In the review mentioned here, Warburton states that Pluckrose and Lindsay "have done their homework, and can’t fairly be accused of a superficial understanding of the thinkers they engage with". I have done extensive research into three pages of the book. Below are my findings. https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1332026938945310723

Here's @lastpositivist 's fav. Does postmodernism reject a theory about *what truth is*? Or does it reject the claim that truth, on some definition, exists. Also this implies that deflationists about truth can't believe in objective truth. So, cool.

Now we have a claim about the existence of objective reality, and a quotation from Foucault supposed to show that he rejects that claim. The quotation concerns only knowledge. What it says is perfectly consistent with there being an objective reality.

At the end of this paragraph we learn that Foucault doesn't deny "objective reality" after all. He just denies we can get at it. Get at what? At the objective truth - a notion which we are told in the first sentence that he "argues against". I'm sorry. WHAT?

Sometimes this is read as the denial of objective truth. Sometimes, as scepticism about whether it can be known. Sometimes, as a rejection of a certain theory of what the truth is (truth instead becomes relativised).

All three views are sometimes ascribed simultaneously to the same thinker, on the basis of the same passage, which often says nothing at all about "objective truth" (when does Foucault use that term, e.g.)?

Systems can decide? Also, Foucault's analysis has "regimes of truth" determined by both power and *resistance* - there is always resistance where there is power, he says. This is simply not mentioned, as far as I can see. "Done their homework"...

You don't need to hear the whole of a joke to know it's a joke. You can tell by the jocular tone. You don't need to read the whole of this book to know it's a joke, though the tone is not at all jocular.

They also "explain" Derrida. For comparison, I've given you a pretty decent summary from Graham Priest.

Priest's summary goes on with a lengthy quotation from Derrida. Pluckrose and Lindsay quote only a single sentence, the one that everyone already knew. But let's follow that footnote to the citation...

Ah yes. _Of Grammatology_. Which page? Just, you know, the general vibe of the thing. **That is the only citation of Derrida's writings in the entire book**

Did they do their homework? The dog ate their homework. Their homework is a dog's dinner. So is the whole bloody book. Please let us never speak of it again.

Here's the review that skewers their treatment of some analytic epistemologists. But I'm telling you, the precision of their scholarship on that stuff is the Reverend Dr Colbatch compared with their treatment of the French stuff. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-cynical-theorists-behind-cynical-theories/