[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Craig, Matt,


On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:00 PM,  <craigerb at comcast.net> wrote:
> "The MOQ says that Quality comes first which produces ideas
> which produce what we know as matter."
>
> Perhaps this refers to "theoretical" matter (such as quarks) &
> not things like apes.


Steve:
Whether there are separate sorts of things like apes and ideas is an
ontological question rather than an epistemological question.
I think for Rorty as well as for Pirsig, quarks are as real as apes.
Neither is "just an idea" more than the other or anything else. Ideas
are different sorts of things than are apes, but they aren't thought
of as of a different ontological kind (for Pirsig, they are both
static quality), pragmatically they just have different purposes and
uses and different relations to human interests.

I mentioned sorting out epistemology from ontology as far as realism,
and I think the issue is something like this. Idealism is an answer to
an epistemological ratherthan an ontological question. It concerns how
we can know what it is real. For idealists, ideas come first
(epistemologically) among the things that can be known, and we never
actually know an ape as anything other than an idea of an ape. For
Pirsig, Quality is known even before ideas, so he isn't a true
idealist. But he isn't a realist since he certainly doesn't think that
matter or anything else nonhuman "comes first."

I suspect Rorty just isn't too interested in the "what comes first"
epistemology game because it doesn't do much in helping us figure out
which sentences are true for issues that might be more likely to make
our lives better than "what comes first" considerations. He's happy to
say that we DO know quarks and apes and ideas because we can use
quarks and apes and ideas for whatever purposes we can make them
useful. That sort of "using" is all that "knowing" means to a
pragmatist.

Best,
Steve