[MD] theories of truth

[david buchanan]

valkyr said to Harding: 

I prefer to think of all _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true.)   ...'expanded rationality' occurs when an individual transforms the natural tendency to reify self and world into the natural tendency to hold all static patterns of value to be hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true.) ...It moves one away from thinking of entities as existing inherently.  So yes, I prefer to think of _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true.)

[and later added]

Value exists, and a conceptually constructed and projected static pattern of value is thought and thought is imagination and not ultimate reality.



dmb says:

Thought is static value and not ultimate reality? Gee, where have I heard that before? It almost sounds like Marsha is saying that there MUST be some fundamental difference between static patterns and Quality itself, there must be some basic discrepancy between concepts and reality. 


"In his last unfinished work, Some Problems in Philosophy, James had condensed this description to a single sentence: 'There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous, while the latter is dynamic and flowing.'  Here James had chosen exactly the same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of Quality."



With that discrepancy in mind, let us focus on that first paragraph. Let me show you how Marsha goes wrong here. It's a fairly good example of a fundamental mistake that she makes pretty much every time. As you can see, she's trying to explain her "preference" for the term "hypothetical". The paragraph is quite repetitive and wordy but it can be cleaned up quite a bit by simply replacing " _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical (supposed but not necessarily real or true)" with short, simple words like "concept" or "idea". 


In that case, Marsha is saying she "prefers to think of all concepts as hypothetical.   ...'expanded rationality' occurs when an individual transforms the natural tendency to reify self and world into the natural tendency to hold all concepts to be hypothetical. ...It moves one away from thinking of entities as existing inherently. So yes, I prefer to think of concepts as hypothetical."


Did you spot the crucial sentence, the one that tells you where Marsha has gone wrong? She prefers to think of all _static patterns of value_ as hypothetical BECAUSE, she says, "It moves one away from thinking of entities as existing inherently". The problem, quite simply, is that the MOQ's static patterns are not supposed to be conceived as inherently existing entities in the first place. Static patterns are already de-reified in the MOQ. They are set up to replace SOM's conception of inherently existing things. As is usually the case, Marsha taking the MOQ's critique of SOM and then misapplying to the MOQ itself. She is treating the cure as if it were the disease. 


"Of course it's just an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians don't know that."


"...We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it."


To understand the world as an inherited pile of analogies is to understand that we created this world, that we carved it out, that it is far more plastic and malleable than the realists can imagine. When the oceans, earth, and sky are understood as analogies, as concepts, then the world of understanding looses its foundational status, its ontological primacy and is instead seen as an elaborate set of human concepts.


"Of course it's an analogy. Everything is an analogy. But the dialecticians don't know that."


Hypothetically yours,