[MD] pragmatic

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
I don't see RMP's agreement with William James any more than an agreement that patterns continue to exist because of their usefulness.  I certainly agree with that.  I do not think using RMP's term 'patterns' denigrates their usefulness, nor does considering patterns as hypothetical (supposed but not neccesarily real or true).  You might consider that fallibilism is compatible with the pragmatists.


dmb says:
Apparently, this is a response to my criticism. In various ways, I keep trying to explain how you are inappropriately using Pirsig's attack on Objective truth to attack his own pragmatic truth and that mistake is what leads you to denigrate truth and the MOQ's intellectual values in general.

"[William James said] 'Truth is a species of good.' That was right on. That was exactly what is meant by the Metaphysics of Quality. Truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality." LILA 364

Do you see the problem? Do you see the contradiction between Pirsig's statement and your own?

According to Pirsig, truth is a static intellectual pattern. And yet you think it's okay to consider these patterns as "not necessarily real or true". Thus you have a definition of truth that says truth isn't necessarily true. Anyone should be able to see how this is contradictory. Anyone can see that this does not add up. The main reason that you're coming to such absurd conclusions is because you're confusing the problem (SOM's conception of Truth) with the solution (the MOQ's pragmatic conception of truth). Your final sentence is an example of this confusion, for example.

Every pragmatist knows that pragmatism is a form of fallibilism. As Wikipedia puts it, "In the most commonly used sense of the term, this consists in being open to new evidence that would disprove some previously held position or belief, and in the recognition that "any claim justified today may need to be revised or withdrawn in light of new evidence, new arguments, and new experiences."  [...] "Some fallibilists argue that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible. As a formal doctrine, fallibilism is most strongly associated with Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and other pragmatists, who use it in their attacks on foundationalism."

And we can hear Pirsig singing this same song in Lila, not only in his alignment with James's pragmatism as quoted above, but also in the paint gallery analogy. Where Pirsig talks about truths being provisional, he's talking about their inevitable fallibility...

“Unlike SOM the MOQ does not insist on a single exclusive truth. 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. 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."

See the problem here? Your last sentence, in effect, asks us to consider that fallibilism might be compatible with fallibilism. You're using Pirsig's criticism of objective truth or absolute Truth against pragmatic truth, which is ALREADY plural and provisional and already a form of fallibilism. In pragmatism, philosophic truths are never supposed to be taken as anything more than a working hypothesis. You're taking the pragmatic concepts of truth and using them against pragmatic concepts of truth. In short, you're attacking the solution as if it were the problem. You're using the MOQ to undermine the MOQ. You don't mean to, probably, but that is the consequence of your confusions, conflations, and other such errors. 

To simplify a bit, the MOQ posits a theory of truth that reject the extremes. It rejects the ancient Platonic idea that there is a fixed and eternal Truth and similarly rejects the Modern idea that there is a single Objective Truth or Absolute Truth. The MOQ also rejects relativism, the stance that says one truth is as good as the next, that there is no way to assert my truth over your truth, or, as you put it, that there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky. The MOQ's pragmatic truth rejects both of these extremes and instead says that truth is a particular kind of excellence, a species of the good, or static value at an intellectual level. Being provisional, of course, pragmatic truths are not fixed or eternal but that doesn't mean they are as fleeting as the wind. It simply means truth is the best intellectual explanation we presently have and we abandon it when something better comes along. It's as simple as keeping what's best until it is no longer the best. Being pluralistic, pragmatic truth does not claim that there is only one correct and true truth but that doesn't mean there are billions and billions of truths either and it certainly does NOT mean that everybody is equally right and wrong about everything. It simply means that truths are always true within a context and from a particular perspective. In other words, the scientific truth about the sun does not cancel out the mythographer's truth about the sun or the farmer's truth about the sun. But the scientist can be scientifically wrong about the sun. He can fail to make sense to other scientists, produce a ridiculous scientific theory. His truths have to be true within the tradition and practice of sun science or he'll rightly get tossed out on his ear. If the farmer has his own private truths about the sun, he's probably gonna starve. That's why we cannot rightly construe the MOQ as a form of relativism, because pragmatic truths are empirically testable and verifiable, which is to say they are ideas which are successful in actual practice, when they are put to use in actual experience. This kind of truth is not divine, eternal or "Objective" but it still has pretty tough standards. It's still a form of excellence, the most highly evolved species of static quality and this theory of truth is at the heart of Pirsig's root expansion of rationality. It's one of the MOQ's core concepts.