[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Steve,

No, I think I do get DMB, he said exactly what I said he'd say ...
ie he "does NOT say truth is "whatever we feel justified in believing"."
His emphasis not mine.

Back to what I'd said ... You said
 "I don't see any difference between "Ian says that X is true" and
"Ian says he believes that X."

I believe you don't, but that's your problem. (Your's notice, not mine
... it's you that doesn't see any difference.)

The first statement is low quality because it introduces the ambiguity
(in whether Ian simply believes X to be a justifiable assertion or
whether Ian understands X to be an objective fact independent of ....
anything else, or maybe both ... ) ... like why would Ian even choose
to insert the word true, rather that just assert X ? Short-hand (true
is just four letters and one syllable long) for everyday conversation,
where you don't really care about the difference, so you allow
yourself to ignore or blur the ambiguity, because you understood we
were trying to catch a bus, not having a metaphysical conversation. We
deliberately blur the definition of true. Choosing to ignore the
difefrence between two things is not the same as saying there is no
difference between them, for ALL intents and purposes.

The second says what it means, exactly what it says on the tin and no
more. Any basis of why I believe it is not part of what is said ... it
means the same whether we are trying to catch that bus or dawdle along
having a metaphysical discourse ... a separate question, a separate
assertion.

Hopefully you could tell (from the Huh ?) that I couldn't quite
believe the (invented) Pirsig quote - if he had written it he would
have to have been joking, (as I said). It sounded more like
Wittgenstein toying with Russell ... another joker making fatuous
comic logical statements, in order to demonstrate that logical
statements were fatuous ... which I also said, but deleted before I
sent, oddly enough.

Regards
Ian


On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ian,
>
> Ian:
>> First point the one you didn't get ...
>> You had said
>> "I agree that it is indeed the same thing to assert that something is
>> true and to assert that you are justified in believing that same
>> something."
>>
>> I said politely, no, you're not agreeing because I didn't say it was
>> "the same thing" - I said they are different conversations, one
>> useless (without quality), one useful (with quality).
>
> Steve
> Let X be any assertion. I don't see any difference between "Ian says
> that X is true" and "Ian says he believes that X."