[MD] Truth as a word of caution

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mark,

> Mark:
> If I may jump in, I believe what MoQ is suggesting is that the "search
> for the Good" is more relevant to our daily actions than the "search
> for the Truth".  The search for the Truth implies looking for a thing
> that exists out there that needs to be found.  The search for the Good
> implies a personal action that is part of becoming.  We do not uncover
> Truth, we create it.  If it is Good, it remains.  "Thou shalt not
> kill" is an example of such a truth.  The Good should be emphasized
> more than the Truth, it is much less dogmatic.

Steve:
Like Pirsig, pragmatists also see true as a type of good in the sense
that the truth of a claim is always evaluated relative to the human
needs and interests that claim was made to support. Claims are not
"objectively" true or false which is to say that truth and falsity are
not properties of objects. Claims are neither good nor bad in and of
themselves (true or false _of_ something) but rather good or bad _for_
something. As Rorty put it, "On James’s view, “true” resembles “good”
or “rational” in being a normative notion, a compliment paid to
sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other
sentences which are doing so." So I agree with you of course that
truth isn't "out there." It is the word we use to describe sentences
that we think people ought to believe for some human purposes and for
some good reasons.

James wanted to equate the advisability of asserting S with the truth
of S, and for most purposes there is no pragmatic difference. But
sometimes it is good to hold our _reasons_ for believing S is true
independent from whether the _belief itself_ is true. A justified
belief belief may not be true, and we may have some true beliefs that
are not as of yet well-justified. Saying so is just to acknowledge
that we have sometimes been wrong in the past and may be wrong even
now.  Saying so is not to hold Truth as some objective thing that
exists "out there." It is just to say that some of our beliefs that
guided us to successful action in the past ended up failing us in the
long run and were replaced by better beliefs.

In doing so, we avoid violating such common sense notions as that the
world was always roundish even before anyone was justified in
believing that it is--that the earth didn't change shape when beliefs
about the world changed. Again, this is not a metaphysical claim about
the objectivity of "the truth about the world" but rather just one of
our every-day justified beliefs that either earns its keep or not,
specifically, our belief that believing something about the shape of
the world does not have a causal impact on the shape of the world.

Best,
Steve