True to Life : Why Truth Matters (A Bradford Book)

Rating:
Summary: Clear defense of objective truth; some flaws, though
Review: "True to Life" is a needed tonic against postmodernist dismissals of the objectivity and knowability of truth. The author handles philosophical controversies with clarity and without oversimplication. While not a technical work, Lynch takes the readers fairly deep into the discussions while always trying to explain the pertinence of the issues. For example, if there is no objective truth, how is it possible to "speak truth to power" or call for moral reform based on moral realities and not just the perspective or preference or language game of the speaker?

One drawback is that Lynch's worldview is pervasively secular. He doesn't seem to see that the notion of knowable objective truth is far more "at home" within a theistic worldview than in a materialistic one in which "mind" is a mere product of nature (time, chance, brute natural laws, and matter). If we are designed to know the world, our knowledge is metaphysically justified. If not, why think that mindless nature would kick up beings capable of such significant knowledge, that which far transcends what is needed for mere survival?

Moreover, the relationship between a belief and its object is not a material relationship. Lynch basically holds to a realist or correspondence view of truth in which a belief is true if it connects with the facts in question. But a belief's content (X is true) is only true if X exists objectively. This is not a causal relationship or a material relationship of any kind. It is the immaterial relationship between a mental state and a state outside the mind (whether material or immaterial--such as a moral principle).

Lastly, Lynch's politics intrude at several points. His views are quite left-wing, and often given in an acerbic manner. More conservative ideas are never considered.

Nevertheless, Professor Lynch's defense of the existence of objective truth and its value for us is to be commended for its clarity and importance.


Rating:
Summary: Why Truth Matters
Review: This book has all of the qualities that might be attributed to the term "thought-provoking". Common questions regarding the attainability, relativity, and inherent goodness of truth, are addressed. Also includes popular criticisms of truth as a means to and end and truth as fiction- are analyzed rigorously. Easily accessible to everyone from the casual reader to the doctoral candidate. Katherine Wylie