[MD] D i a l e c t i c

[X Acto]

> Socrates favoured _truth_ as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To Socrates, _truth_, not _aretē_, was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one's life. -- Wiki "dialectics"

> dmb says:
> Pirsig favors pragmatic truth as a species of value, asserting that they (plural) are invented to serve human purposes. Pirsig values an expanded rationality (appealing to logic and the affective domain) and the art of rhetoric as the proper means of persuasion, excellence in thought and speech. To Pirsig, truth, intellectual quality, is the highest of static values, and is subordinate only to Dynamic Quality itself, which is what guides all static values, including our pragmatic truths.
 
[Ron sez:}
In an attempt to distill the similarities and the differences:
It seems both Socrates and Bob value rationality as the proper means of persuasion (the meaning of the term rhetoric seems to
simply serve to redundantly restate this).
It also seems they both  value intellectual excellence and which is only subordinate to the good. (Socrates compares the good to the sun
and intellectual excellence as our visual ability to percieve.)

Marsha quotes RMP: 
"Truth is a (singular) static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality. ...  What Phaedrus saw was that the Metaphysics of Quality avoided this attack [of James] by making it clear that the good to which truth [singular] is subordinate is intellectual and Dynamic Quality"

[Ron sez]
I think when you add the term (singular) you are making an interpretive assertion that Pirsig is just not making. 
When you read into a term with this assumptive-ness you are bringing a whole host of prejudices that will
only serve to breed misunderstanding and bolster blind prejudicial rejections of meaningful and useful concepts.
 
In fact, I find it difficult to pin down EXACTLY who...concieves of truth as a singular, eternal,changeless entity except maybe
the christians (God) or the Positivists (objective reality and corresponance theory) who reject knowledge gained from
introspection (dialectic as an example) and instead rely on direct scientific observarion and mathematics which is used to
predict these direct empirical observations.
 
THE ATTACK is ON JAMES by the Positivists regarding the assertion of the idea that the true is what is useful.
Pirsig could avoid this attack on James by the Positivists by making it clear that Truth (singular since we are responding
to Positivists) is subordinate to intellectual excellence (which holds inorganic,organic and social excellence as that which
is necessary for intellectual patterns to hold the highest value) ie the intellectual justification for a moral system of values.
Therefore the true is not simply what is useful it is also what is best morally (intellectualy speaking).
Intellectual values MUST support social, organic,and inorganic values, their test in experience is their satisfaction THAT
is what James lacked in his explanation of Pragmatic truth, moral responsibility.
 
..