Galen on Fake News
Posted by Ken Parry
Galen (second century CE) On ‘Fake News’.
“It has indeed happened that some of my friends, hearing from someone else that such-and such a person had returned from travel abroad, have actually announced his arrival to us – and then after been refuted as liars. When I criticized such behaviour, they do not resolve to be surer of their ground next time; far from it. They actually get annoyed with me, saying that they are not responsible for the false information; they believed so-and-so’s account, and the error was his alone. They refuse to accept the blame for attaching themselves to every rash assent. If they had framed their statement as I do habitually, and said that so-and-so had told them such-and-such about such-and-such a person, they would not have been guilty of telling a lie. As things stood, their mistake in trusting the giver of that information led to them displaying the mendacity, not only of that person but simultaneously also of themselves – whereas it was perfectly possible for them to say that they had heard from someone that that person had arrived back from abroad, rather than themselves making a declaration on the matter. When, then, people do not refrain from rash assents to facts of this order, which refute them as liars a short time later, what must one think will happen to them in cases where the facts are non-evident, and are therefore more difficult to grasp?”
From: The Diagnosis and Treatment of the Affections and Errors Peculiar to Each Person’s Soul, trans. P. N. Singer, in Galen: Psychological Writings, ed. P. N. Singer (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 310.
Galen (second century CE) On ‘Fake News’.
“It has indeed happened that some of my friends, hearing from someone else that such-and such a person had returned from travel abroad, have actually announced his arrival to us – and then after been refuted as liars. When I criticized such behaviour, they do not resolve to be surer of their ground next time; far from it. They actually get annoyed with me, saying that they are not responsible for the false information; they believed so-and-so’s account, and the error was his alone. They refuse to accept the blame for attaching themselves to every rash assent. If they had framed their statement as I do habitually, and said that so-and-so had told them such-and-such about such-and-such a person, they would not have been guilty of telling a lie. As things stood, their mistake in trusting the giver of that information led to them displaying the mendacity, not only of that person but simultaneously also of themselves – whereas it was perfectly possible for them to say that they had heard from someone that that person had arrived back from abroad, rather than themselves making a declaration on the matter. When, then, people do not refrain from rash assents to facts of this order, which refute them as liars a short time later, what must one think will happen to them in cases where the facts are non-evident, and are therefore more difficult to grasp?”
From: The Diagnosis and Treatment of the Affections and Errors Peculiar to Each Person’s Soul, trans. P. N. Singer, in Galen: Psychological Writings, ed. P. N. Singer (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 310.
Comments
Post a Comment