[MD] Realism and anti-realism

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Dan, Matt, etc:
DMB ... insists that "truth" needs to be disentangled from the notion of objectivity in favor of the pragmatic theory of truth which says that saying something is true means no more nor less than that the belief is justified in a particular time and place. Justification cannot be distinguished from truth, he says. Otherwise, the only alternative is the SOM correspondence notion of truth. Obviously I disagree.


dmb says:
Well, no. I don't insist that SOM's correspondence theory is the only alternative to pragmatic truth. It just so happens that YOU invoked that dualism in YOUR defense of the distinction between truth and justification. Your example of the flat earth pushed back against pragmatism by contrasting our beliefs with the actual shape of the planet. If you have a way to maintain the distinction between truth and justification that doesn't invoke the correspondence theory, the appearance/reality distinction or some other form of Platonism, I'd be glad to hear it. 

Steve quoted Pirsig:
"what guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through the communications that we have with other men we receive from them ready-made harmonious reasonings. We know that these reasonings do not come from us and at the same time we recognize in them, because of their harmony, the work of reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these reasonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is that we know we haven't been dreaming. It is this harmony, this quality if you will, that is the sole basis for the only reality we can ever know."


Steve commented on the quote:
Apparently Pirsig didn't see any non-conversation constraints on knowledge, either. I would add here when Pirsig says that the piles of analogues upon analogues is the only reality "we can ever know," that that reality is all we ever mean by "reality." We only get into SOM when we think of comparing that reality to some more real reality. ... to say that the world was roundish even before people were in any position to justify that belief, is _not_ to backslide into SOM. It is merely to value some reasoning that harmonizes well with our sensations and other valued sets of reasonings. It is not to assert (nor to deny) a _real_ reality compared to which our conceptions are mere shadows.



dmb says:

Sensations are the non-conversational restraints. Sensations are among the empirical, non-conversational restraints. This is the part you're breezing over, as if it were among the valued sets of harmonious reasonings. As James put it, the pragmatic truth is wedged and controlled by two factors, the conceptual order and the empirical flux. In other words, pragmatic truth includes the conversational constraints BUT it also says this is only half of the story, that conversational constraints (intersubjectivity) are not the ONLY kind. Not only that, the MOQ prioritized empirical reality over our conceptual and intellectual reasonings. The MOQ wants to make ideas subservient and secondary while Rorty says these secondary things are the ONLY things.

Isn't it clear by now that empiricism makes all the difference? That's what James and Pirsig have that you don't have. James and Pirisg can be radically empirical while Rorty isn't empirical at all. How is even plausible to deny a difference like that, a difference that stark and epic?