[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi all,

I was going to comment that this (nevertheless interesting) thread was
descending into a purely definitional one in terms of the word truth,
then I noticed Matt had already said it better (quoting Davidson)

"truth is a semantic notion, not an epistemic one"

And therefore not an important one to Pirsig (or any pragmatist),
where truth value (quality) is what matters. So abandoning a
definition of truth to the obscurity of language - a la Rorty - is
... errr ... pragmatic (if not audacious).

It is good / useful / better to treat gravity as existing before
Newton, in developing causal explanations and justifications for
things now, related to things past - but of no value to debate whether
that means it is / was true (or not).

Someone here coined "relationalism" to avoid semantic debates about
"relativism" vs "foundationalism" too - that might help us ?
Relationships matter, but to be relative in some arbitrary subjective
sense is pretty well useless.

And finally Bo's point ...

>    ".... the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the
>    sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of
>    anything, Quality existed."
>
> I do NOT oppose that inside the MOQ quality has existed for ever but
> THIS QUALITY IS THE DQ OF THE DQ/SQ CONFIGURATION not a
> Quality that exists independent of the MOQ.
>

Is also a semantic argument, about the word "quality" as used in a
particular sentence.
Yes, Bo, the quality that pre-existed was a "potential" for quality, a
DQ from which more static patterns might emerge.
It is simply good to treat the MoQ "as if" it had existed before being
intellectually expressed (See Gravity above).

Regards
Ian
PS come back Paul Turner