsall's much needed expertise.

You can find Dr. Halsall's books in the library collection:

Halsall, F. (2023) Contemporary art, systems, and the aesthetics of dispersion. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Halsall, F. (2008) Systems of art : art, history and systems theory. Bern: Peter Lang.

Introduction: Truth / Post-Truth

We are delighted to begin this libguide with an introduction from Dr. Francis Halsall:

"In the face of unprecedented existential threats to humanity from climate change, technology and each other, facts matter now more than ever. And yet, with contested and often contradictory claims distributed widely across different media and platforms (such as social media) it can often feel like the truth about things is hard to grasp and even harder to agree on. In the 1980s this became known as the Postmodern Condition in which it seemed that facts were revealed as mere positions or relative perspectives on the world. In contemporary times this is the world of ‘Alternative Facts.’ 

In part the issue involves discerning the nature of reality. Is reality best understood as an objective world of immutable facts which we should all agree on?  Or is the world only known through being mediated through human observation and human values and, hence, from different perspectives? What’s at stake is how we might learn to navigate public spheres where individual, shared and conflicting positions, opinions and values meet. 

For the contemporary German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas ‘truth’ is only one of three ways in which validity operates within society. The other two are rightness and authenticity. Validity claims, he argues, are assertions in which the conditions for the validity of the utterance have been met. But each of the three operate in a different domain. First, science, has claim on ‘truth’ through making assertions supported by empirical observation and logical inference. Second, ethics and law, make claims on the ‘rightness’ of assertions through norms and collectively agreed values. Third in the domain of aesthetics, such as art practices, the expressions might be judged on their ‘authenticity,’ beauty or aesthetic elements. The judgements that an action is wrong or that a painting is beautiful are different to one that recognises a scientific principle to be true.

Habermas’ point is that whilst each of the three ways in which validity is understood may be in dialogue with each other they do not affect how the claims are understood. For example, it is true that the earth orbits the sun regardless of whether we think this is ethically correct or even beautiful. Or, even if there might be a preference for scientific explanations to be either in line with religious beliefs or elegant and pleasing there is no way to prove that it is true that this must be the case. 

From the perspective that there are three ways in which validity operates problems arise when the areas of validity encroach on one another. For example, the observation that we live in a heliocentric solar system made by astronomers such as Copernicus, Galileo and others (from the 16^th Century onwards) was at odds with the Roman Catholic church who claimed in 1616 that Copernicus was wrong and the earth was at the centre of the cosmos and the church was the source of truth. In other words, just because I’d like some inconvenient truth not to be the case or an opinion to be right because I like it doesn’t make it so. 

The implications of all of this become particularly relevant in relation to social relations and politics. When political discourse becomes overwhelmed by aesthetic spectacle or the values of particular groups then truth and facts can be the casualties and with their loss the erosion of common ground rooted in reality shared between all members of a society. As Walter Benjamin warned, writing as a German Jew in the face of Nazism, in his famous ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ essay, ‘The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.’

What can be done in the face of these contemporary conditions, in which opinions threaten to outweigh facts, remains an open question. What can or should artists do in the face of this predicament without producing mere propaganda or reducing their actions to entertainment? Can they offer the promise and care of something shared between peoples that isn’t ‘true’ but no less important as a result?"

- Dr. Francis Halsall, 2025

Still from John Carpenter's film 'They Live' (1988) (Image source) 

Find the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy definition of 'Truth' by clicking on the image below: