[MD] Pirsig's theory of truth

[Steven Peterson]

Steve:

> dmb says:
> there are lots of different kinds of relativism but this little Wiki is very specific. It defines relativism as the view that justification is relative to the group and it describes Rorty's position as exactly that. You have both a definition and the reason for thinking Rorty fits that definition. I think this is about as clear as it can be.


Steve:

Hold on!!! Did you just finally provide a definition of relativism????

Okay, got it, so Rorty is a relativist in your mind because he thinks
that justification is relative to an audience. But do you think that
that statement does not apply to James and Pirsig? ow could truth be
relative to a person or audience for James and Pirsig while
justification is not? How could they hold a view of justification as
absolute while the truth that is being justified is only relative? I
mean, wshat if I simply ask, it TRUE that a a given belief is
justified? Aren't we then right back in the territory of the
relativism of truth for James and Pirsig?



DMB:
> Fourthly, the idea that everything is related to everything else simply isn't what we mean by relativism. To say that justification is "relative" to the group is not to say it is "related" to the group. That would not really be incorrect so much as empty and obvious. It means that the standards of justification depend entirely on the group and will therefore differ from group to group. We see this in the position that Rorty himself calls "ethnocentrism"



Steve:
But standards for justification DO and MUST vary from group to group
unless two people have the exact same experiences. Pirsig doesn't call
it ethnocentrism, but he has the same idea:

"The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they
come to it with different sets of analogues. He gave linguistic
examples, showing that to  us the Hindi letters da, da, and dha all
sound identical to us because we don't  have analogues to them to
sensitize us to their differences. Similarly, most  Hindi-speaking
people cannot distinguish between da and the because they are  not so
sensitized. It is not uncommon, he said, for Indian villagers to see
ghosts. But they have a terrible time seeing the law of gravity. This,
he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students
arrives  at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions. They all
have relatively
similar backgrounds and similar knowledge. But if a group of foreign
students  were brought in, or, say, medieval poems out of the range of
class experience  were brought in, then the students' ability to rank
Quality would probably not  correlate as well. In a sense, he said,
it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him.  People differ
about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because  people
are different in terms of experience."


It seems to me that if "relativism" amounts to "justification is
relative to an audience," and if you find that to be a big problem,
then your bigger problem is with Pirsig rather than Rorty.

Best,
Steve