<p>Truth has always been a central preoccupation of philosophy in all its forms and traditions. However, in the late twentieth century truth became suddenly rather unfashionable. The precedence given to assorted political and ideological agendas, along with the rise of relativism, postmodernism and pseudoscience in academia, led to a decline both of truth as a serious subject, and an intellectual tradition that began with the Enlightenment. <br/><br/><em>Why Truth Matters</em> is a timely, incisive and entertaining look at how and why modern thought and culture lost sight of the importance of truth. It is also an eloquent and inspiring argument for restoring truth to its rightful place. Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, editors of the successful ButterfliesandWheels.Com website - itself established to 'fight fashionable nonsense' - identify and debunk such nonsense, and the spurious claims made for it, in all its forms. Their account ranges over religious fundamentalism, Holocaust denial, the challenges of postmodernism and deconstruction, the wilful misinterpretation of evolutionary biology, identity politics and wishful thinking. <br/><br/><em>Why Truth Matters</em> is both a rallying cry for the Enlightenment vision and an essential read for anyone who has ever been bored, frustrated, bewildered or plain enraged by the worst excesses of the fashionable intelligentsia. </p><br/><div></div>>
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In response to what Benson and Stangroom consider the modern reality of gray areas and denial, they present a philosophical case for the importance of truth that draws on writings by philosophers, anthropologists, poets and scientists. Their approach, accessible for readers who are less familiar with philosophical thought, addresses a wide range of topics: feminism, "the social construction of truth" and evolutionary biology. However, Benson's and Stangroom's arguments tend to get lost in the breadth of material they cover. Though generalizations leave the text vulnerable to counterarguments, it's hard to find fault with their premise that the truth, no matter how elusive or uncomfortable it may be, is worth pursuing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
'A sassy and profound response to [a] cascade of superstition and silliness ... Benson and Stangroom answer the clotted, barely readable sentences of the postmodernists with sentences so clear you could swim in them. There should be a law demanding every purchase of a Jacques Derrida "book" be accompanied with a free copy of this shimmering, glimmering answer.'
Postmodernism is often billed as attacking truth and science. This is how it is presented in the valuable little book Why Truth Matters, by the editors of the sceptical website butterfliesandwheels.com, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. They mount a spirited counterattack, reminding us - in the way that Cambridge philosopher GE Moore was famous for doing - that if it comes to a battle for hearts and minds, basic convictions of common sense and science beat philosophical subtleties hands down. Where Brian King horrifies us with his liars, Benson and Stangroom reveal a parallel rogues' gallery of social constructivists, who look at how individuals and groups participate in the creation of their own perceived reality. These "rogues" include the feminist Sandra Harding and the neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, but the doyen must surely be the French philosopher of science Bruno Latour. Latour's confusion of words and things led him to the precipice of denying that there could have been dinosaurs before the term was invented. Presumably a similar argument would show that nobody before Crick and Watson had DNA. Why Truth Matters is an excellent example of philosophy done well but also, and not coincidentally, made accessible and exciting. Truth matters, it tells us "not in a dull perfunctory dutiful sense, but in a real lived felt sense - 'on the pulses' as Keats put it".
"In this book, Benson and Stangroom are wide-ranging in their knowledge and in the thinking about what they know, and so the books appears laid out almost like a collection of essays that are connected by the theme described above. Anthropology, evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, feminism, philosophies of various sorts, and the politics of Nazism are all touched on or addressed. Each chapter is interesting in its own right...The book is beautifully written, and sprinkled with passages of both insight and literary value." (Entelechy: Mind and Culture)
"British philosophers Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom array their immense talent ... in Why Truth Matters. What they're on about is a prevailing intellectual indifference to coherence, logic, rationality, and evidence. It's a world-view that holds that there is no historical truth and almost everything is a mere social construction. Discovery is conflated with invention, myth is elevated alongside empirical evidence, and no lines are drawn between fact and fiction....Most of us will get the main point Stangroom and Benson are making: truth matters because human beings are the only species capable of finding it out." —Straight.com, July 13, 2006
"As polemics go, it is short and adequately pugnacious. Yet the authors do not paint their target with too broad a brush. At heart, they are old-fashioned logical empiricists —- or, perhaps, followers of Samuel Johnson, who, upon hearing of Bishop Berkeley's contention that the objective world does not exist, refuted the argument by kicking a rock. Still, Benson and Stangroom do recognize that there are numerous varieties of contemporary suspicion regarding the concept of truth....They bend over backwards in search of every plausible good intention behind postmodern epistemic skepticism. And then they kick the rock." —Inside Higher Ed, June 2006
Selected as Prospect's 'Underrated Book of the Year 2006'
'In every generation, intelligent people insist on embracing the irrational. Postmodernism, identity politics and pseudoscience are easy to criticise, but hard to scorn to anything like the extent they merit. Benson and Stangroom do a heroic job of trying, and their defence of the Enlightenment ought to be better known.'
