The book under review, Why Truth matters (WTM), closes yet another chapter of the prolific wave of literature coming out of the ‘Truth Wars’.   Authors on both sides of the fence – the radical relativists or extreme sceptics and their opponents – have assumed their respective roles as veritable crusaders. As a result, their claims and counterclaims have come indeed in several forms and guises. And these can vary significantly according to their style or degree of seriousness and subtleness.

As you probably surmised from the title, 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. 

Yet, how many more books of this kind are necessary? If you favour, like the authors do, say, clear-thinking and intellectual honesty as our surer-footed approach towards truth, then as many as it would take to keep denouncing those thinkers who masquerade sound truth with wilful quibbling. More basically, WTM sets out to raise and answer a number of foundational truth-related questions, among them: Why should we even care about it? What are the best means at our disposal to preserve it? How are we to distinguish complex and difficult arguments from mere gibberish?

It seems somewhat unfortunate that, in the apparent epistemic superiority of the 21^st century’s intellectual heights, this sort of message still needs to be stated, and then restated. Some years ago, for example, the Sokal Fallacy (Sokal A., 1996) and The Postmodern Text Generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo) seemed to do more than their share in exposing to the world the excesses of sophistry of the extreme relativist community. But, as damaging as this academic embarrassment seem to be to them, it proved insufficient to quell their writing output. In hindsight, it might have just for awhile waned it. Consequently, the authors argue that ‘new’, though fundamentally similar works will still keep cropping up out of this original penchant for verbosity and deliberate shadow-throwing.

Nonetheless, it should be marked at the outset that the authors would not, in principle, oppose the efforts of those who labour conscientiously and honestly (for this attitude cannot be overstressed) in literary criticism and other humanities-related fields — in the same spirit in which perhaps they might disagree with the paradigmatically obtuse scientist who regards all art as ‘unreal’.  But they’d certainly insist that such efforts be carried out – in either case – with responsible awareness regarding the epistemic reach and boundaries of their respective disciplines and academic specializations. What Benson and Stangroom seem to reject the most, then, are the arbitrary and uninformed incursions that certain intellectuals make on fields in which they clearly show no competence, as well as their indiscriminate tangle of the methods of art and literature with those of science. 

For instance, it is worth noting that this was akin to the motivation that prompted physicist Jean Bricmont’s (1996) exposé of gender studies professors who, like Luce Irigaray, argue that ‘constructs’ such as Einstein’s equation can be ‘sexed’:

Sandra Harding consistently refers to epistemology as ‘conventional’ epistemology in contrast to standpoint or feminist epistemology, thus framing standpoint epistemology as unconventional rather than potentially simply wrong. There is a strange idea lurking behind this framing: that epistemology is a matter of choice, and thus of fashion and convention, and of politics and commitment, as opposed to being a matter of truth of falsehood, warrant or the lack of it. (Stangroom & Benson, 2006: 46)

I have quoted this passage at some length not only because it is representative of the book’s manifesto, but also because it highlights, indirectly, a perennial philosophical dilemma. By definition, to be sure, epistemology and philosophy are essentially-contested fields (Campbell R.J., 2001); but the task of evaluating the merits of a given work, which aspires to make some kind of contribution to them, has been also a conventional and necessary feature shared by both. The chief reason for this, I believe, is to prevent the virtues of scepticism, one of philosophy’s cherished tools, from being mishandled by disingenuous and sensational minds. Only in this manner can scepticism be rescued from degenerating into the vices of fallacy that are pervasive in various forms of “philosophy”. And, as Campbell (2001:341) states, “Bad philosophy, if it is bad enough, is not philosophy at all”.

Though its arguments are simple, straightforward and unpretentious, the book is still remarkably effective in retaining the interest of specialists. Although perhaps is even more successful for its care in not showing, at the same time, condescension towards lay readers. In so doing, it teaches by example: avoiding the sometimes pedantic, discursive and muddled jargon of the trends of thought it seeks to deflate.   While it is true in a few passages that the tone can be construed to swing from critical to deridingly scathing, the authors try to make sure the change is duly justified. And they do not need greater excuse than to merely reprint the somewhat cynical titles of various articles and conference papers of the academics they criticise. For Benson and Stangroom don’t have to fabricate any straw man, since this type of research seems to be parodying itself. This is specially the case in their discussion of “Institutions, Academe and Truth” (chapter 7), when they talk about (p. 152) “the popularity of, shall we say, surprising titles that accompanied the Theory explosion”:

Session and paper titles which have graced the annual MLA [Modern Language Association] convention include: ‘Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl’; ‘The Muse of Masturbation’; ‘Clitoral Imagery and Masturbation in Emily Dickinson’; ‘Desublimating the Male Sublime: Autoerotics, Anal Erotics, and Corporal Violence in Melville and William Burroughs’… it is hard to read this sort of thing without laughing…(p. 152)

This book is thus peppered with similar examples, such as those of the third chapter, “The Truth Radicals”, where WTM cleverly groups together postmodernism and new age relativism — although this is perhaps better achieved in the one that follows it, “The Social Construction of Truth”. Here can be found excellent vignettes of those who contend that ‘truth’ is absolutely subservient to the general ‘social’ ends of the particular cultural context within which it was ‘constructed’. One can barely help recall Richard Dawkins’ (2003: 18)  trenchant dictum: “If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there… is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.”

Dawkins, by the way, gets his share of attention in chapter 5 of WTM, “Politics, Ideology and Evolutionary Biology”, albeit in vindication and defence of his views. The focus there is on the theoretically inane criticisms of Dawkins’ detractors who, having little or no inking about issues in contemporary genetics and ethology, endeavour persistently in trying to discredit scientific claims.  Further, not content to limit their ‘criticisms’ to biology, they cast aspersions as to the alleged political implications of Dawkins’ scientific ideas — going as far as equating them, along with those of fellow biologist E.O. Wilson, with social Darwinism and baron-robber capitalism. Needless to mention, these attacks appear to be still more frivolous given the extensive and highly documented repudiation that both scientists have made in relation to this matter; considering, especially, that some of their arguments were voiced even before these objections surfaced!

Finally, in their closing chapter, Ophelia and Stangroom finish–quite predictably–with a plea to condemn the spurious rhetoric of extreme relativists, whichever field they happen to be in. More importantly, by conflating societal values such as ‘human flourishing’ and ‘happiness’ with clear, rational and methodical enquiry, their summons to the cause of truth invokes a strong humanist component.  And thus, as they stress in the book’s last line: “That’s why truth matters”.

REFERENCES

Bricmont, Jean (1996); “Postmodernism and its Problems with Science”, in Archimedes: A Journal for Science Teachers; Finland; LaTeX file.

Campbell, R.J. (2001); “The Covert Metaphysics of the Clash between ‘Analytic’ and ‘Continental’ Philosophy” British Journal for the History of Philosophy; 9(2) 2001: 341–359

Dawkins, Richard (2003); A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Essays; Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London

Sokal, A. (1996); "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies." Lingua Franca 62-64.