[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[david buchanan]

Steve replied to Marsha:

The problem for DMB of course is that he wants to support this theory of truth but deny the relativism it entails. After years of attacking Rorty for being a relativist, DMB now claims that Rorty wasn't "audacious" enough in his relativism because Rorty didn't have the balls to say that the earth wasn't round until people thought it was round. Let me be clear that I don't think that there is anything dangerous about the relativism of Marsha, DMB, James, and Pirsig. It is DMB who thinks there is some big danger in relativism. My problem in this thread has always been to expose DMB's attacks on Rorty as a relativist as having occurred over a background of DMB maintaining a relativistic theory of truth himself.

dmb says:

Well, no. The painting gallery analogy tells us that pragmatic truth is plural and provisional. The pragmatic theory of truth has standards of coherence, usefulness and agreement with experience. It is a form of empiricism, even when held separately from radical empiricism, and so it can't rightly be called a relativism. I can see how it could look that way, because, as James puts it, "to a certain extent, everything here is plastic". 

Think of the paintings in the gallery in terms of the non-Euclidean geometry. Pluralism doesn't mean simply "true for me, not true for you". It means there can be more than one valid hypothesis for any given set of data. There is more than one way to map any given territory. Each one still has to make sense and work and be internally consistent and all the other standards. The most important point in being a pluralist is to deny the idea of a single, objective truth, one that supposedly corresponds to a non-human objective reality. 

Rorty definitely agrees with the provisional nature of truth. Copernicus, Newton and Einstein showed us that truth changes as time goes by and Rorty was pals with Thomas Kuhn, after all. I don't see why he would object to pluralism either. What he objects to is having truth theories and doing epistemology and, I think, that's what makes him a relativist. That's what saves Pirsig, James and Dewey from the same. Rorty goes along with the deconstruction project but when it comes time for reconstruction, Rorty bails out. I think he bailed without a chute.  

Why does Rorty think truth a lost cause? Why do Pirsig, James and Dewey think otherwise? That's the question. That's where their differences lie. It's metaphysical. When you see that, you'll understand why Rortyism is relativism and pragmatic empiricism ain't.

Why does Rorty put on the emphasis on language after rejecting the correspondence theory of truth? Douglas McDermid puts it in terms of Rorty's rejection of "Givenism". This, as you know, is also known as the "myth of the given", which says that "our judgements are justified by their relation to something extra-linguistic transcending our web of beliefs". For Rorty, he says, "the true nature of this relation is not rational, but causal" and this notion was "central to Rorty's attack on Givenism". As Rorty puts it: "The notion of a 'theory of knowledge' will not make sense unless we have confused causation and justification in the manner of Locke" (Rorty 1979:152). He also says the world in itself is "sublimely indifferent to the attentions we lavish upon it" (Rorty 1972:12). This is how Hildebrand reads it too. "Rorty ..insists that the objects are there before minds come along and remain what they were while being known", Hildebrand says, and this is "consistent with his anti-realism, which needs to give a nod to the reality of objective things so that it may then argue that access to them is not just impracticable, but impossible." (111)


You see, Rorty has given up on the correspondence theory, but not the underlying metaphysical assumptions. That's why the end of the correspondence theory of truth, for Rorty, means the end of truth theories altogether. He's a physicalist who thinks we can never have access to physical reality. That is not exactly what Marx meant by alienation, but it is a very depressing picture of our situation. Somebody should write a sad country song about a dude named Dick who spent all his time drinking life through a straw, never getting enough and wondering why.


> > Anthony writes:
> > Intellectual values include truth, justice, freedom, democracy and,
> > trial by jury. It’s worth noting that the MOQ follows a pragmatic
> > notion of truth so truth is seen as relative in his system while
> > Quality is seen as absolute.  In consequence, the truth is defined
> > as the highest quality intellectual explanation at a given time.
> >
> > RMP:
> > If the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
> > provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One
> > can then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines
> > paintings in an art gallery...
> >      (McWatt,Anthony,MOQ Textbook)
 		 	   		  
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