Fact-Checking and Disinformation
This talk puts forth a novel account of the nature of disinformation that challenges several widely spread theoretical assumptions, such as that disinformation is a species of information, a species of misinformation, essentially false or misleading, essentially intended/aimed/having the function of generating false beliefs in/misleading hearers. The paper defends a view of disinformation as ignorance generating content. The account, if correct, carries high stakes upshots, both theoretically and practically: disinformation tracking will need to go well beyond mere fact-checking.
Biography:
Mona Simion is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. She has published widely in epistemology, philosophy of language, and moral and political philosophy. She is the author of ‘Shifty Speech and Independent Thought’ (Oxford University Press, 2021), ‘Sharing Knowledge’ (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and ‘Resistance to Evidence’ (Cambridge University Press, 2023). She runs several major research projects in social epistemology, funded by e.g. the European Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. She has received several prestigious international awards and fellowships, including the Young Epistemologist Prize (2021) and the Mind Fellowship (2018). She is managing editor at Ergo and associate editor at Philosophical Studies. She sits on the Executive Board of the Aristotelian Society, the Management Board of the British Society for Theory of Knowledge, and the Advisory Board of the Institute of Philosophy, London. She also sits on the Board of the Young Academy of Europe and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland.