POST-TRUTH AS A SOCIAL SYMPTOM AND INSTRUMENT FOR IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

The article investigates specific characteristics of the post-truth discourse, which in inherent modern social communication. Post-truth is considered as a cognitive distortion rooted in the structure of bourgeois social identity, characterizing the emotivist personality type and the socio-manipulative type of relations. The position is substantiated according to which the role of the ontological basis of the post-truth discourse is performed by a new type of information objects — «factoids». The specifics of their functioning in the information and communication space are described in categories of not binary, but three-valued logic, which assumes, in addition to truth and lies, a third mode — the unknown, uncertainty. The underdetermined epistemological status of the «factoid» does not indicate any of its inferiority compared to the fact, but is a specific property indicating the probabilistic nature of its ontology. It is argued that the post-truth interpretation of the ontological status of meaning as morally, ethically and epistemologically neutral legitimizes its use as a tool of post-truth politics. It is concluded that post-truth discourse is performative in nature. In this regard, it can be considered not only as a descriptive — specifically speculative-market way of representing reality, but also as: 1) a performative technology for the formation of augmented reality that produces «factoids», 2) a tool for the humanitarian-technological construction of social identity