Reddit reviews Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism

1. Where did you get this quote?
   
2. I'm not sure about 'postmodernists', but those who hold relativist views of this sort in mainstream philosophy are few and far between. Paul Boghossian has written an excellent book in which he argues rather forcefully, but fairly against this view. It's quite rigorous, but still very accessible.

I'll just leave this here.

Epistemic relativism and how to argue against it. Just ordered Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge.

If I'm going with the shallow response (which is what I take the self-defeating argument to be, really), then you still haven't answered the criticism. (It works for moral relativism, too.) That's just as well, though, because I don't have enough time today to do a big comment thread.

If you're interested in this topic, I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Knowledge-Against-Relativism-Constructivism/dp/0199230412

I like it quite a lot. I'm not sure I always agree with Boghossian, but he makes some darn good points here.

It's not that entire universities are plagued by postmodern thinking. Postmodernism as it relates to art and subjective things has its place, and I think it's interesting, even sometimes valuable. But it is rare that postmodernism is treated as belonging only to the area of subjective topics, as it often is incorporated in other areas in which it cannot contribute something substantial.

Humanities departments in universities are the primary source of postmodern scholarship, in departments like English, Sociology, Communications, History, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Cultural and Social Anthropology. It is not unusual for members of these departments to extend postmodernism to areas it doesn't belong, like science. In fact, there are quite a few books written by scientists and academics addressing this very problem.

The links in my previous post also do a fine job of outlining the problem.