New issue of Degrés: revue de synthèse à orientation sémiologique

“Modaliser la verité” (Modalities of truth)

Abstract :

In La guerre du faux (The War of the fake), Umberto Eco defines truth as an “effect” dissociated from the immediate relationship with the reality of facts.

Alongside of a criteriology of conformity, the author thus designates truth as a pattern of “constructs”. Quite logically, Umberto Eco is calling for a “semiotic guerrilla war” enabling the scientist to re-establish a critical dimension. Today, more than ever, Eco deserves to be heard. Faced with In the face of the prevailing ideology of make-believe, at a time when falsifiability is being undermined, we need
critical tools.

In a world of hypercommunication, where the very faces and words can no longer be guaranteed multiple modalities of truth have to be taken into account: the veridiction, , the intention to tell the truth, the existential circumstances of the enunciation of the truth, the plausible (the list is not exhaustive). More and more we must consider a discourse on the ‘status’ of truth, as determined by the enunciators and their world of reference.