Steve said: I personally find it absurd to think that, for example, the assertion "the earth is roundish" was MADE true for a particular person when that person was able to ride that truth to successful action while "the earth is flat" was at that time still true for anyone who was able to cash out this alternative belief. It is far more agreeable to me to just say that people used to think that the earth was flat, but they were, in truth, wrong.
dmb says: Well, if you think it's absurd then you don't understand what Pirsig and James mean by saying that truth is provisional, that it is a species of the good. To think that flat earth theories worked at one time, even though they were in truth wrong entails the assumption that truth corresponds with an objective reality rather than the experience of the believer. In other words, you are trying to understand the pragmatic theory of truth in terms of the metaphysical assumptions it rejects. That, sir, is what's absurd. Somebody asked Pirsig if apples followed the law of gravity before Newton invented it. He said, no. Apples did not follow the law of gravity prior to Newton. They just fell. That's how it is with the flat earth. Was the earth round before the Egyptians invented the idea? No. It wasn't. This only seems absurd from the point of view of objectivity, but radical empiricism and the pragmatic theory of truth both subscribe to one simple notion. Realities are only what they are KNOWN as. It is no accident that they reject subject-object dualism and put two interrelated categories of experience in it's place; primary and secondary or dynamic and static. Realities are only what they are KNOWN as and these two categories are two ways of knowing. There is knowledge by direct acquaintance and there is conceptual knowledge. This is what you and other Rortarians are missing and it's pretty much the whole thing. As so many contemporary critics have pointed out, Rorty takes the heart and soul out of Dewey and James. And by extension that's what you're doing to Pirsig here. It's an evisceration of the MOQ. _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea. Combine multiple calendars with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multicalendar&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_5 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
