That Book
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Dan at Muscular Liberals cites Why Truth.
Considering the response of some to what can only only be described as Hezbollah propaganda dressed up as reporting called to mind a passage in Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom’s “Why Truth Matters”, a great book I read whilst on my travels a couple of weeks ago.
Well – that’s pleasing, because I suppose that was the idea. That generally is the idea in books of the ‘let’s all try to think just a little bit carefully’ variety: the hope is that things will link up that way, so that the abundant examples of propaganda dressed up as reporting the world is blessed with will seem not like bizarre one-offs but like examples of a nameable phenomenon such as propaganda dressed up as reporting. Sometimes patterns are illusory but other times they’re very useful; sometimes connections are merely paranoiac imaginings but other times they make sense of apparently random mistakes.
This is the passage he quotes (emphasis his):
There is a frivolity, a lack of responsibility, an indifference to canons of coherence, logic, rationality and relevance – which are reminiscent not of the Left or progressivism, but, as Richard Wolin argues, of counter-Enlightenment and reaction.
That is not an accidental association, it is what counter-Enlightenment and reaction are all about: the rejection of reason, enquiry, logic and evidence, in favour of tradition, religion, instinct, blood and soil, The Nation, The Fatherland. That is the sort of thing that remains standing once canons of coherence and relevance are stripped away. The Left is not well-advised to discredit or undermine reason and respect for truth, because those are ultimately the only tools the Left has against the irrationalist appeals of the Right.
Well, thanks, Dan. I quite like that passage myself.
And it’s pleasantly revelvant to the running argument over cultural relativism and rational argument that’s been going on here lately.
Another reason to not let up on the religion bashing! Godbotherers thrive in a rhtorical world ulimited by reason or fact – the Pope, the DI and GWB, among others. By dismantling tools set our for us by very smart people, we’re not doing ourselves any favors.
And not just “The Left” either.
Just because you are not part of the left, or not considered part of it, is no reason to give up on reason.
There are plenty of people on the right who are not conned by the blackmailers and torturers and con-men of religion and superstition.
They are all part of the alliance for truth and justice and the abilty to mind our own busnisses’, without being bothered by any security police, whether they be of the state or religious kinds.
dsquared – wow – did you read the book or just that para ?
nah, disregard that d2, posted it without engaging brain, apologies.
Dsquared
Where to start with you…?
First: You’re just making a bad logical error: it doesn’t follow that because there are consequentialist reasons – and in this instance quite specific consequentialist reasons to do with the counter-enlightenment aspects of a certain kind of conservative thought – for thinking that the Left is ill-advised to throw away a commitment to reason and truth that there are not also non-consequentialist reasons.
Second: ‘”Why does truth matter”? is anything other than “it just does”, then it isn’t truth that matters.’
This is just pedantry. It is quite reasonable to claim that things matter for consequentialist reasons. For example, if it were the case that by always pursuing the truth we were able to create a world without suffering, and that this was all that there was to be said in favour of the truth, then it is tediously, obviously the case that in a sense truth would have no intrinsic value. But it is also the case that in such a world it would be perfectly legitimate to answer the question “Why does truth matter”? by saying “Because it contributes to a world without suffering”. Of course, if the question were “Why does truth matter, in and of itself”, then one couldn’t give a consequentialist answer. But hey, guess what – that’s not the only question we address in WTM.
Third: Relativism. Well the first point deals with this. But suppose there weren’t that logical problem with your response. Does that bolded section imply relativism? No it doesn’t – not necessarily – because you’ve made a second large error (well actually you’ve made two errors at the same time).
First, you assume the statement is a piece of general advice vis-a-vis truth telling, when actually, as it appears quoted here, it isn’t (it’s about resisting counter-enlightenment, irrationalist appeals of the Right). Second, you assume that a consequentialist justification for truth-telling will necessarily result in relativism. Well that’s just an erroneous assumption. It’s certainly an empirical possibility that one’s consequentialist commitment to non-relativistic truth will never collapse into relativism (because of the way that the consequentialist calculation plays out in the particular circumstances we confront). In other words, it might always be important for consequentialist reasons to spurn relativism. (Of course, you may think otherwise, but it’s something to be argued for, not simply asserted).
Is there anything else? Probably, but I’ve said enough (for the next six months, likely).