Why Truth Matters
Book review by Maggie Atkins
Title: Why Truth Matters
Author: Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom
Publisher: Continuum Books
I picked up on this book whilst browsing through the Prospect Magazine's list of "underrated book" of the year. The authors founded a web site in 2002 Butterflies and Wheels.com as a resource for discussion of issues such as the human capacity to reason and argue and to seek the truth.
WHY TRUTH MATTERS follows on from that work. Examining the spurious claims made for creationism, Holocaust denial and misinterpretation of science and history the authors have produced a profound response to the deluge of superstition that abounds.
It is an argument for the value of truth coupled with the practices of inquiry, evidence and testing to oppose the pseudo-philosophical wishful thinking of those with unfettered truth claims of ideological religion and politics.
As a starting point Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom show how the sceptical Enlightenment tradition of rationality within philosophy has developed into a form of postmodern relativism. With this approach, truth does not result from investigation but rather from self- generation or attribution to perspectives regardless of evidence. Post modernists argue that rationality is a controlled state of the mind with arbitrary rules. But, there are other so called forms of enquiry - divine revelation or myth.
The authors note the claims in academic work and the distortion and pressures that lead to academics and institutions eschewing a responsibility to seek /present the truth. This is self evident within political dogma via "spin".
This is a comfortable and at times amusing read generating thoughts as to the validity of "truth reality". Whilst there has always been doubt as to human capacity to uncover the truth the message from the authors is that "truth matters".
