Is it all Relative?

The September 24, 2009 New York Review of Books has a review essay by John Searle, Philosophy Professor at Cal-Berkeley. Searle is a longtime contributor to NYRB (that's how us cool kids refer to it). I'm a novice when it comes to "philosophy of mind" stuff, but from what I can gather, Searle is a solid academic who still writes books and articles for a literate and non-academic audience.
In this particular piece he reviews Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism by Paul A. Boghossian, published by Oxford U Press. It is a short book, only 139 pages, but from Searle's review it seems to raise some important issue.
As an erstwhile academic, I have studied my fair share of what is known as social constructionism. One of my main graduate mentors is a firmly committed social constructionist as are many of her fellow sociologists.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge is usually acknowledged as the Ur-text of this intellectual movement. Boghossian defines it this way: "A fact is socially constructed if and only if it is necessarily true taht it could only have obtained through the contingent actions of a social group."
Now you might disagree with this premise, but that doesn't seem to be so dangerous, right?
Another famous philosopher, Donna Haraway, writes about "situated knowledge", that our worldview is situated in a particular number of contexts. But it is not necessarily any more valid or better than another. I do agree in part with this belief. For example, despite the rabid beliefs of someone like Fred Phelps and his demented followers, "Homosexuality" as we currently understand it, did not exist back in the culture of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians. Therefore these Biblical condemnations are actually specific to the practice of sodomy or the trade of temple prostitution that Paul warns against in some of his letters. The act of sodomy existed, but not the belief or identity of homosexuality. If we accept the work of Michel Foucault, homosexuality does not come into being until the 19th century (if I'm recalling his writings accurately). Now, as both Boghossian and Searle rightly point out, this can be a slippery slope. They both cite the following example: "Recent research shows that he [Ramses II] probably died of tuberculosis . . . a social constructivist who has denied that this was possible,' asking 'How could [Ramses II] who died circa 1213 BC] pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch in 1882?'" REALLY! No wonder mainstream culture has such a negatively dismissive view of academia. Go figure!
As someone who formerly taught undergrads in classes like Humanities and Western Civ I-II and Understanding America, I have experienced how prevalent, if poorly understood, this idea has become. In both classes we tackled difficult issues like religion, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. It was the rare student who dared to take a strong position, which could have potentially alienated me or their fellow students. This came to the fore in HWC when students read selections from the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim scriptures. I explained to my students that despite their common Abrahamic heritage, they all made "truth claims" that were mutually exclusive. To cite one example, all three faiths had contradictory views on the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, it is true that I a student was free to reject all of these truth claims and religion in general, but even this was something that most students were uncomfortable doing. Also, they certainly rejected my idea of grading on a "relativist" scale. Then they all became fans of objective truth and standards.
As someone who has studied and applied social constructionism in my own academic work, I do see its usefulness, but I ,like Boghossian and Searle, ultimately reject this epistemological position. I do believe that we can still find timeless wisdom (episteme) and that knowledge is not ultimately relative and contingent.
If I may make a plug for a publication, I think the New York Review of Books is one of the best publications around. If you are looking for a magazine that takes art, literature, and ideas seriously, NYRB is for you. The contributors are almost uniformly excellent and well-qualified to provide their commentary and analysis and they have the gift of handling difficult ideas and translating these ideas and experiences into prose accessible to a wider audience.
Czar