[MD] : Thus Spake Lila...

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
Protagoras:  “Man is the measure of all things.”, or as Lila might have interpreted it ‘All beliefs are true if you believe them.’ 


dmb says:

Marsha think all beliefs are true if you believe them, and yet she has no idea why anyone would call her a relativist or why anyone would object to her interpretation of truth.

Is it just me or is that a silly, silly, vacuous thing to say? Doesn't Pirsig say that beliefs are true to the extent that they work AS beliefs? Yes, and James's pragmatism will fill in the details of what that means for anyone who's interested in knowing about truth as "a species of the good". Ideas only become true in experience, when they are put to work in reality. And that's where our beliefs are wedged and controlled by the sensible flux (DQ) and the conceptual order (sq). That's what our truths have to answer to and beliefs are certainly not true just because they are believed. Without action, beliefs are literally meaningless. 

I mean, try ACTING on the belief that all beliefs are true. And then just watch as disaster unfolds. You will almost certainly crash and burn, maybe even literally.