PUZZLED ELEPHANT TO MARCO:
MARCO WROTE:
>
> TRUTH -- Another feature of a quality pattern that is widely recognized in
> all intellectual patterns is TRUTH. This is covered extensively in the
> writings of James and Pirsig. In SOM, truth often means objective laws that
> float out there like some idealistic platonic form. In the MOQ, we know
> that truth "is one species of good" that involves a pattern's correlation
> with
> experience and other patterns. In the famous words of James: "Realities are
> not true, they ARE; and beliefs are true of them."
ELEPHANT:
One thing floating here is a vanishingly recognisable view about what a
Platonic form is. (The law of gravity, one of Plato's forms? Pull the
other one!) Be that as it may, your quote from James has not been
understood either, if you think that Jamesian Truth is "a pattern's
correlation with experience". Because for James, experience is always of
realities, but not all realities can have beleifs about them that are true
in the Jamesian sense, because not all experienced realities are good
realities, and good realities are what we need as referents for truth.
Truths, therefore, do correspond with some experiences, but only with
experiences of good realities, which are not the only realities, and not the
only realities experienced. The experienced world of the psychologically
disturbed is existentially real, it's just that the disturbed man's beleifs
about that world don't do him much good and so don't constitute the truth.
Hence, the test of truth is emphatically not correlation with experience at
large (that would simply be empiricism, not radical empiricism). If that
seems puzzling, this is Dewey's neat summary of the Pragmatist position (The
Practical Character of Reality):
"A reality which is taken in organic response so as to lead to subsequent
reactions which are off the track and aside from the mark, while it is,
existentially speaking, perfectly real, is not a good reality. It lacks
the hallmark of value. Since it is a certain kind of object which we want,
one which will be as favourable as possible to a consistent and liberal or
growing functioning, it is this kind, the true kind, which for us
monopolises the title of reality..... Since it is only genuine or sincere
things, things which are good for what they lay claim to in the way of
consequences, which we want or are after, morally they alone are 'real'."
That make sense?
Pzeph
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:00:53 BST