This presentation included arguments for the following claims:

• Progressive political and social criticism is conceptually coherent only if an argument can be given showing why some states of affairs are preferable to others.
• In order to justify the claim that some states of affairs are preferable to others, some minimally realist account of truth must be presupposed.
• Crude relativism about truth cannot provide a conceptually coherent foundation for progressive criticisms of any state of affairs and, by extension, cannot support justifications for preferring one state of affairs over others.