Hey Platt,
> PLATT:
> Already I suspect we've hit the land of futile discussions when you
> describe the snippets as addressing, not defining truth. To my mind
> that's a distinction without a difference because I don't know what you
> mean by "address truth." I've never heard such an expression. You
> address a letter or an audience or a passing yacht, but not truth. When
> Pirsig says, "The tests of truth are . . ." I take it to be his DEFINITION
of
> that word.
RICK:
You've never heard anyone use the word 'address' meaning 'refer to'. For
example, a reporter on TV might be heard to say, "the President will address
the economy in next speech." Surely if you heard this you wouldn't think
the president was planning to define the word 'economy'... would you?
Regardless, what I meant was that while those quotes 'mention' truth,
they don't 'explain' truth. Simply saying 'truth is an Intellectual pattern'
doesn't tell us what 'truth' is as Pirsig names several dozen Intellectual
patterns in LILA. And while that second quote 'defines' the 'tests for
truth', it also doesn't explain what the 'truth' is... for that, you have to
go to the quote on p.114 (the one I had in the last post).
Interstingly enough, if by 'economy of explanation' Pirsig is referring
to Occam's razor I think you'll find that many scientists would strongly
disagree with him about it being a criterion for 'truth'. Very often, the
simplest explanation is NOT the correct one.
> > What do you think???
>
> PLATT:
> Right now I can't say ay or nay because of Pirsig's emphasis on
> "intellectual explanation" and "intellectual reality." Since he has
already
> defined truth as an intellectual pattern of values of logical consistency,
> agreement with experience and economy of explanation," a proposition
> or a purported piece of evidence WITHOUT THOSE
> CHARACTERISTICS wouldn't qualify to be included in his "set of
> truths."
>
> But if your reference to "systematic" means "logical," and "fact" means
> "agreement with experience," then indeed we are of like mind and
> there can be group hugs all around.
RICK:
Then lets break out the huggin' brother... because this is almost
precisely what I mean. By 'systematic', I do mean logical... that is,
'facts' within a particular truth-system of interpretation must agree with
each other... if they don't than either the fact is wrong, or some
interpretitive premise of the system is wrong.
And while I would probably list 'agreement with experience' as a
criterion for a 'fact' I wouldn't use that a defintion of the term. Rather,
I would define a fact as an as-of-yet irrefutable opinion which offers no
guarantees of remaining so in the future (that is, they are 'provisional',
like Pirsig says of truths).
This theory of provisional truth is not original to Pirsig (not even
close), it's a time-honored view argumentation theorists. As Pirsig was a
rhetoric professor, I've no doubt that it from this source that he
appropriated the theory.
Glad we could agree... (I think),
rick
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