[MD] DMB and Rorty

[david buchanan]

Matt said:
What additional condition is there for truth?  Claim-X being true, in addition to justified.  But since justification is our only route to truth, it does in a sense make justification sufficient: justification is _experientially_ sufficient for a claim of truth.  But since new experience will never end, no claim is ever assured eternal sufficiency.  Which is why justification cannot be theoretically sufficient, even if it is practically.  Because as long as shit keeps popping in and out of the little circumscribed bubble called the "genre of 'all cases of Trues,'" we know the circle isn't practically helpful.  Hence Steve siding with Rorty in saying that there's not too much point in having a theory of truth.



Ron replied:
Exactly why isn't it helpful? Why must eternal sufficiency be met? I think this is where Dave's criticism is leveled. Your assertion that any claim of truth, on the basis that it can not be eternally sufficed, isn't practically helpful is a criticism based on the notion of having to meet some sort of eternal sufficiency. 


dmb says:

Ron sees it. Apparently, this notion of eternal sufficiency is what leads Steve to insist that truth and justification are two different things. But I'm saying that truth AS eternal sufficiency is a meaningless concept. That doesn't mean there is no truth. It only means there is no eternal truth. It means truth is provisional. It means that truth can only ever be what's justified. Anything more than that is just an abstract ideal, a very misleading one at that. And of course you're not going to get a such a static theory of truth from James or Pirsig. They paint of picture of reality that is fluid, dynamic and a picture of consciousness that is likened to a stream. You know, one of those slippery wet things that you can never step in twice. What sense would a standard like "eternal sufficiency" make in a world like that? None.

I'd repeat Ron's first question. How do you figure that there is no point in knowing what is currently within the circle of truth? Why should we abandon truth just because we no longer define it in terms of eternity? I think it is completely ridiculous to expect anything like eternal truth and such a notion has no business in any serious discussion of the meaning of truth. It's really just a idealized reference to future justification anyway. But if you've already stipulated that truth is provisional, then you're not shocked or humiliated or even mildly surprised when new truths replace the old ones. 



 		 	   		  
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