EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL TRANSPLANTATION

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest problems in the 21st century with unique characteristics, including its alarming rate of spread and the widespread accumulation of information. In the era of advanced information and communication tools, public understanding comes mainly from social media, which shapes and constructs public opinion and reality. Consequently, this can result in many conflicts on the prevention and treatment of the disease. Paradoxically, although vaccination against COVID-19 has proven its efficacy and safety, it remains a profound issue of debate. Nowadays, we navigated the social media sources to find the answers, as Socrates did navigating in the ancient “agora” to find answers, by conducting the Socratic dialectic method and filtering “information” by the triple filter test. Its aim was to imagine an agitated anti-vaccinist coming to Socrates and saying: “Socrates, I want to tell you some information about vaccination.”
Socrates: Calm down before listening to what you have to say are you sure that everything you are going to tell me is true?
Anti-vaccinist: Well, this personal perception comes mainly from social media.
Socrates: So, you cannot know if your information is true or not. Is what you are going to tell me good or not?
Anti-vaccinist: You know that I am opposed to vaccination.
Socrates: And finally, do you think that this is useful?
Anti-vaccinist: Well, I am not quite sure.
As Socrates would say, if everything you want to tell us you are not sure is true is not good, as you ignore all the “good” proven data, and is not helpful but rather harmful, this could lead the public opinion to confusion and danger. During this pandemic, where various media construct the reality, “ancient wisdom” may promote a mediating or even a filtering effect between information and untrue, harmful, and useless formations of personal perceptions.

Key words : COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccination, Social media information

There is a general belief that philosophy is the intellectual luxury of people who do not face serious issues of daily routine. The image of banquets (symposiums) with relaxed people philosophizing in the peculiar democratic regime of the Athens of the golden age is conjured up in most people’s thoughts when they hear the word philosophy. However, the history of philosophy is simpler, beginning with the transition from the mythological way of thinking to the correct discourse of philosophy and science. The philosopher is the one who “loves wisdom” and is curious and tries to explain rationally the physical reality elements that concern any of us; thus, philosophy concerns each of us and all areas of our daily “physical” reality.

Is the Pandemic a Natural Event?

Primarily the most dramatic and preeminent chapter of the 21st century is the widespread outbreak of a global pandemic, the novel coronavirus commonly known as COVID-19. Pandemics have been and will be critical situations of “immediate” danger, not only for health but economy and ethics too, often acting as revealers of social and ethical issues that have gone unaddressed. They have everything to do with our relationship to our mortality and death and reflect the acuity and virtue of human nature in the face of more significant threats: disease and death. Pandemics show to communities and to us who we really are. Under the pandemic’s status, every society must test its moral values and the efficacy of its ethical framework. In the gyre of all these, everybody wonders and even doubts what is wrong and what is right. A pandemic is a “natural” event in our reality.

Pandemic outbreaks can even nowadays be interpreted as a “divine” punishment for sins or in its eschatological perspective as an event heralding the “end of days,” that is, the end of the world. Philosophy and science have seized humanity from the world of divine rage and punishment of sins, leading to understanding the human relationship with his natural environment.

The Role of Philosophy

What makes this pandemic unique?

This is not the first time that humans have dealt with something deadly, but the current pandemic has some characteristics that make it unique. First is the alarming widespread nature of the disease, and second is the more alarming widespread accu-mulation of information about the disease and the controlling measures through social media in our highly interconnected world.

Public opinion comes mainly through social media fermentation and personal perception. Social media has become an important medium for reality construction, a role that becomes more extensive in the age of advanced information and communication tools. Thus, it must be noted that there is a mediating or even a filtering effect between the formation of personal perception and real events.¹ In the Phaedrus, Plato reimagines an Egyptian myth where the God-King Thamus critiques the God Theuth’s invention of written language.² Theuth had offered writing as a gift to aid humankind, but Thamus prophesies that it will have a corrosive effect on human culture: “… they will be hearers of much, without learning anything; they will appear to know much, yet for the most part know nothing; and they will be miserable to be around, having become wise-seeming without actually being wise….”³ This reads like an unequivocal critique of the information age with search engines, instantaneous data accessibility, and the petulant self-assurance of social media discourse.

It is evident that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised several ethical issues and emerging controversies concerning prevention and treatment, with the most prominent debating issue being the need and safety of vaccination against COVID-19. Online meetings, protests, and educational discussions by experts supported by special committees, organizations, and academic unions add so much irrationality in the “cultural milieu” today with no end obviously in sight, which have favored the emergence of “ideological movements” (anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers). Paradoxically, the number of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers is growing, although both vaccination and wearing masks have proved their efficacy and safety. The problem has become that some beliefs that are simply factually untrue have become embedded into the world views of their proponents. There is a rigidity to how proponents of these special world views clutch onto the core tenets of their “irrational” beliefs and never even examine the possibility of revising them. Their viewpoints are often so confidently expressed that their proponents somehow manage to succeed in making more rational, well-informed people appear to be irrational ones.

Socrates’ triple test filtering: Socratic method

There will always be a division between the knowledgeable and the ignorant in any society, which is true today as it was in ancient Athens, where street philosophers such as Socrates were navigating in the agora (marketplace) where the drama of daily life and discourse unfolded instead of social media surfers who are navigating through global networks in our times.

Socrates, a Greek philosopher from Athens (470-399 BC), is credited as the founder of Western philosophy.⁴ Socrates lends his name to the concept of the dialectic method and the Socratic method. The dialectic method is a discourse between 2 or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation resembling a debate.⁵ The Socratic method of questioning takes shape in dialogue using short questions and answers, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine various aspects of an issue or an abstract meaning, usually relating to one of the virtues, and find themselves at an impasse, completely unable to define what they thought they understood. Socrates devised a wonderful way, using a mental triple filter test, “the filter of truthfulness, goodness and usefulness,” to arrest ignorance and rumors.⁶ Harkening back to this Socratic approach, imagine a dialogue between Socrates and an anti-vaxxer:
Anti-vaxxer: Socrates, let me tell you some information about vaccination.
Socrates: Hold on a minute. Before you talk to me about this, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you are about to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. Before listening to what you have to say are you sure that everything you are going to tell me is true?
Anti-vaxxer: Well, this is my personal perception that comes mainly from social media.
[THE FIRST FILTER]
Socrates: Is what you are going to tell me good or not? Anti-vaxxer: You know that I am totally opposed to vaccination.
[THE SECOND FILTER]
Socrates: Do you find it useful?
Anti-vaxxer: Well, I am not quite sure for the moment.
[THE THIRD FILTER]

So dear anti-vaxxers, as Socrates would say, if everything that you want to tell us you are not sure is true isn’t good, as you prefer to ignore all the “good” proven data about vaccination, and isn’t useful, rather harmful for the moment leading public opinion to further confusion and people to danger, why would we want to hear it?

Ancient wisdom elucidates the principles of modern societies and does not try to replace them. Instead, ancient wisdom can encourage a modern society to consider what it considers “good” and not adopt inherited old moral values. An ethical approach based on “virtue,” where people are motivated according to their happiness and who they want to be, is more valuable than an approach where people remain stuck to a fixed set of moral values.

In a pandemic crisis where various media construct reality, ancient wisdom can promote a mediating or even a filtering effect between untrue, harmful, and useless information in the formation of personal perceptions.

Volume: 21 Issue: 6 June 2023 - Supplement - 2

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