There is among some philosophers who work in the field of epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge, belief and truth) a theory that a statement or proposition is true if it coheres or harmonizes or fits with other beliefs we hold to be true. On this view, a claim that doesn't fit with our other beliefs is at best dubious.
An example would be a Darwinian confronted with the claim that the earth is only a hundred thousand years old. This assertion is so wildly out of synch with everything else the Darwinian believes that it would be rejected out of hand.
Coherence works the other way, too. A claim that a fossil had been discovered that shows an evolutionary link between, say, whales and land mammals would, at a minimum, have Darwinians hoping that the claim was true because it fits exactly with everything else they believe and lends support to their other beliefs.
I use evolution as an example but the post is not about that. It's about something quite different. It's about why the media and others, especially on the left, but not exclusively so, were so quick to believe Jussie Smollett.
It seems that every time a story that involves racist violence hits the news, social media explodes with condemnation and outrage, especially when the victims are alleged to be minorities, before any of the facts float to the surface.
Then, almost invariably, when the facts come out the story turns out to be a concoction or a fraud and those who rushed to judgment sheepishly slink back into egg-faced silence. Until, that is, the next such shocking account is announced, and then they're right back at it, heaping outrage and imprecations on the alleged perpetrators until the evidence shows once again that the charges are fraudulent.
They never seem to learn. Either that or they operate on the principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and assume that, like someone playing the roulette wheel, one of these times the ball just has to land on the right number.
Judgmental people simply can't help themselves. Like secular Puritans they feel a duty to display their own moral righteousness by furiously lashing out against any and all transgressors, real or imagined, but this only partially explains their lack of caution. The deeper question is why they're so prone to believe these fabrications in the first place, and this is where the coherence theory comes in.
From the Duke Lacrosse assault case to the University of Virginia rape case through a dozen or so other examples all the way up to the recent Covington Catholic boys and now the Jussie Smollett imbroglio, the attestations of racism, sexual assault, bigotry and violence have been shown so frequently to be empty and libelous that one wonders why the media talking heads and opinionators continue to fall for them.
Why don't they learn from their previous mistakes? Why don't they exercise prudence and wait for the evidence to come in? I think it's largely because these allegations cohere so well with their assumption of what America is like that their confirmation bias simply overrides their prudential judgment.
In the Smollett case I suspect that some people so despise Donald Trump and those who support him that not only were they prepared to believe the worst about those they hate, they actually hoped that the worst was true. Smollett's account of racist white men putting a noose around his neck, shouting anti-gay and racist slurs, dousing him with bleach and declaring him to be unwelcome in MAGA country comported so closely with the stereotype of Trump and his voters to which some in the media and on social media cling that Smollett's claims just had to be true.
For many, the actual facts don't matter. We live in any case in a post-fact culture where all that matters is one's personal feelings, and any testimony, no matter how bizarre, is credible if it coheres with and confirms our worst prejudices.
We need to be better than this.
