From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 19:35:58 GMT
Joe,
I'm having a hard time getting through to what some of you questions and
comments are (for instance, "Do I accept that everyone's pattern "truth" is
also individual?"), so I'll stick to the ones I feel I understand properly.
Joe said:
I don't know what it means that "true" is a
property we apply to sentences that cohere to other sentences. Is the
"cohere" stickiness integral to the sentences, or is it an outside
instinctive stickiness? I imagine it is a choice that the property of the
sentences is "true." Is the theory of knowledge by which the true is
identified as individually different as each one's fingerprint?
Matt:
The coherence "theory" of truth was something elaborated by Donald Davidson
and picked up by Richard Rorty. First, to say that "truth" is a property
of sentences is to say that the sentence, "My kite is red," has the
property of being true or false. "Truth" isn't something "out there" that
needs to be corresponded to. If that were the case, the truth of "My kite
is red" would be judged by it corresponding to the eternal Truth of "My
kite is red." Pragmatists don't know how to cash out how this
"correspondence" helps us determine truth, however. All we know is that
some sentences we call true, others false.
Secondly, to say that "'True' is simply the property we apply to sentences
that cohere to other sentences that we call 'true,'" is to say that, when I
call "My kite is red," true, it should be coherent and consistent with some
of the other sentences I'm calling true. For instance, "My kite is not
blue," "My kite is not green," "My kite is not yellow," etc. If it is not
consistent (for instance, you hold "My kite is red" and "My kite is not
red" to be both true), then you have to rethink what sentences you call
true. These sentences all fit into a relatively coherent whole. So making
your web coherent in the "My kite is both red and not red" case would be
relatively simple. You simply change the status of one sentence. Other
reweavings take much more time and attention, however, such as the first
time a devout Christian becomes an atheist, or vice versa.
I think the picture of the self as a web of these sentences works very well
with Pirsig's picture of the self as patterns of value.
About a "theory of knowledge," however, pragmatists plead "mu." The
pragmatic picture I just presented isn't a theory of knowledge, they don't
do epistemology. They are simply offering a picture of how people acquire
and revise beliefs. Insofar as pragmatists don't tell us what would count
as ahistorical knowledge, they aren't offering an epistemology.
Joe said:
For the pragmatist, must all stories be retold?
Matt:
Yes. If they are not retold, with the stories being updated to the present
cultural climate, then the stories will stay too static and either culture
will not progress or people will cease to identify with the past. I read
Pirsig's suggestion for a moderation between Dynamic and static as the
suggestion that we need to retell and update our stories.
Joe said:
Did SOM influence the pragmatist tradition?
Matt:
This question doesn't make sense to me because of my peculiar understanding
of what SOM is. I take SOM to be the same, dead philosophical tradition
that the pragmatists are trying to eradicate. So, in the sense that
pragmatists are trying to rid us of SOM, yes, SOM influenced the pragmatist
tradition.
Joe said:
You indicate that Persig has a foot on two traditions. Is this from his
emphasis on an instinctive sensing creating experience placing him in a
third tradition?
Matt:
I believe Pirsig has a foot in two traditions that I've been calling
several different things: Kantian v. Hegelian, Kantian v. pragmatist,
realist v. pragmatist, Enlightenment v. post-modern, and many others
(including Pirsig's own formulation of postivist v. mystic). How I frame
the traditions depends on the point I'm trying to make (and how I'm making
it), but they are all loosely lined up in some manner. In most of my
formulations, I think either Pirsig doesn't know which way he wants to go
or that he decidely takes one path or the other. I've considered whether
Pirsig is really opening up a third path, but I have yet to really see it.
Scott's "ironic metaphysics" is Scott's enuciation of what this third path
might be, but I don't quite buy it yet (or, rather, I don't buy that its a
third path). The question of a third path, in fact, will probably be the
question that drives me through all of my readings of Pirsig, because I
think it is quite evident now that there are some heavy tensions in his
writings that need to be resolved in some manner. In my newest essay that
Horse is keying up for the Forum, I spend some time at the end considering
whether Pirsig offers a third path in the framework I used to explicate him.
Matt
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