Conversation about McGilchrist
Me: I'm still reading "The Master and his Emissary" by Ian McGilchrist and was curious about a section in (I think) chapter 4 in which he attacks those who claim there is no such thing as truth. Are there really such people? I mean actual academic authors. I know some in the right like to claim post-modernists deny truth but surely it's just a debating point - no serious thinker, say Baudrillard - actually makes such a claim. Even headlines like "the gulf war does not exist" is about the spectacle of late capitalism, following the ideas of people like Guy Debord ? Reply: Great question, John — and you're absolutely right to want to dig beneath the surface of what often gets simplified or caricatured in debates about postmodernism and truth. McGilchrist does indeed criticise the idea that truth is somehow illusory or relative to the point of nonexistence — and he associates this view with certain currents of modern and postmodern thought. But let's un...