This one covers a lot of ground
One comment I particularly liked in this review of Why Truth Matters, because it said we did a kind of thing that I like to see done, that I think is a worthwhile thing to do, so it was very gratifying to find that someone thought we had done it.
Benson and Stangroom’s WTM opposes unqualified relativism and thus allies itself with other books in this tradition. So if you are lured to it by the prospect of finding something extraordinarily startling, but have first familiarised yourself sufficiently with this type of literature, then you probably won’t find here anything shocking. However, to its great credit, and unlike other books of its class, this one covers a lot of ground (virtually every school of notoriety of radical relativism) in a few concise, enjoyable to read pages.
Well…good; I’m glad you think so. That was one of the goals. (Of course, we also wanted to startle and shock, and perhaps even terrify, but you can’t have everything.)
I liked the bit in the last para where it called the 2 of you “Ophelia and Stangroom”. Friend of yours? Hope we don’t have to start calling you BO…. ;-))
Ah, GREAT! A thread on WTM. It is an excellent work and well worth the reading, and I wanted to tell you how I found it.
I read WTM about 4 weeks ago, and when I had finished, my wife read it too. As a long-term fine arts student she has suffered some serious pomo wearying from reason-challenged lecturers.
I really enjoyed much of this work. In particular, the evolution of the problems and their manifestations were described and diagnosed with succinct clarity. I am reminded of Strunk’s smug reference to ‘the LITTLE book’, because WTM is gracefully economical too.
I think the key to it was choosing carefully the examples for dissection, which clearly display the failings being challenged. I didn’t have the direct knowledge of the writers and papers discussed, but having read a bit of the History Wars, the Sokal hoax and the split at Sydney University Philosophy Department through links over years at ‘Arts & Letters Daily’, I had almost enough to go on.
The argument that ‘truth matters because we are the only species capable of knowing it’ seems a bit thin. It is a poetic idea; maybe I just didn’t see the sunset backdrop on the Powerpoint. I would go further. Evolutionary biology sees the individual genes as the sole driver (in contrast to the idea of change directed to a ‘species benefit’). I suggest the argument would be stronger when it points out the benefit of truth to the individual directly and in the individual’s altruistic contribution to his society. That becomes a legacy of that individual whoever receives the benefit, just as that individual receives the legacies of others. To build our legacies a solid grounding is something that really, really matters.
You may also enjoy that I found some of WTM very irritating! To my reactionary spirit, it seemed like half of the intent in Ch 1 was to establish the authors’ credentials as charter members of the academy, (and thus what follows must be seen as housecleaning the way Titus Andronicus does it). This seemed to take the form of the display of a range of shared prejudices held as moral imperatives, a razor-honed version of PC.
Relativism’s easy rhetorical cheat disguised in neologist bombast is like African failed-state economics. Its an act of thievery which brings careless vandalism and arson against the legacy of all intellectual capital. Why Truth Matters therefore matters very much in its own right.
So there it is – you DID terrify.
How about: truth matters because falsehood is icky?
Dave, yeah, that made me laugh too. But I think the guy is furrin! One of them there furriners – so there were some bits of translationese; I took that to be one.
Thanks, Chris!
Yeah – many critics think the ‘only species’ argument is more than a bit thin. My fault. It’s not really an argument, more of a reason, but perhaps it’s a crappy reason.
Cool about chapter 1! That can’t have been the intent, I don’t think, since I’m certainly not a charter member (or any kind of member) of the academy; I’m a guttersnipe; and JS isn’t immensely deferential toward membership in the academy, to say the least. But I’m glad you found it irritating for whatever reason!
‘truth matters because falsehood is icky’
Would look better on the back cover, too.
There is a way of making the “only species” argument quite persuasive (and I’m making no judgement here about whether the WTM version is persuasive).
As far as we know, we’re the only species able to find out the truth. Therefore, we’d better be damned sure before deciding that truth doesn’t matter.
So it gets allied with a cautionary principle.
Now it’s possible that this was the argument that we made (I can’t remember now). If it was, then it’s defensible.
Obviously the title would have to be “Why Truth Doesn’t Not Matter”, which I guess is a little less catchy.
So Jerry S, it becomes like the argument against amputation for ‘body identity’ reasons… our species has limbs and reason, and amputation of any part of either self-evidently diminishes our something-or-other.
Unless…
So, we can choose to be like the results of ECT or lobotomy in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, but damn, that is a bad idea.
This is very, very late, but:
Truth matters because there is only one other alternative.