[MD] Ron, Rorty and Truth

Mary marysonthego at gmail.com
Sat May 22 17:22:04 PDT 2010 

Hello John Wilkes Booth born in 1966,

[you said]
> But I claim that the specification for Truth specifies the empty set.
> 
> IN FACT IT MUST!

OUTSTANDING!  

Mary

- The most important thing you will ever make is a realization.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org [mailto:moq_discuss-
> bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Frank Booth
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 2:36 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Ron, Rorty and Truth
> 
> [Marsha]
> Call me stupid if it makes you feel good, but it seems to me
> the best that can be done is to start shifting the world-view from
> truth as about subjects and objects, or ideal forms, to truth
> as ever-changing, interdependent, impermanent, relative
> patterns.
> 
> [Frank]
> Hi stupid.
> 
> Didn't work. Still feel like shit.
> 
> There are two things:
> 
> There is a specification of Truth.
> 
> And there are things which satisfy the parameters of the specification
> of Truth.
> 
> Obviously two very different things.
> 
> The classical specification for Truth is a synonym for STATIC.
> 
> You want the specification to be a synonym for DYNAMIC.
> 
> But the classical specification of Truth is a high quality Intellectual
> pattern, possibly the highest. It seems to get us somewhere.
> 
> And what distinguishes the Intellect from the Social is greater
> freedom, i.e. DYNAMISM, EVOLUTION.
> 
> An interesting contradiction.
> 
> But I claim that the specification for Truth specifies the empty set.
> 
> IN FACT IT MUST!
> 
> Otherwise we would have some "thing" that would serve as the
> fundamental axiom and we would be able to build from it the ultimate
> metaphysics that would explain everything we want to know.
> 
> End of story.
> 
> ( cascade of cheers and applause, the sound of cash registers
> overheating and slot machines exploding, wild horses stampeding )
> 
> We need that empty set. Can't do without it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 8:09:33 AM
> Subject: Re: [MD] Ron, Rorty and Truth
> 
> 
> Steve,
> 
> Call me stupid if it makes you feel good, but it seems to me
> the best that can be done is to start shifting the world-view from
> truth as about subjects and objects, or ideal forms, to truth
> as ever-changing, interdependent, impermanent, relative
> patterns.
> 
> 
> Marsha
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On May 20, 2010, at 10:40 AM, MarshaV wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hi Steve,
> >
> > see below...
> >
> >
> > On May 20, 2010, at 9:05 AM, Steven Peterson wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Ron,
> >>
> >> Ron said:
> >>> Dave has provided several quotes over the course of this arguement.
> Which stated that Rorty felt that any epistomologial theory of truth is
> meaningless, Dave points out that this is true if one is speaking to
> the context of objective truth in an ontological way. Objective truth
> is culturally derrived. Pirsig and James remark how truth is a species
> of the good. Connecting truth and experience, that is why everyone can
> agree to "the good" but disagree over the truth.
> >>
> >> Steve:
> >> I don't think that Pirsig thinks that people agree about "the good"
> >> any more than they do about the truth.
> >>
> >> Rorty agrees with Pirsig about the notion that truth is a sort of
> >> good. What he doubts (I think along with Pirsig) is the possibility
> of
> >> coming up with a theory about what MAKES all true statements good--
> the
> >> essence of Truth. He thinks it is pointless to ask, what is that
> >> common feature that all true sentences share other than goodness? No
> >> answers to that question have ever helped us say more true things or
> >> distinguish true beliefs from false ones. Pirsig points to common
> ways
> >> that we verify beliefs (logical consistency, coherence with other
> >> beliefs we take to be true, economy of explanation, agreement with
> >> experience), but like Rorty, he doesn't think that truth has an
> >> essence we can get at with a theory. That is what Rorty means by
> >> saying that he sees the pragmatist theory of truth as a deflationary
> >> theory says that truth is not the sort of thing one should expect to
> >> have a philosophically interesting theory about. In Pirsig's terms,
> to
> >> say that a sentence is true is to say no more and no less than that
> it
> >> is a high quality intellectual pattern of value. In Rorty's terms,
> to
> >> say that a belief is true is to say that, as far as we know, no
> other
> >> habit of action is a better habit of action.
> >>
> >>
> >> Rorty in his Introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism:
> >> "The essays in this book are attempts to draw consequences
> pragmatist
> >> theory about truth. This theory says that truth is not the sort of
> >> thing one should expect to have a philosophically interesting theory
> >> about. from a For pragmatists, “truth” is just the name of a
> property
> >> which all true statements share. It is what is common to “Bacon did
> >> not write Shakespeare,” “It rained yesterday,” “E = mc2” “Love is
> >> better than hate,” “The Allegory of Painting was Vermeer’s best
> work,”
> >> “2 plus 2 is 4,” and “There are nondenumerable infinities.”
> >> Pragmatists doubt that there is much to be said about this common
> >> feature. They doubt this for the same reason they doubt that there
> is
> >> much to be said about the common feature shared by such morally
> >> praiseworthy actions as Susan leaving her husband, America joining
> the
> >> war against the Nazis, America pulling out of Vietnam, Socrates not
> >> escaping from jail, Roger picking up litter from the trail, and the
> >> suicide of the Jews at Masada. They see certain acts as good ones to
> >> perform, under the circumstances, but doubt that there is anything
> >> general and useful to say about what makes them all good. The
> >> assertion of a given sentence – or the adoption of a disposition to
> >> assert the sentence, the conscious acquisition of a belief – is a
> >> justifiable, praiseworthy act in certain circumstances. But, a
> >> fortiori, it is not likely that there is something general and
> useful
> >> to be said about what makes All such actions good-about the common
> >> feature of all the sentences which one should acquire a disposition
> to
> >> assert.
> >>
> >> Pragmatists think that the history of attempts to isolate the True
> or
> >> the Good, or to define the word “true” or “good,” supports their
> >> suspicion that there is no interesting work to be done in this area.
> >> It might, of course, have turned out otherwise. People have, oddly
> >> enough, found something interesting to say about the essence of
> Force
> >> and the definition of “number.” They might have found something
> >> interesting to say about the essence of Truth. But in fact they
> >> haven’t. The history of attempts to do so, and of criticisms of such
> >> attempts, is roughly coextensive with the history of that literary
> >> genre we call “philosophy” – a genre founded by Plato. So
> pragmatists
> >> see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. This
> >> does not mean that they have a new, non-Platonic set of answers to
> >> Platonic questions to offer, but rather that they do not think we
> >> should ask those questions any more. When they suggest that we not
> ask
> >> questions about the nature of Truth and Goodness, they do not invoke
> a
> >> theory about the nature of reality or knowledge or man which says
> that
> >> “there is no such thing” as Truth or Goodness. Nor do they have a
> >> “relativistic” or “subjectivist” theory of Truth or Goodness. They
> >> would simply like to change the subject. They are in a position
> >> analogous to that of secularists who urge that research concerning
> the
> >> Nature, or the Will, of God does not get us anywhere. Such
> secularists
> >> are not saying that God does not exist, exactly; they feel unclear
> >> about what it would mean to affirm His existence, and thus about the
> >> point of denying it. Nor do they have some special, funny, heretical
> >> view about God. They just doubt that the vocabulary of theology is
> one
> >> we ought to be using. Similarly, pragmatists keep trying to find
> ways
> >> of making anti-philosophical points in non-philosophical language.
> For
> >> they face a dilemma if their language is too unphilosophical, too
> >> “literary,” they will be accused of changing the subject; if it is
> too
> >> philosophical it will embody Platonic assumptions which will make it
> >> impossible for the pragmatist to state the conclusion he wants to
> >> reach.
> >>
> >> All this is complicated by the fact that “philosophy,” like “truth”
> >> and “goodness,” is ambiguous. Uncapitalised, “truth” and “goodness”
> >> name properties of sentences, or of actions and situations.
> >> Capitalised, they are the proper names of objects – goals or
> standards
> >> which can be loved with all one’s heart and soul and mind, objects
> of
> >> ultimate concern. Similarly, “Philosophy” can mean simply what
> Sellars
> >> calls “an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense
> of
> >> the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the
> term.”
> >> Pericles, for example, was using this sense of the term when he
> >> praised the Athenians for “philosophising without unmanliness”
> >> (philosophein aneu malakias). In this sense, Blake is as much a
> >> philosopher as Fichte, Henry Adams more of a philosopher than Frege.
> >> No one would be dubious about philosophy, taken in this sense. But
> the
> >> word can also denote something more specialised, and very dubious
> >> indeed. In this second sense, it can mean following Plato’s and
> Kant’s
> >> lead, asking questions about the nature of certain normative notions
> >> (e.g., “truth,” “rationality,” “goodness”) in the hope of better
> >> obeying such norms. The idea is to believe more truths or do more
> good
> >> or be more rational by knowing more about Truth or Goodness or
> >> Rationality. I shall capitalise the term “philosophy” when used in
> >> this second sense, in order to help make the point that Philosophy,
> >> Truth, Goodness, and Rationality are interlocked Platonic notions.
> >> Pragmatists are saying that the best hope for philosophy is not to
> >> practise Philosophy. They think it will not help to say something
> true
> >> to think about Truth, nor will it help to act well to think about
> >> Goodness, nor will it help to be rational to think about
> Rationality."
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> Steve
> >>
> >
> >
> > And???   Shall I sing:
> >
> > Is that all there is, is that all there is
> >
> > If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
> >
> > Let's break out the booze and have a ball
> >
> > If that's all there is
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
> >
> >
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> 
> 
> ___
> 
> 
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