Autorità in declino?

Abstract

The rise of post-truth seems to indicate that the confusion between knowledge and opinion has reached a point of no return, making scientific expertise indistinguishable from any kind of assertion. However, the weakening of the epistemic authority of science in the public sphere does not correspond to a weakening of its effectiveness. To support this claim, which eludes or is downplayed by the fast-growing literature on the crisis of expertise, the paper argues that: a) the intermingling of episteme and doxa is constitutive of scientific expertise; b) its performativity depends on the power with which a scientific circle is provided, the politicization of expert opinion and the type of truth claims of the latter; c) the debate over the declining authority of science, allegedly due to deconstructive accounts of its work, downplays the relevance of a new, non-dualist way of conceiving the relationship between knowledge and the world, whereby the latter gives itself in multiple versions, suited to the cognitive act and purpose. This increases to unprecedented levels the performativity of expertise. Post-truth is hardly the opposite of evidence-based decision-making, but its continuation as a governmental strategy by way of reversed means.