RE: MD Gardner on Pragmatism

From: Erin N. (enoonan@kent.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 06:29:11 GMT

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    >===== Original Message From moq_discuss@moq.org =====
    >>Determine whether a card "truly" is spades?
    >>Can you say that is true in a visual sense, meaningless in an auditory
    sense?
    >>The truth of it being spades does seem to be *made* by events..of the visual
    >>system. To grant it as absolute truth is to grant truth is visual in nature
    >>right?
    >>
    >>erin
    >
    >Seeing is believing, in this case!
    >What you are really saying is that turning over the card and
    >looking at it *determines* the truth of the statement,
    >"This card is the Queen of Hearts". But also, there is a
    >commonsense notion that this statement attains a truth value at
    >the moment you select the card from the spread, even though you don't
    >yet know what it is. The die is cast, so to speak. It is this notion
    >of truth, that is independent of people and exists "out there", that
    >is distinct from the methods for deciding a truth for our sake.
    >Glenn

    Glenn,
    I pulled something from the archives that can
    better show what i was trying to say.

    erin

    RICK
        When the tree
    falls, a quality is there for sure... but the issue is whether it's properly
    called 'sound quality' before it's sampled by an observer that interprets it
    as sound.
        For lack of a better example of my point... Imagine walking through the
    infamous forest when a bat sweeps down from the trees and screeches at you.
    The quality to you will be 'sound quality' because you interpret it as such.
    However, to the bat, it's more like 'sonar/radar quality'. The quality that
    we perceive as sound is perceived by the bat as distance. Same air wave,
    totally different significance.

    Boeree:When the tree falls in the forest, the sound happens, whether
    there is someone there to hear it or not.

    RICK:
        Uh oh... The problem with this is that when the tree falls in the
    forest... an 'air wave' happens. It's whether that wave can truly be called
    'sound' that everyone's been stumped on for thousands of years. It's a
    semantic puzzle. If 'sound' is the wave, then the tree makes a
    sound whether or not someone's there. If 'sound' is the sensation of the
    wave interacting with an ear drum, then the tree doesn't make a sound.
       Same with or problem (I think): If Intellectual Quality is defined as
    'historcial accuracy' we get a different result than if it is defined as
    'coherence'. I think the ultimate point is that choosing one or the other
    requires a judgment call as to which value is more important than the other.
    The MoQ, unfortunately, gives us almost no guidance is how to rank competing
    values within a level like this.

    BOEREE
    > On the other hand, some of these qualities we call "matter" and some we
    call
    > "mind." "Matter" includes the ones that emphasize form, resistance, and
    > especially separateness from mind. The ones we call "mind" include those
    > qualities that are more elusive, more personal, harder to share. Both are
    > real, neither is superior in some way. There are as well qualities of
    time,
    > space, number, causality, value, and so on, that are hard to place in
    either
    > category. "

    RICK:
    Well, this is obviously just a play on the traditional mind/matter
    dichotomy. The MOQ acknowledges this distinction as being of high value,
    but it also acknowledges that there are better ways of looking at things.

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