[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Ian,

Ian said:
> Hmmmm Steve ,,, not really ...
>
> I wouldn't / didn't say "the same thing as" that would be a
> categorical ontological statement about what truth "is".

Steve:
I don't know what you are referring to here.

Ian:
> Justified belief is more useful than truth ... so let's talk about it
> (instead of "asserting" truth) but we've just shifted the problem to
> the process(es) of justification ... of one idea, conclusion, decision
> being "better" than another (vis the Pierce example)

Steve:
Yes, the issue is epistemic, it is about how we justify our beliefs.
Rorty is saying, let's talk about that instead of touting a theory of
truth as "what works." As a theory of truth "what works" doesn't work.
It doesn't distinguish a true belief from a justified belief.


Ian:
> Dave is no sissy, and doesn't need my defense, but I doubt that
> rhetoric .... of what he "thinks / is trying to say / make" as
> justified = "whatever we feel justified" .... was within a million
> miles of what he was actually saying. (Jamesian) Radical empiricism is
> more than the subjective feeling of experiencing justification, but
> even without that the (Pirsigian) quality we experience is a
> multi-patterned & many-layered thing.

Steve:
I'm not trying to belittle justification at all. I'm say that we can
be really really justified in the most convincing most radically
radical empiricist way imaginable in believing something that just
isn't true. I am saying that what one person is completely justified
in believing is often different from what another person is justified
in believing. I am saying what people were justified in believing in
the past is different from what we are justified in believing now. To
me, all this is a problem for DMB who wants to dismiss truth as simply
justified belief. This has been the standing critique on James since
the beginning--he has conflated justification and truth. This is what
kept Pierce from agreeing with James. This is what kept Dewey jumping
back and forth from agreeing with James to agreeing with Pierce to
eventually just avoiding the issue and talking about "warranted
assertibility."

As Putnam said:
"Truth cannot simply be rational acceptability for one fundamental
reason; truth is supposed to be a property of a statement that cannot
be lost, whereas justification can be lost. The statement 'The earth
is flat' was, very likely, rationally acceptable 3000 years ago; but
it is not rationally acceptable today. Yet it would be wrong to say
that 'the earth is flat' was true 3,000 years ago; for that would mean
that the earth has changed its shape."

All the correction that is needed to DMB's thinking, by the way, is
what Rorty says here:

Rorty:
"Truth is, to be sure, an absolute notion, in the following sense:
"true for me but not for you" and "true in my culture but not in
yours" are weird, pointless locutions. So is "true then, but not now."
[...] James would, indeed, have done better to say that phrases like
"the good in the way of belief" and "what it is better for us to
believe" are interchangeable with "justified" rather than with "true."

As you say, it is a matter of semantics. I think DMB ought to stop
saying that what he and James are talking about is truth rather than
justification simply to avoid "wierd, pointless locutions." Here is a
guy who thinks that the biggest problem in he world is relativism, but
he himself has a notion of truth as "true for me but not for you" and
"true in my culture but not in yours" and "true then, but not now."
His point about relativism would make more sense if he could say that
slavery was always wrong wherever and whenever it was practiced
regardless of whether or not anyone was able to ride the belief in the
morality of slavery to successful action.

Best,
Steve