So what do we have here?
Quality
Dynamic
static
true
some intellectual static patterns of value*
untrue
some intellectual static patterns of value
On Nov 28, 2012, at 11:41 PM, david buchanan wrote:
>
> Arlo said to dmb:
> ...Would you describe 'truths' as high-Quality intellectual patterns? I'm
> thinking along the lines of: the greater the explanatory power, the greater
> the affordances to activity, the greater the cohesion with experience, all
> these things which are evaluative measures of intellectual Quality seem
> linked to the notion of pragmatic truth. For example, the flat-earth theory
> is an intellectual pattern, but it is a low-quality intellectual pattern
> because it lacks the explanatory power, affordances ..that an ellispoid-earth
> theory offers. 'Truth', seems to me, to be good and simple way to say
> 'high-quality intellectual pattern of value', and that evaluation rests on
> pragmatic-experiential cohesion. Does this gel with what you are saying?
>
>
> dmb says:
> Yea, the pragmatic definition says that truth is an intellectual pattern and
> that entails the first of two major elements. For a concept to count as
> truth, as you say, it has to have explanatory power or predictive power - and
> all kinds of qualities like clarity and precision enter into it too. But -
> something I haven't mentioned much - the quality of an idea is also very much
> about how well it fits with all the other relevant concepts in the total web
> of beliefs. Remember that part in ZAMM, as he's wrapping up the sermon on
> Poincare, where he says that it's the harmony of ideas that really holds the
> world together? We recognize the harmonious reasonings of other reasonable
> creatures like ourselves, he says, and this harmony is the sole basis of our
> "objective" reality.
> The pragmatic definition of truth says that intellectual quality always
> exists within a larger entity called Quality. This is the second element of
> truth, the empirical element. Truths are always subordinate to this primary
> empirical reality, always have to agree with experience, operate within
> experience. For Pirsig, this is reality as such and concepts can only have
> value in relation to reality. The MOQ is radically empirical, meaning it's
> empirical all the way down to bone marrow. Reality is experience and
> experience is reality.
> As James puts it, pragmatic truths are tightly controlled by these two
> elements; truths are wedged between the conceptual order (those harmonious
> reasonings) and the perceptual flux (dynamic experience). This is just a
> different way to say the same thing as Pirsig, where he says, "truth is a
> static intellectual pattern within a larger entity called Quality".
> There can be many truths in this picture because it has replaced the idea of
> eternal Truth or objective Truth and instead sees all concepts and all
> knowledge as parts of one giant pile of analogies, as parts of our total
> understanding. From this perspective, knowledge and truth is a species of the
> good, a servant of life. From this perspective Einstein is not truer than
> Newton anymore that liters are truer than gallons. But that doesn't mean it's
> okay to put a gallon of gas into a one liter bottle. It doesn't mean we get
> to be sloppy about the meaning of our analogies or the precision of our
> truths.
>
> But you already know this. You're just showing the trolls what an actual
> conversation would look like. Thanks for that.
>
>
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