Author archives

Mark Satta is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Purdue University and a JD from Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the faculty at Wayne State, he was an associate at the law firm Harter Secrest & Emery LLP in Rochester, NY. Mark specializes in epistemology, philosophy of language, applied philosophy of law, and First Amendment Law. His work has appeared in Philosophical Studies, Analysis, Synthese, Episteme, the Buffalo Law Review, the Harvard Law & Policy Review, and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, among others.

3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it

An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus. All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage. As a philosopher who studies knowledge-sharing practices, Mark Satta calls this experience “epistemic exhaustion.” The term “epistemic” comes from the Greek word episteme, often translated as “knowledge.” So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion. It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances. Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from Satta’s perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them.

Subjects: Ethics, KM, Social Media