[MD] Demanding Evidence From Theists

[X Acto]

----- Original Message ----
From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Sat, January 30, 2010 2:18:12 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Demanding Evidence From Theists



Steve said to dmb:
You didn’t bother to address the concern that having a theory of truth or not is exactly the sort of philosophical non-issue that James should want to call a difference that makes no difference when none of the proposed candidates for so-called  “theories of truth” give us any way of distinguishing true beliefs from false ones.

dmb says:
I don't understand this concern, probably because I don't think "truth" is a non-issue. In fact, I'm making a case that it matters, that it is an issue, and that lots of other pragmatists think so too. To claim that the inventor of the pragmatic theory of truth would take his own work as the treatment of a non-issue strikes me as wholly implausible. James thought his theory of truth could be used to eliminate fake philosophical problems, but having a theory of truth is not one of them. And of course he thought we could distinguish truth from falsity by testing our ideas in experience. As Hickman tells it, when James introduced pragmatism as "a new name for some old ideas" he was making a cheeky reference to that saying of Jesus; "By their fruits ye shall know them". At least in this moment, Jesus was a pragmatist. Who knew? And it's not that the pragmatist just glances up and says, "yep, they look like figs to me". Oh, no. He's gotta eat a fig or two
 before he claims knowledge of that tree. What's more, he insists this is the oldest and best way to know anything. 

Ron:
Some critiques of Pragmatism imply that James realized he was following in the tradition of
Socrates, Aristotle, Hume,Locke..and one could argue Jesus, Lao Tsu, Gautama..ect..
The point being that Pragmatism may not be as reveolutionary as some would like to
believe. The little I read of Rorty so far suggests to me that he, as well as Aristotle
recogizes in an empirical way that experience is indeed relative, plural and infinite.
That through complexity a unity of experience emerges... through these complexities
these hanging togethers of meaning ever and ever more simplifications of value emerge.
Truth then is a complexity of value that emerges as what we mean by the word truth.








                        
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