[MD] theories of truth

[david buchanan]

 David Harding said to Marsha:
...I think that the MOQ's theory of truth is better. Don't you?


Marsha replied:
If again you are addressing static (relative) truths, than yes indeed, it is better by far. But personally, I prefer to stick with RMP's terminology "static patterns of value" without the need to assign the term 'truth'. ...


dmb says to Harding:
The distinction between sticking to Pirsig's terms and assigning the term truth is just a bad fiction produced by Marsha's incoherent imagination. As Pirsig says quite explicitly, James's pragmatic theory of truth is "right on" and it is "exactly what is meant by the MOQ". 



"Phaedrus, like most everyone else, had always assumed that pragmatism and practicality meant virtually the same thing, but when he got down to an exact quotation of what James did say on the subject he noticed something different: James said, 'Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it.' He said, 'The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.' TRUTH IS A SPECIES OF GOOD. That was right on. That was EXACTLY what is meant by the MOQ. Truth is a static intellectual pattern WITHIN a larger entity called Quality." (p. 363-4. Emphasis is Pirsig's in the original.)


Please notice what James and Pirsig are rejecting in this common formulation. It is usually supposed that truth is an entirely separate category from the good. This supposition goes all the way back to the days of Socrates and Plato and it made the good subordinate to the truth. This supposition survives to this day, of course, as we see in the fact/value distinction. But James and Pirsig are rejecting that notion and are saying instead that truth is not separate from the good. It is a species of the good and is subordinate the good. To say that "truth is a static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality" is to reject the dialecticians and to endorse the pragmatic theory of truth. Marsha claims to be sticking with RMP's terms but, as you can see, she dismisses or rejects about half of the them in a very unprincipled way. It's just more of her incoherent nonsense. 

Don't take any wooden nickels and don't pay any attention to this dishonest, anti-intellectual, truth-hater.