[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,

> Steve said:
> DMB of course disagrees. ... Everything he says about truth ought to be said about justification instead. We are better off leaving truth to semantics to avoid all the "true for you, not for me" and "true then, false now" sort of nonsense.
>
>
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> dmb says:
>
> There you go again. Instead of dealing with my case honestly, you put quotes around silly, trivial distortions of what you wish I'd said. The nonsense, sir, is all yours. I mean, really Steve. It looks like you're constructing straw men to avoid case I actually made.

Steve:
This is no straw man argument. You specifically said that "the earth
is flat" used to be true. Now it is of course false and "the earth is
roundish" is true. Such "true for you, not for me" and "true then,
false now" business is your nonsense, not mine.


DMB:
You insist that justification has to be distinct from truth and yet
you can't even say what that precious concept means.

Steve:
I don't insist that your concept of truth must distinguish between
truth and justification. I'm just pointing out that your concept of
truth doesn't do that and then entails all that "true for you, not for
me" and "true then, false now" business that I would prefer to avoid.

And I can indeed "say what that precious concept means." I you the
word truth as follows: When I say that the assertion "X" is true, I
mean that X. This is where you yawn and say that that is a boring
unhelpful definition of truth, but I am happy to have a boring
unhelpful definition of truth since I don't think that there is any
mileage we are going to get out of truth as distinct from
justification other than the notion that what we are justified in
believing may not be true.


DMB:
This is the part you can't deal with, or explain. This is what makes
your position so incoherent. How can truth transcend justification?


Steve:
Truth (in my view) transcends justification because some things that
are true cannot be justified as true. For example, there either are or
are not an even number of birds flying right now despite the fact that
there is no way to verify it one way or the other. There either is or
is not intelligent life elsewhere in the universe right now whether we
have any way to know the answer to the question right now. In the
Jamesian view, the assertion "there is intelligent life elsewhere in
the universe" is literally true precisely to the extent that belief in
this assertion can be ridden to successful action and is also
simultaneously literally false to the extent that it cannot be ridden
to successful action. I don't think that there is anything inherently
wrong with James's conception of truth. I just think he is using the
word "truth" in a strange way that doesn't not distinguish between
what is true and what we are justified in believing. I think it would
be better for him to say that he was talking about justification
whenever he said he was talking about truth.

Truth/justified belief is a distinction that I think is worth keeping,
but if you are comfortable with "true for you, not for me" and "true
then, false now" and the fact that you will always need to defend your
position against charges of relativism (a phoney problem in my book),
then you should go along with James. What is strange to me is that you
are one of those people that likes to accuse others of relativism as
though there is something in that term that ought to scare us, so it
would seem to me that you wouldn't want to have a relativistic
definition of truth.


DMB:
 You're turning an abstract concept into something by which to judge
the actual concrete reality from which it was abstracted in the first
place. It's just a generalization, not a god we aspire to. Truths are
made by humans. Period. James is saying truth can't mean anything more
than that.


Steve:
In my way of thinking, beliefs are made by humans. Some of them are
true and some of them are false. Our only way of determining which
beliefs are good to hold as true is through the human practice of
justification. I agree with Pierce and James and Dewey and Rorty that
inquiry is about resolving doubts, better justifying our beliefs, and
finding better beliefs rather than about getting closer to the truth.
"Closer to the truth" has no cash value in inquiry. The difference
between James and I is only that I am not willing to equate truth and
justified belief. I would just keep teh distinction as a reminder that
some of our beliefs are probably not true since some of the beliefs
that we were once justified in believing turned out to have been
false. You and James are content in such situations to say "true then,
false now." "The earth is flat" was true, but now it is false.
"Slavery is good" was true, now it is false.

I don't see the advantage in using the word truth in this way instead
of saying, as most people would, that what we once believed to be true
was false all along. What are you getting from your "audacity" in
calling truth rather than justified belief "what works"? This loss of
distinction between truth and justification must have some redeming
value, but I can't tell what that could be.

Best,
Steve