(Oliver Kamm)Reviewed on Classic FM's Classic Newsnight - 26 Sept 2007
'A clear, accessible and hugely important account of what it is to be rational.
Popular philosophy at its best.'
Popular philosophy at its best.'
"The authors discuss philosophical notions of truth amidst broader societal and political concerns, and the most exciting passages cover the rise of social Darwinism and eugenics in a discussion about the interplay between ideology, science and politics"
mention in an article of Peter Benson, Philosophy now, 1 March 2009
"the book is well-written and comprehensive either for people without a deep knowledge in philosophy"
Nicola Vassallo, Epistemologia (An Italian Journal for the Philosophy of Science), vol.31 2008
'A sassy and profound response to [a] cascade of superstition and silliness ... Benson and Stangroom answer the clotted, barely readable sentences of the postmodernists with sentences so clear you could swim in them. There should be a law demanding every purchase of a Jacques Derrida "book" be accompanied with a free copy of this shimmering, glimmering answer.'
Postmodernism is often billed as attacking truth and science. This is how it is presented in the valuable little book Why Truth Matters, by the editors of the sceptical website butterfliesandwheels.com, Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. They mount a spirited counterattack, reminding us - in the way that Cambridge philosopher GE Moore was famous for doing - that if it comes to a battle for hearts and minds, basic convictions of common sense and science beat philosophical subtleties hands down. Where Brian King horrifies us with his liars, Benson and Stangroom reveal a parallel rogues’ gallery of social constructivists, who look at how individuals and groups participate in the creation of their own perceived reality. These "rogues" include the feminist Sandra Harding and the neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, but the doyen must surely be the French philosopher of science Bruno Latour. Latour’s confusion of words and things led him to the precipice of denying that there could have been dinosaurs before the term was invented. Presumably a similar argument would show that nobody before Crick and Watson had DNA. Why Truth Matters is an excellent example of philosophy done well but also, and not coincidentally, made accessible and exciting. Truth matters, it tells us "not in a dull perfunctory dutiful sense, but in a real lived felt sense - 'on the pulses’ as Keats put it".
"In this book, Benson and Stangroom are wide-ranging in their knowledge and in the thinking about what they know, and so the books appears laid out almost like a collection of essays that are connected by the theme described above. Anthropology, evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, feminism, philosophies of various sorts, and the politics of Nazism are all touched on or addressed. Each chapter is interesting in its own right...The book is beautifully written, and sprinkled with passages of both insight and literary value." (Sanford Lakoff)
"British philosophers Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom array their immense talent … in Why Truth Matters. What they’re on about is a prevailing intellectual indifference to coherence, logic, rationality, and evidence. It’s a world-view that holds that there is no historical truth and almost everything is a mere social construction. Discovery is conflated with invention, myth is elevated alongside empirical evidence, and no lines are drawn between fact and fiction….Most of us will get the main point Stangroom and Benson are making: truth matters because human beings are the only species capable of finding it out." –Straight.com, July 13, 2006
"As polemics go, it is short and adequately pugnacious. Yet the authors do not paint their target with too broad a brush. At heart, they are old-fashioned logical empiricists -– or, perhaps, followers of Samuel Johnson, who, upon hearing of Bishop Berkeley’s contention that the objective world does not exist, refuted the argument by kicking a rock. Still, Benson and Stangroom do recognize that there are numerous varieties of contemporary suspicion regarding the concept of truth….They bend over backwards in search of every plausible good intention behind postmodern epistemic skepticism. And then they kick the rock." –Inside Higher Ed, June 2006
Selected as Prospect's 'Underrated Book of the Year 2006'
'In every generation, intelligent people insist on embracing the irrational. Postmodernism, identity politics and pseudoscience are easy to criticise, but hard to scorn to anything like the extent they merit. Benson and Stangroom do a heroic job of trying, and their defence of the Enlightenment ought to be better known.'
(Sanford Lakoff)"The authors discuss philosophical notions of truth amidst broader societal and political concerns, and the most exciting passages cover the rise of social Darwinism and eugenics in a discussion about the interplay between ideology, science and politics"
(Sanford Lakoff)
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The shocks of The Great War of 1914-1918 spawned a social movement known as "nihilism". Values once held meaningful were rejected by those who felt the conflict demonstrated such beliefs to be invalid. The Second World War may be considered the foundation for a similar movement arising in post-War France - "postmodernism". A close cousin of nihilism, the "French philosophy" strives to place all cultures on an equal footing. That equalitiy, moreover, is absolute - any declared stance must be granted equivalent respect with any other. Accompanied by many synonyms such as "cultural relativism" and "post-structuralism", the pestilence quickly spread in Western Europe where its symptoms are clearly seen in media presentations. More significantly, it became firmly established in the US, particularly in universities where it generated such programmes as "Women's [in a variety of spellings] Studies", "African Studies", all with a strong anti-Enlightenment and anti-science orientation. Benson and Stangroom here apply some vigorous therapy to counter the assault on rational thought. Although brief, this book is direct and incisive, clearly exhibiting the malaise infesting our universities and political institutions.
