Finding facts in a world filled with disinformation.

Part of the CHA's Difficult Dialogues: Community Conversations series and Colorado Chautauqua's Voices at Chautauqua series.

What have facts become in our current information-rich environment?

This event is a community conversation to look at how we attempt to gain knowledge and what are the social and environmental features that pose a challenge to do this. We want to look at how we come to understand information as fact.

Moderators

Tyler Porter is a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He studies Hostile Epistemology, which examines how social and environmental factors make it hard for people to gain knowledge. Social factors could include people pretending to be experts or social networks passing around false information. Environmental factors could include false information on the internet or evidence that is difficult to find. Tyler’s work has been published in well-known philosophy journals such as Erkenntnis and Episteme, and he has presented at major conferences such as the American Philosophical Association, World Congress of Philosophy, and the European Congress of Analytic Philosophy. He teaches with the intent of using philosophy to help people better navigate problems surrounding misinformation, disinformation, manipulative people, conspiracy theories, and more.

Ted Shear (PhD, University of California, Davis) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. His primary research focus is on questions about rational belief with a particular emphasis on belief revision. He is especially interested in the role that our beliefs play in theories of rational choice. While orthodox theories of the rationality presuppose strong, unrealistic idealizations, his work aims to explore how they can adapted to provide useful guidance for real-world agents like us. He regularly teaches courses in Critical Thinking and Symbolic Logic, but has also recently enjoyed teaching Philosophy & Sport. Outside of his academic interests, he spends his time rock climbing, skateboarding, and playing with his cats.