[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
This is not to say that radical empiricism may not do anything extra for you in terms of metaphysics, it is just that it doesn't do anything for you in terms epistemology that we can't have in other ways.

dmb says:

Well, people like me and Sam Harris disagree. I think Rortyism introduces the kind of relativism that prevents us from being able to handle all kinds of problems. The problem with pragmatism has always been the proverbial Nazi or fundamentalist who says fascism or bible-thumping is true for his purposes. Rorty openly admits that he has no way to get past this problem. And Sam Harris tells us that Rorty's pragmatism won't help us negotiate the difference between a culture that wishes they could all be California girls in Bikinis and a culture where having a tan is punishable by imprisonment and being raped is punishable by death. (The rapist gets a stern scolding.)

You see, Pirsig is doing an East-West fusion, which only makes sense given our historical context, whereas Rorty thinks we're trapped within our provincial perspectives. I think that is intellectually paralyzing and wrong for other reasons too. But mostly, it doesn't work in this world. We desperately need standards of truth that rest on something more than Rorty can offer. Recent history shows that evidence matters. We went to war despite the lack of it and the Republican Neocons in charge at the time believed that "perception is reality" and mocked their Democratic opponents as members the "reality-based community". A man who works as a spokesman for whatever cause his public relations agency is being paid to advocate explained that in his business, facts are optional. I kid you not. The notion of truth has literally turned into a matter of cash value, as in "how much cash can I make". In the case of the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the premise of the war, truth was a matter of life and death. (Truth lost, death won.) And so even nonchalance toward the issue of truth (not to mention lies, bullshit and propaganda) has always struck me as a kind of evil. It's not just an academic issue, although it's that too. 

If Susan Haack is right, Rorty is responsible for launching an army of pretentious dilettantes who don't even understand the questions, let alone the implications of Rorty's answers. Personally, I think she goes a bit too far and her anger is predicated on a certain fondness for Pierce, who was barely distinguishable from a positivists, but I also think she has a good point. There is this simple minded adoption of the notion that since we can't have "THEE Truth", we can't have anything theory of truth at all. You know, because it can only be useless or a step backward into foundationalism.    


Steve said:


Let me and that one thing that radical empiricism is quite good for is critiquing traditional "sense impression" empricism as not being empirical enough. As a form of anti-foundationalism it is good stuff. But when it gets reasserted later as a quasi-foundation for supporting epistemology it is either useless or a step backward into foundationalism.



dmb says:

That's exactly what Rorty says about Dewey. And Dewey's defenders say that is exactly where Rorty goes wrong. That's exactly where this Pirsig defender says you go wrong. This is very much related to my long-standing complaint that Rorty defines the issues too narrowly and in terms of the failed theories. To say you can't do epistemology without foundationalism is like saying you can't have morals without God. It's like saying you can't do astronomy without the crystalline spheres or you can't have creatures without a creator. We can understand how these pairings made sense at certain periods in history but why insist on retaining them? That would mean giving up on epistemology, astronomy and creatures. 

C'mon Steve, we throw out the bath water but we want to keep the clean, dry baby. We can do without value-free objectivity, but we want the science. We want our knowledge to be empirically based without dismissing everything that can't be reduced to that which is directly observable. We can do without "THEE single exclusive Truth". We do want many excellent paintings in the gallery of truth and of course we need some standards of excellence if we're going to be critics of those paintings.


Contrary to your apparent impression that pragmatic truth is a personal "true for me" kind of thing, the pragmatic theory of truth is aimed at belief systems as a whole. Worldviews. That's what's in the gallery, no? For James, personal volition only comes into the equation in those cases where the choice can NOT be decided on the basis of evidence. And even then, it has to be what he calls a "live option", there's something about the choice that you find genuinely compelling. And even then, it also has about something very important to the way you live your live, it has to be "momentous". But the pragmatic theory is never supposed to be at odds with the evidence. James was only pointing out that sometimes the evidence won't help, that many different worldviews can be equally supported by the evidence. And sometimes we must choose from among them. That's how saw Empiricism and Absolutism. He could see the logic of the latter and yet he was sicken and suffocated by the picture it offered. The subscribers he described as prigs, and the thought itself as too clean-shaven and buttoned up for his tastes.


See, James wanted to be an artist, but dad made him go to medical school instead. So he invented psychology and became a philosopher, perhaps as an act of revenge. In any case, the man was an artist and I think Pirsig's painting gallery analogy is exactly the kind of thing he'd love and cheer. He'd say "Yea, THAT is what I'm talking about". 

Of course there's a lot of paint-by-number stuff that really doesn't merit the nail on which to hang it in the gallery. Those are the ones that depict worldviews that are not based on the evidence. Those are just finger paintings of wishful thinking. That kind of "true for me", self-indulgent nonsense is not pragmatic truth. Personally, I think people who buy into that are just buying into autism or narcissism or something else that's not philosophical at all. Sadly, this is what college kids are getting out of Rorty these days, much to Haack's horror. I've sat and watched my professors cringe at some expression of relativism and brace themselves for the task of issuing yet another set of disclaimers. I mean, it was quite obvious they'd been through it all before. I've seen it up close at least twice. So I tend to sympathize with Haack on that much at least.















 		 	   		  
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