The purpose of this book is to re-establish that "truth" is indeed a valid concept. Postmodernism's contention that there are as many "truths" as there are tellers of it cannot be sustained. Benson and Stangroom, who founded the Website "butterfliesandwheels", explain that truth is empirically based and not a highly variant cultural phenomenon. Because our species appears to be the only one that can define truth, the authors address such fields as anthropology, evolutionary psychology, "women's ways of knowing" and various philosophies in describing how truth has been both supported and distorted.
Certain figures loom large in their presentation, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty and Sandra Harding, among others. The authors show how "cultural relativism" has attempted to discredit research in human behaviour with the objective of achieving "political correctness". In anthropology, for example, the episode of Napoleon Chagnon's work among the Yamomano of South America being falsely challenged raised a storm of controversy in the discipline. Although Chagnon was finally vindicated, the controversy brought suspicion on the science and besmirched Chagnon permanently. A related circumstance lies in the pronouncements of Sandra Harding that empirical evidence can have a gender bias and that a "feminist empiricism" should replace long-standing work. Harding, who still teaches at UCLA, has produced a population of graduate students who have fanned out to their own teaching posts and public affairs roles. Among other criticisms, the authors point out that even Harding admits her "philosophy" leads to a wide range of "ways of knowing". Women have indeed been excluded from science, but revising the methodologies isn't going to grant women more places at the lab bench. For all Harding's rhetoric, "E" still equals "mc2".
These examples indicate how knowledge, long and often painfully gained, can be cast aside in the name of some minority's demand for "respect". The authors make it clear that tearing down established knowledge and the methods of attaining it does not enhance or restore elements of society who feel they are victims of injustice. Part of the work of empirical research is to examine those injustices and right them. Their cause, however, isn't due to truth being false, but being misused. The fascisti mis-applied Charles Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest", but that, the authors insist, doesn't reflect a flaw in the basic premise. The danger in not knowing how to make the distinction only results in repeating that kind of history under a new guise. Such distortions are being perpetrated in North American universities on a daily basis and carried into the public realm.
Postmodernism, the authors contend, is more than just a "philosophy". It is an assault on knowledge itself. By contriving the results of research into "tools of oppression", the postmodernists conveniently overlook not only how science works, but who is actually doing the "oppressing". Bench scientists aren't imposing social conditions resulting from their work. Science, no matter how haltingly and hesitantly, is the one means to establish what is valid. Its answers are authoritative because they can be proven correct or not. To undermine those answers through treating them as options instead of data, is simply to falsify the results. The Enlightenment began as a means of overcoming false mythologies. It's depressing to see how a new wave of such mythologies has required a re-starting of Enlightenment principles to overcome it. That long-held standard will prove the needed therapy. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
The purpose of this book is to re-establish that "truth" is indeed a valid concept. Postmodernism's contention that there are as many "truths" as there are tellers of it cannot be sustained. Benson and Stangroom, who founded the Website "butterfliesandwheels", explain that truth is empirically based and not a highly variant cultural phenomenon. Because our species appears to be the only one that can define truth, the authors address such fields as anthropology, evolutionary psychology, "women's ways of knowing" and various philosophies in describing how truth has been both supported and distorted.
Certain figures loom large in their presentation, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty and Sandra Harding, among others. The authors show how "cultural relativism" has attempted to discredit research in human behaviour with the objective of achieving "political correctness". In anthropology, for example, the episode of Napoleon Chagnon's work among the Yamomano of South America being falsely challenged raised a storm of controversy in the discipline. Although Chagnon was finally vindicated, the controversy brought suspicion on the science and besmirched Chagnon permanently. A related circumstance lies in the pronouncements of Sandra Harding that empirical evidence can have a gender bias and that a "feminist empiricism" should replace long-standing work. Harding, who still teaches at UCLA, has produced a population of graduate students who have fanned out to their own teaching posts and public affairs roles. Among other criticisms, the authors point out that even Harding admits her "philosophy" leads to a wide range of "ways of knowing". Women have indeed been excluded from science, but revising the methodologies isn't going to grant women more places at the lab bench. For all Harding's rhetoric, "E" still equals "mc2".
These examples indicate how knowledge, long and often painfully gained, can be cast aside in the name of some minority's demand for "respect". The authors make it clear that tearing down established knowledge and the methods of attaining it does not enhance or restore elements of society who feel they are victims of injustice. Part of the work of empirical research is to examine those injustices and right them. Their cause, however, isn't due to truth being false, but being misused. The fascisti mis-applied Charles Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest", but that, the authors insist, doesn't reflect a flaw in the basic premise. The danger in not knowing how to make the distinction only results in repeating that kind of history under a new guise. Such distortions are being perpetrated in North American universities on a daily basis and carried into the public realm.
Postmodernism, the authors contend, is more than just a "philosophy". It is an assault on knowledge itself. By contriving the results of research into "tools of oppression", the postmodernists conveniently overlook not only how science works, but who is actually doing the "oppressing". Bench scientists aren't imposing social conditions resulting from their work. Science, no matter how haltingly and hesitantly, is the one means to establish what is valid. Its answers are authoritative because they can be proven correct or not. To undermine those answers through treating them as options instead of data, is simply to falsify the results. The Enlightenment began as a means of overcoming false mythologies. It's depressing to see how a new wave of such mythologies has required a re-starting of Enlightenment principles to overcome it. That long-held standard will prove the needed therapy. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"Why does truth matter? It matters because we are the only species we know that has the ability to find out."
Thus spake Benson and Stangroom in their latest effort to defend rational discourse and science. Not a rant;not a tirade, but a well reasoned and well written treatise evaluating enlightened thought (and not so enlightened) in this age of fashionable nonsense, postmodernist obfuscation, and misconbobulated interpretations of how science works. The editors of ButterfliesandWheels.com make a compelling series of arguments against social and cultural relativism and nonsense in general. A must read for "brights" and a plea in defense of rational evaluation of truth.
Thus spake Benson and Stangroom in their latest effort to defend rational discourse and science. Not a rant;not a tirade, but a well reasoned and well written treatise evaluating enlightened thought (and not so enlightened) in this age of fashionable nonsense, postmodernist obfuscation, and misconbobulated interpretations of how science works. The editors of ButterfliesandWheels.com make a compelling series of arguments against social and cultural relativism and nonsense in general. A must read for "brights" and a plea in defense of rational evaluation of truth.
24 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Being a fan of the authors' butterfliesandwheels website, I was expecting something more accessible to the general reader. But even with a graduate degree in linguistics, I found this book to be rather heavy going. Some philosophy courses might have helped! They assume that you're familiar with current controversies (for example, they assume that you know the details of the Sokal hoax, about which I was a little rusty). I was disappointed to find only a brief discussion of Afrocentrism, and surprised that Vine Deloria, perhaps the most widely read member of the truth-doesn't-matter school, never gets mentioned at all. But they do give a good summary of the major postmodern philosophical schools (as far as they can be understood)! Just take it slow and easy and you'll probably make it through.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good.
The authors tackle the truth in a serious manner, offering several reasons why it matters and why post-modernism is mostly bunk
Published 5 months ago by Clifton B. Chadwick
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre polemics
It's not that the authors aren't bright; I'm perfectly happy to assume that they are. But their readings are sometimes willfully obtuse, which should I suppose be less surprising... Read more
Published on January 24, 2011 by I. Allen
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Joy of Truth
This elegantly argued work examines the reason why and the ways in which modern thought and culture dispensed with the primacy of truth, whether that of historical fact or science. Read more
Published on January 17, 2010 by Pieter Uys
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting critique, but uneven
The authors take aim at trendy relativism, intellectual fads, political correctness, wishful thinking, and similar follies. It's an interesting read for weekend philosphers. Read more
Published on January 11, 2009 by Carl of Mariemont
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well written basic introduction
Stangroom & Benson provide a solid introduction to some thorny issues. The serious student will want to follow this up by reading some of the classic works on both sides of the... Read more
Published on November 2, 2008 by Reinhard W. Lindner
3.0 out of 5 stars
Okay
Truth matters, of course, but this book was a simplistic explanation of the role of "truth" in modern times. The examples were weak and the writing was not inspiring. Read more
Published on September 4, 2008 by Maria Folsom
3.0 out of 5 stars
Almost inaccessible
One might reasonably expect a philosophy book such as this to have been better written, the better to deliver its message. Read more
Published on March 5, 2007 by Dick Marti
4.0 out of 5 stars
Why Truth Matters - for all
An excellent read and can be read, with profit, by believers as well as atheists and secularists generally. Read more
Published on December 12, 2006 by tolkein
5.0 out of 5 stars
Philosophy need not be boring
The book is a witty and interesting examination of just what the title says.You can't address societal problems effectively by pretending they don't exist.
Published on November 9, 2006 by Marshall E. Deutsch
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