[MD] DMB and Rorty

[david buchanan]

DMB said:
"The correspondence theory is just one particular answer to the question of truth and knowledge but because that particular answer has failed, he concludes that we should abandon the questions too."



Steve replied:

...before I respond to your post, it would be helpful if you explained what you see as "the question of truth and knowledge" that you keep referring to if it is not to ask about the fundamental nature of the True and the Good.



dmb says:

You already have a good idea from the debate we recently had about the pragmatic theory truth. In the eyes of a pragmatist, truth and knowledge are not eternal and they're not spelled with capital letters. We just want to which ideas actually work in the course of experience and which one's don't. We just want to know the difference between good ideas and bad ideas, between wishes and actualities. The question of truth is just, "What's true?" and not "What is the fundamental nature of truth?" or "What do all true sentences have in common?". 

The point is that you not only CAN have a theory of truth and an epistemology without being a Platonists, you have to have a position about what's true and what's real or you wouldn't be able to think or talk about anything. So that's where the charge of all-or-nothingism comes in. I think it's a mistake to search for the Platonic essence of truth or the objective truth but I also think it's just as big a mistake, maybe even bigger, to say we have no constraints on truth except conversation. As I see it, language and ideas come from experience. Abstractions are what allow us to apply the lessons of past experiences to similar situations in the future. These abstractions, when they successfully guide us, are made true in the course of experience. In that sense, ideas and language function within experience, not just within its own structures. That's part of the reason that truth is still empirical for James and Pirsig. It has to makes sense and be communicable of course, but truth is agreement with experience and that's all it can ever mean. 

  		 	   		  
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