50 Some Advice
Perhaps the most important advice one can give regarding the problem of what one should trust when trying to gain knowledge through the internet comes from a school of philosophy known as hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. Particularly, it is the study of how to interpret texts whether those texts are books or websites. Authors have always been tricky and strategic in providing information. Sometimes they are trying to advance one special cause, and sometimes they are trying to appear as advancing one cause while really—“between the lines”—advancing some other cause. Readers have to be very critical and self-reflective when they read if they are to grasp what is really being said in a text.
The French philosopher of hermeneutics, Paul Ricœur (1913-2005), advocated a hermeneutics of suspicion especially when reading the tricky texts of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. These authors were very conscious of the effects words can have and often, Ricœur argued, seemed to say one thing while really meaning something else. They deliberately set out puzzles and paradoxes in order to prompt readers to think for themselves and reach some further conclusion that was not stated explicitly in the texts themselves. But setting aside the challenges of reading such difficult philosophical authors, for our purposes we might consider adopting a hermeneutics of suspicion toward our readings of online texts.
In adopting a hermeneutics of suspicion, we must first recognize that in any exchange of information, the provider of the information is attempting to cause the receiver to adopt some belief. If we are suspicious, we will begin to ask who is getting us to believe what and for what purpose:
Who? Who is providing this information? Are they in a position to have this information? Are they relying on other sources? How reliable are those sources?
What? What is this provider trying to get me to believe? Is that claim, given my prior experience, likely to be true? What sort of initial probability would I put on that claim, before reading the account of this provider, and to what extent should this new information change that probability?
For what purpose? Why would this provider want me to gain this belief? Is it this provider’s “job” to simply communicate truths — or are they working for some other cause?
The hermeneutics of suspicion asks us to adopt the sort of attitude toward information that one might adopt in buying a used car from a stranger. We will want to gauge the character of this stranger, what they are selling us, and for what purpose.
Very often, of course, a stranger is selling us a used car that has no hidden flaws, merely because they no longer need the car and they would like a fair amount of money for it. That’s a good and very common scenario. Similarly, in many instances, the providers of information on the internet are simply trying to provide accurate information based on reliable sources so that readers gain ac