The birther situation doesn’t have anything to do with evidence, because to be a birther is to fundamentally reject the notion of evidence. This is a very truncated/shoddy philosophical perspective on why the birther thing happened and why it’s important.

Philosophy has something to do with this. Specifically, the branch called “epistemology,” which roughly means “how we know things.” Back in the day, the way we thought we knew things was by

1. Having the thing be true.
2. Believing the thing to be true.
3. And having some good reasons for believing the thing to be true.

This model worked for, like, ever. And it’s still a pretty good model for living in the world. So it’s true that Obama was born in the United States, and people believe it’s true, and they have good reasons for believing it’s true. Right? If you don’t happen to believe he was born in the United States, then you probably have reasons for not believing it.

So you can see, knowing Obama was born in the US hinges on having good reasons for believing he was. This point doesn’t actually depend on whether he was born in the US or not. It’s also the part of knowledge that, to me, is where epistemology starts to veer into ontology (“the study of what is or exists”), which seems a little counterintuitive, since the first point seems to have to do with what is.

But since it seems we’re all in the state of radical subjectivism (as it were), anything goes. The fact of Obama’s birth depends on one’s believing in it because, as my buddy Wittgenstein tried to prove (and yet failed at proving…) the world is as it were subsumed in the system of language used to describe the world. The map—as China will tell you—constitutes the reality of the terrain.

This map-terrain problem just is the whole problem. When you say, “the fact of Obama’s birth in the US is incontrovertible,” you’ve already made it not-incontrovertible. You’re no longer arguing facts; you’re arguing arguments. But why is it an argument?

Read the rest here.