From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 16:01:28 GMT
Wim,
You said:
Isn't 'using this metaphor for that relation is not useful' quite another
type of argument than 'using this metaphor for that relation doesn't do
justice to others using this metaphor for quite different relations'?
Matt:
Actually, no, it isn't. (And here I'm going to catch a lot of flak from
all the anti-pragmatists, but it's probably more _useful_ for me in the
long run to come clean.) Pragmatists think questions about Truth and
Morality all dissolve done into questions about usefulness, much like
Pirsig's dissolution into "good or bad." Of the two things I said, you're
supposing that there's a difference between the former and the latter
because the former is a statement about usefulness and the latter is a
statement about truth. Pragmatists translate everything into usefulness.
What makes me want to tell the truth is the community I've been socialized
and/or the community I'm surrounded by. In this community it is useful to
be able to offer interpretations of people's statements that they would
recognize as there own. This is what I take to be accurately reflecting a
person's stance or as Truth-believers might put it, what a person's True
position is.
Matt
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