Fake news, conceptual engineering, and linguistic resistance: reply to Pepp, Michaelson and Sterken, and Brown

Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (4):488-516 (2022)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT In Habgood-Coote : 1033–1065) I argued that we should abandon ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’, on the grounds that these terms do not have stable public meanings, are unnecessary, and function as vehicles for propaganda. Jessica Pepp, Eliot Michaelson, and Rachel Sterken and Étienne Brown : 144–154) have raised worries about my case for abandonment, recommending that we continue using ‘fake news’. In this paper, I respond to these worries. I distinguish more clearly between theoretical and political reasons for abandoning a term, assemble more evidence that ‘fake news’ is a nonsense term, and respond to the worries raised by Pepp, Michaelson and Sterken, and Brown. I close by considering the prospects for anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian conceptual engineering.

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Joshua Habgood-Coote
University of Leeds

Citations of this work

Fake News: The Case for a Purely Consumer-Oriented Explication.Thomas Grundmann - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (10):1758-1772.
Defining Fake News.Glenn Https://Orcidorg Anderau - 2021 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 35 (3):197-215.
The Concept of Fake News.Romy Jaster & David Lanius - 2025 - In Alex Wiegmann, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Lying. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 31–54.
Conceptual Engineering and the Dynamics of Linguistic Intervention.Adam F. Gibbons - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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Two Dogmas of Empiricism.Willard V. O. Quine - 1951 - Philosophical Review 60 (1):20–43.
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.Kate Manne - 2017 - Oxford University Press.
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability.Elizabeth Barnes - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

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