[MD] Taking words Seriously

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
What pragmatists like myself want to do away with is precisely your (and Pirsig's?) notion that our concepts must answer to reality. Instead, concepts must earn their keep with respect to our purposes. The quality of an idea lies not in some proper hooking up between concepts and reality (this is a correspondence theory of truth that pragmatists reject) but instead lies in the extent to which it helps us achieve our goals.



dmb says:
You are repeating the same mistake again. You are misreading the pragmatist's insistence that our ideas must agree with reality as if Pirsig and James were insisting on the correspondence theory of truth. That is simply wrong. Pragmatism is a very empirical theory of truth but you are following Rortyism and that is very different. Like I said, you and Matt are misconstruing the MOQ, pragmatism and radical empiricism because you're trying to read them through Rorty's so-called pragmatism. As a result, you are only rejecting your own misinterpretation. And it's no wonder that DQ evaporates into nothing. You're trying to see radical empiricism with some very anti-empirical eyes. That is never going to work. Besides that, Pirsig and James both reject the correspondence theory of truth quite explicitly on their way to constructing the pragmatic theory of truth so that you really don't have any excuse for reading this so badly. The correspondence theory goes out the window along with SOM, of course....


"If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things-that which CORRESPONDS to the "objective" world-and all other constructions are unreal. But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings in an art gallery, not to find which one is the "real" painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values." (Lila, 8)