[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Matt Kundert]

Oh yeah, don't anybody take me for being well read in 
semantics or linguistics.  I couldn't even tell you which 
"semantic pieces" people think are indispensible or primitive 
(though I think there's still debate--Robert Brandom thinks 
logical connectives can be reduced to two: the conditional 
and negation).  Pirsig makes a subtle slide from the S/O 
distinction to subjects and predicates in a passage in ZMM, 
and it's a slide I think we need to be very wary of.  I, 
personally, don't go in at all with the notion that because 
we diagram sentences the way we do there are 
metaphysical implications (some, like Bo, do).

On what I said about bivalence, the "mu" position is a good 
point to remember.  While all languages have to have 
certain things to function as fully expressive languages 
(able to do all the things natural languages can do, like 
produce an infinite number of sentences), not all particular 
sentences have all the same pieces.  Some, declaratives 
like "Go!", have very few indeed.  Michael Dummett, a 
long-time bigwig in analytic philosopher and major 
interpreter of Frege, made the presence and absence of 
bivalence key to his notion of "anti-realism," which was 
idealism's replacement in the Realism Wars for the 
Linguistic Theatre.

I don't know how it would really play out very far with Pirsig, 
though.  If I understand correctly, according to Dummett's 
terms, to think bivalence exists for all statements whether 
or not we have the means with which to determine which it 
is--true or false--is to think truth transcends evidence: 
which makes one a realist.  (On this score, you've been 
arguing to a realist position against DMB.)  To not think 
bivalence so applies is to be an anti-realist, which makes 
Pirsig an anti-realist/idealist.  Yet, on the other hand, 
Rorty thinks Dummett's frame is a bad one and for years 
urged that Davidson's philosophy of language commits one 
to going "beyond realism/antirealism" (which Arthur Fine, in 
the philosophy of science, was urging for years, too).

So, I don't know--I bet one can easily bring together "mu" 
with the cautionary use of true.  It seems like they each 
serve different epistemic functions, and it isn't clear why 
they'd get in the way of each other, despite a 
Dummett-like analysis.

Matt

> Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 14:34:49 -0400
> From: peterson.steve at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Pirsig's theory of truth
> 
> Steve:
> I don't know if you know enough about semantics to answer, but where
> would Pirsig's criticism of the bivalence of true/false (the aditional
> "mu" state) fit in here? I would expect that mu could be considered to
> be just as primitive in the sense that subjects, objects, predicates,
> verbs, nouns, logical connectives, and the valence of true/false are.
> Is the idea that every language has to have these pieces to function
> as a language?
> 
> It seems widely agreed in this forum that language is a social pattern
> (even though we MOQers can't seem to agree at all on different
> particular uses of language as being social or intellectual). This
> semantic analysis which says that subjects and objects are primitive
> language bits has implications for the MOQ in that subjects and
> objects in at least the semantic sense of the terms predate
> intellectual patterns (which of course undermines Bo's SOL theory for
> the 4th level).
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4