The ‘Logic’ of Fake News

Philip Mirowski

6-7.30pm, 27th October 2017

PSH LG01, Goldsmiths

It is amazing the extent to which the very phenomenon of ‘fake news’ has been garbled and rubbished, to the extent it means nothing in particular. One might almost regard this as another case of agnotology. In this lecture, Philip Mirowski will insist that the terminology should only be used in a relatively narrow set of cases; and further, that it is a fairly direct expression of some tenets of neoliberal epistemology. While the neoliberal thought collective did not ‘invent’ fake news, they certainly helped shape its current configuration.

Philip Mirowski is Carl Koch Chair of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, and Fellow of the Reilly Center, University of Notre Dame. He is author of, among others, Machine Dreams (2002), The Effortless Economy of Science? (2004), More Heat than Light (1989), Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013), and ScienceMart: privatizing American science (2011). His latest book is The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics with Edward M. Nik-Khah.

This event is open to all and no registration is necessary. To find Goldsmiths, click here.

You can now listen to a podcast of this lecture at the link below: