Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition” (Part 7 of 26)

0061 Chapter four introduces two apparently successful attempts to construct value2b in the post-truth condition.  Value2band credentials2b are not identical.  But, they do not contradict one another.  They both fit into the slot for the situation-level actuality.

The two successful attempts are capitalism and scientism.

0062 I start with capitalism.  Capitalism substitutes the institution of the market3b for the situation-level forum for discourse3b.  Shall I say that money talks?  What is money saying?  It is formalizing knowledge as price1b.

Here is a picture of the resulting interscope.

0063 Of course, the experts3b are all about the market, but certain other elements stand out.

Yes, some elements stand out in comparison to other elements.

In the following figure, I put boxes around the most illuminating elements.

I call the result, “the questionable box of capitalism”.

0064 For Americans, the questionable box of capitalism has been a field of intense investigation by academics promoting both capitalism (as a materialist ideology that opposes communism) and the conceptual structure of social construction.

Why “social construction”?

I ask, “What creates value2b?  How can the term, ‘value’2b, occupy the slot for actuality2 on the level that corresponds to actualityb, when value2b seems to be anything but actual?”

Maybe, I can look at the four corners of the box.

The four elements that characterize the questionable box are the capitalist one3c, opportunity1c, intellect3a and will1a.

Maybe, they create value2b.

0065 But, does the box contain the actualities of success2c and diverse facts and claims2a that virtually contextualizes and virtually underlies value2b?

What a questionable box!

When I look into the box, I see that the normal context of the market3b brings the actuality of value2b into relation with the potential of price1b.

0066 According to Fuller, when Count Saint-Simon (1760-1825 AD) challenges the game of the capitalist one by promoting what he calls “socialism”.  He tries to re-enact Plato’s truth-regime as an alternative to the then-current unregulated market in capitalist sophistry.

Yes, the capitalists, like the sophists, promote minimal, but clear constraints.  Each individual may promote his or her own rightfulness, as long as others are not directly harmed and the social order is not disturbed.

No, the socialists, like the Platonists, proclaim the righteousness of order in conjunction with… you know… um… other manifestations of righteousness.  If I declare that these other manifestations of righteousness are “true”, then I can see why Fuller welcomes the post-“truth” condition.

0067 Here is the even more questionable box of socialism.

Order3b, value2b and righteousness1b govern the will1a and the intellect3a.  They define opportunity1c in the regime of the socialist one3c.