[MD] Is the MOQ static, or a static pattern?
craigerb at comcast.net
craigerb at comcast.net
Thu May 17 09:17:20 PDT 2012
"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." (LILA)
Notice Pirsig does not say here that truth is provisional, but that explanation is.
[Arlo]
> Within a MOQ, can you point to a pattern, any pattern, that is "right" but is not "useful"?
By 'useful' do you mean has an actual use or has a potential use?
It is true that a speck of dust on the far side of the moon has an actual shape,
but this might not be actually useful. That is enough to show that 'true'/'right' are different
concepts than 'useful'.
[Arlo}
> In fact, I'd argue that within a MOQ, 'right' would mean 'useful'. To the sailor trying to determine which map to
> use, he'd examine his context, and select the best map to get him where he needed to be, and he might say
> "that was the right map for that task", but 'right' is being defined and used by virtue of 'usefulness'.
> I can't imagine any context where he'd say, "well, the Cartesian map was right but not useful,
> the Polar map was not right but it allowed me to navigate to where I needed to be."
But if 'right' is to mean 'useful', you also have to show that every case of being useful is a case of being
right. What if a sailor used a map of the East Indies to successfully navigate between two islands, then later discovered it was a map of the West Indies?
Craig
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