[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Matt,


Matt:
> 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.)

Steve:
I wouldn't say that bivalence exists for ALL statements. I just think
that bivalence CAN exist even for statements for which no verification
is possible. As pragmatists we probably can't be realists but can we
be anti-anti-realists? (I sometimes cheer for Putnam when he used
"anti-realist" as an epithet.) Isn't pragmatism is supposed to be a
"none of the above" in the realism/idealism debate? I'm not sure what
the issues are actually. I suppose there are epistemic and ontologic
aspects to untangle?



Matt:
>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).


I think this Pirsig LC annotation is shows Pirsig as an anti-anti-realist:
"Bohr’s “observation” and the MOQ’s “quality event” are the same, but
the contexts are different. The difference is rooted in the historic
chicken-and-egg controversy over whether matter came first and
produces ideas, or ideas come first and produce what we know as
matter. The MOQ says that Quality comes first which produces ideas
which produce what we know as matter. The scientific community that
has produced Complementarity, almost invariably presumes that matter
comes first and produces ideas. However, as if to further the
confusion, the MOQ says that the idea that matter comes first is a
high quality idea!"

By the same token, I think that though justification is our only route
to truth and truth cannot be used as the goal of inquiry, it is still
a good idea to keep truth as a separate notion from justification. An
argument along the lines as the above is how I would like to read
Pirsig on the matter, but Ant said he was a relativist with resepect
to truth, and Pirsig I suppose went along with it.

Best,
Steve