[MD] theories of truth

[David Harding]

> Ron commented on this dispute:
> ... One then has to ask Marsha and Dave H. if they side with the christians in this matter in which we are all born with the original sin of knowing good. At least that is what they seem to be saying when they use that quote out of context as support to the explanation of the immorality of intellectual quality. They use it in such a way as to seek to undercut quality because quality that is unintelligible is quality that does not exist... In an attempt to be more moral than intellectual quality they assert the superiority of the value-less. The consequence is it renders the good as an illusion, Quality is hypothetical and lacks any inherent reality. This appears to run contrary to Pirsigs explanations in most every way. So I suspect it is more of a rhetorical move {a very poor one} aimed at besting someone in an argument by hoping they will simply address the quote out of context instead of actually looking at what they are saying in a critical manner and evaluate the consequences of the position they are taking. It is a device employed by someone who obviously thinks their opponent is not very bright and not very well read on the subject matter because it is an obviously dishonest and desperate tactic to employ just to win an argument.
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> dmb says:
> Yea, that's pretty much what I mean by calling it "self-serving, anti-intellectual bullshit". 
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> But what really kills me is the oblivious evasion of every argument. David H did not even address the objection but simply repeated the same mistake more emphatically. I said it was asinine and explained why it makes to sense and yet it was as if I said nothing at all.  And it's such a stupid, simple mistake. Defining conventional and philosophical concepts is not the same as trying to define the ineffable, mystical reality. This misconstrues thought itself as a sin. Man, that is just really shooting yourself in the foot. If one's aim is intellectual paralysis, this is the way to go.  Plus, if one really believed that discussing philosophy were a sin then one's participation here would make you either a hypocrite, a liar or an idiot.

djh responds:

Or dmb - I'm not aiming for purity and avoiding sin because I understand that even by simply existing I am destroying the ultimately undefined nature of reality..

"The only person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born — and to whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life."

Marsha seems to think that she can avoid this sin by calling static patterns 'ever-changing'. You seem to think that you can avoid this sin by pretending that philosophical concepts are somehow not a destruction of the mystic reality. Both of you are aiming for a purity which isn't possible…

"But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution."

No wonder you're at each other all the time.. 

Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics are a part of life… Doing them doesn't make one a "hypocrite, a liar or an idiot" - they're an unavoidable part of life..  So (says the book Lila) let's get these definitions as good as we can.. 

"Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer, over the fence, that ended the ball game. Good as a noun rather than an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. Of course, the ultimate Quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable, but if you had to reduce the whole Metaphysics of Quality to a single sentence, that would be it."