I find it very interesting that you could perceive my inclination to blur
the ideas of 'truth' and 'reality'. But nevertheless I remain sturdy in my
conviction.
The monistic reality you speak of is, already, dead.
Here are just three philosophers to support this claim:
Shadworth Hodgson, the notion "that realities are only what they are 'known
as"'.
William James, James gives the name "radical empiricism" to his "
philosophic attitude," and adds the following explanation: "I say
'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured
conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification
in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats
the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the
halfway empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or
agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm
monism as something with which all experience has got to square"
'Radical empiricism' is not only a theory of knowledge comprising
pragmatism as a special chapter, but a metaphysic as well. It excludes "
the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality " It is the author's most
rigorous statement of his theory that reality is an "experience-continuum."
Robert M. Pirsig, Value = Reality
jeremy
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