[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[david buchanan]

Today, Steve said:

Again, that is just not what is normally meant by truth. You are of course free to try to win over people to a new way of using an old word, but I think the common sense notion of truth is worth keeping to keep track of what we used to believe to be true that turned out to actually be false or vice versa.



But yesterday, Steve said the opposite:

All I can see that you are getting out of radical empiricism from the point of view of epistemology in pragmatic terms is this: Some beliefs lead us to successful action and some do not. But then we already knew that.


dmb says:

So, on one day the pragmatic theory of truth adds nothing and only offers something we already knew but on the next day the pragmatic theory of truth is just not what is normally meant by truth. You're really not sure what to think of this theory, eh Steve? One day it's just common sense and the next day it defies common sense so profoundly that we shouldn't even call it truth.

But you see, Steve, there is a reason for using an old word in a new way. Some version of the correspondence theory of truth has existed for 25 centuries and that's the theory radical empiricism rejects. The fact that you are re-asserting this old notion of truth against pragmatism only shows that you have missed the central point. I mean, if they are disputing the traditional notions of "truth", then of course "truth" means something new. 

As I have tried to explain many times, by insisting on that traditional notion of "truth", you're insisting that we use failed concepts to define it. You're insisting that pragmatic truth be defined in the very terms it opposes. You're insisting on a definition of truth that has created fake problems throughout the history of philosophy and that the pragmatic theory of truth seeks to overcome.

I think that your objections only demonstrate a lack of comprehension.






  		 	   		  
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