[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[david buchanan]

Steve said:

It isn't that I don't understand what James is saying. I just disagree with him. As for Pirsig, I am not convinced that he ought to be read as subscribing to the so-called pragmatic theory of truth. It is one thing to subscribe to fallibism--to assert that all beliefs ought to be held as subject to criticism and updated in light of new evidence and arguments--and another to not be able to say that people who once thought that the world is flat were wrong. To say that truth is provisional can mean that any belief that is currently held as true may turn out to be false. I'd like to think that that is what Pirsig means, but I could be wrong. Perhaps he does side with James.

dmb says:
Like I said, this objection entails the assumption that truth corresponds with an objective reality, namely a planet called Earth. But Pirsig had already rejected that notion of truth in the opening chapters of ZAMM, where he tells us that scary, scary ghost story. "The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized." (p42) You can see how it might be a problem to ask about the actual shape of the planet in light of this ghostly vision, no? "... the laws of physics and logic ... the number system... These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real." "The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton." (p41) By the same token, the flatness and roundness of the planet are both ghosts. Once upon a time, the idea of a round earth was useless. Until people needed to sail across oceans or do some kind of astronomy, there was no round earth. Until then, the earth was flat. "We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other peoples ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own." The question you pose tells me you're haunted by the ghost of objectivity. 


Long before he ever explicitly aligned himself with pragmatism or radical empiricism, it was already there. Take the painting gallery analogy from Lila, for example and compare it to his discussion of non-euclidian geometry.

"Mathematics, the cornerstone of scientific certainty, was suddenly uncertain. We now had TWO contradictory visions of unshakable scientific truth, true for all men of all ages, regardless of their individual preferences. This was the basis of the profound crisis that shattered the scientific complacency of the Gilded Age. How do we know which of these geometries is right? If there is no basis for distinguishing between them... The ultimate effect of the non-Euclidian geometries becomes nothing more that a magician's mumbo jumbo in which belief is sustained purely by faith! And of course once that door was opened..." (262)

This not only parallels the rival visions of truth in the art gallery analogy, it also fits nicely with what he says about the two kinds of maps, about SOM and the MOQ, etc., etc.. The idea here is that you can have multiple truths and they can all be considered true even if they don't agree with each other. Truth is not just provisional, it is also plural. These ghost gotta earn their keep, of course, they gotta work. Both kinds of mathematics were sound and useful and true, just like both maps work and are true. Without the correspondence theory of truth, Pirsig says in connection with the gallery analogy, it becomes possible for more that one set of truths to exist. 


Steve said:
We don't need correspondence theory to say that people were wrong when they thought that the world was flat. Saying "the earth is not now and never was flat in spite of what people once thought" doesn't have to mean that we think those folks had a belief that didn't correspond to reality. In pragmatic terms it means that a better habit of action was possible for them, specifically "the world is roundish," but they didn't avail themselves of this better belief. It means that we think that if they had had this belief (habit of action) they would have been able to better satisfy their desires.


dmb says:

I can almost go along with that, except that people probably believe what works until it doesn't work anymore. Habits of action that make sense in our space-age context might not make any sense to them. Even if they understood it and believed it and want to help spread the word, she might burned at the stake or crucified. Habits of action (by which i suppose you mean conceptual habits, verbal habits) are ghosts. 






 		 	   		  
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