DMB said:
"The correspondence theory is just one particular answer to the question of
truth and knowledge but because that particular answer has failed, he concludes
that we should abandon the questions too."
Steve replied:
...before I respond to your post, it would be helpful if you explained what you
see as "the question of truth and knowledge" that you keep referring to if it
is not to ask about the fundamental nature of the True and the Good.
dmb says:
You already have a good idea from the debate we recently had about the
pragmatic theory truth. In the eyes of a pragmatist, truth and knowledge are
not eternal and they're not spelled with capital letters. We just want to which
ideas actually work in the course of experience and which one's don't. We just
want to know the difference between good ideas and bad ideas, between wishes
and actualities. The question of truth is just, "What's true?" and not "What is
the fundamental nature of truth?" or "What do all true sentences have in
common?".
The point is that you not only CAN have a theory of truth and an epistemology
without being a Platonists, you have to have a position about what's true and
what's real or you wouldn't be able to think or talk about anything. So that's
where the charge of all-or-nothingism comes in. I think it's a mistake to
search for the Platonic essence of truth or the objective truth but I also
think it's just as big a mistake, maybe even bigger, to say we have no
constraints on truth except conversation. As I see it, language and ideas come
from experience. Abstractions are what allow us to apply the lessons of past
experiences to similar situations in the future. These abstractions, when they
successfully guide us, are made true in the course of experience. In that
sense, ideas and language function within experience, not just within its own
structures. That's part of the reason that truth is still empirical for James
and Pirsig. It has to makes sense and be communicable of course, but t
ruth is agreement with experience and that's all it can ever mean.
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