I've been playing around with the ideas of different kinds of truths empirical scientific truths religious truths that are kind of more mythological rather than reality based and maybe there's political truths although I'm conflicted about this right. If you have a young earth creationist that says the earth is 10,000 years old and geologist says it's four and a half billion years old you don't add them up and divide by two to get the answer right but maybe if it's like what's the right tax percentage for people that make a hundred thousand dollars or more pick Biden's number. To what extent do we have a moral obligation to help people that are down and out? We have to
The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes.
Shermer and Redmond discuss: why we have political duopoly (Duverger’s law) • parties vs. policies • Are we living in a post-truth, fake-news, alternative facts world? • How do we know political polarization is worse now than in the past? • acquiring, perceiving, and evaluating political information • evaluating: false political information, political numbers and arguments, claims of rigged election • whataboutism • cognitive responsibilities of citizenship • cognitive biases • political polarization • myside bias • numeracy vs. innumeracy • solutions to the polarization problem.
Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics. He is a professor at Daemen University where he teaches a political science and history course for education students.