Philosophy

"Tell a lie, speak it loudly, repeat it often, and the majority of people will believe it." ~ Adolf Hitler Sinister as this quote appears, deliberate lying is part of propaganda and advertisement all around. And, while people recognize much of it as false (for instance, an ad that shows women swarming on a man using a particular body spray), it is held that somehow the elevated picture one paints will have a psychologically deterministic noetic effect. But, are truth and determinism compatible? That is a vital question the answer to which will decide two things: 1. Whether humans have epistemic freedom; that is the choice to know. 2. Whether knowledge entails moral responsibility. While some sort of psychological determinism exists, as evident from experiments in group conformity, Milgram's authority experiments, and Piaget's experiments on cognitive ability with children, the determinism of psychology argues in support of uniformity of experience and not diversities