Contributions of Peircean philosophy to contemporary debates on disinformation

Resumen

This text aims to theoretically explore how Peirce’s philosophy can serve as a basis for conceptualizing and explaining everyday practices understood as disinformation. We begin with a review of the Brazilian literature on the contributions of Peircean philosophy to the phenomenon of disinformation. We then situate our position as inspired by the normative theoretical proposal of Peircean semiotics. However, we argue that addressing disinformation events requires the addition of descriptive elements, which were not at the center of interest of Peircean philosophy. In light of this, we will examine two philosophical aspects that are important to a Peircean approach to disinformation: (1) the semiotic theory of information, seen as part of Peirce's normative account on the ideal development of semiosis; and (2) the fixation of beliefs, where we focus on the three non-scientific ways of settling a doubt and a belief. We argue that what is understood as disinformation in the current digital culture is a set of practices that, in general terms, deviate from the demands of systematic critical inquiry and function as deviations in the normal course of semiosis.