Igor Sacramento 244 values of scientific knowledge2. But these phenomena do not im- ply each other, as they do not form a cohesive whole that makes us believe that we have entered a new era. However, these phenomena do not imply each other neither form a cohesive set that makes us believe we definitely entered a new era. First, it was argued that post-truth refers to the already-known situation created by the invasion of internet tech- nologies in the production and reception of information and its effects on public space. Although information must be accessible to everyone everywhere, it becomes so abundant that it satu- rates the media space and deregulates it. While, with old me- dia, it was possible to refer to relatively reliable sources, or at least verify that they were, the abundance of sources has cre- ated widespread distrust, leading information consumers to turn away from them. Instead, we more often see online social 2 Going back - at least - to Plato, there is a classic distinction between doxa and episteme. Doxa is an ancient Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion. Plato used the concept of Doxa to criticize Athenian democracy, believing that popular belief and opinion were manipulated easily. For Plato, doxa and episteme were in opposition, and the first posed a threat to the purity of true knowledge. Aristotle had a different view and believed that doxa was a moment on the way to knowledge and coined the term endoxa to denote knowledge that has stood the test of time and been subject to criticism through arguments. They were the commonly held beliefs accepted by the sages and the most ancient and influential rhetoricians. The Greeks also used another term for knowledge, which referred to a particular type of personal knowledge. It was gnosis; based on knowledge of personal experience. Again, it relates to the epistemology of point of view, as well as the much-abused idea in contemporary debates around the “lived” experience. The difference between doxa and episteme is central to epistemology. In general, it was about establishing the difference between believing in something and knowing something. Modern science has formalized this distinction and elaborated a set of procedures that allow it to exist in vary- ing degrees of confidence, precision, and certainty. In this sense, science can be understood as being a process that specifies different levels of uncertainty without ever reaching the position of certainty. However, there is a variable and significant set of assumptions and consensus, foundations through which science and technology work. In the post-truth era, on the other hand, doxa and gnosis seem to have displaced episteme - at least in the public domain - as the dominant form of knowledge. This idea of doxa as the dominant set of beliefs has, of course, Pierre Bourdieu (2009) as its principal theorist. For him, doxa is a “practical faith,” a first experience of the social. It is part of the assump- tions of inclusion in a determined field. Practical faith, transversal to the idea of pragmatic faith defended by Immanuel Kant in Critique of Pure Reason, in which adherence occurs through the necessity of action, is the right that social fields grant to themselves to exclude those who do not adhere to the game (BOURDIEU, 1980). Doxa is common sense, what all agents in a given social field agree on, and it encompasses everything admitted as “just the way it is.”
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