Conference session

How do we restore confidence in expertise without retreating to dogmatism—and how do we remain open to critique without dissolving into relativism? This session addresses the post-truth condition not as a political phenomenon but as a structural one: the result of epistemological flattening, wherein complex, multi-layered understanding is reduced to simple binaries of true/false, rational/emotional, expert/opinion. Drawing from doctoral research at the intersection of philosophy, education, and non-Aristotelian systems, the presenter introduces two trans-disciplinary practices—philosophical mindfulness (grounded in both Heideggerian thought and Eastern wisdom cultivation traditions) and multi-valued discernment—that offer humanities scholars, educators, policy researchers, and practitioners concrete tools for navigating complexity without sacrificing rigour. Participants will leave with a working understanding of truth paradigms as envelopmental structures through which competing knowledge claims can be evaluated by depth rather than positional opposition alone. Participants will also leave with a renewed sense of why the humanities—precisely at the edge of legitimacy—remains irreplaceable in rebuilding trust, navigating mis/disinformation, and strengthening democratic discourse in an age of algorithmic curation and polarisation. With particular relevance to Canada’s current moment of institutional questioning, the framework extends beyond the academy wherever the legitimacy of expertise is being actively rebuilt and the complexity of human understanding demands more than binary thinking.