From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Oct 25 2003 - 15:30:55 BST
Matt,
Matt,
> Pragmatists don't think Galileo and Newton were doing anything all that
> different from what Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy did. The only
> difference was that Galileo and Newton came up with and used a better
> and more useful vocabulary than their predecessors did.
If you are accurately (truthfully) reflecting the view of pragmatists,
then they had better study history more carefully. Galileo, Kepler and
and Newton introduced measurement into epistemology, creating an
entirely new threshold for establishing truth.
> The rhetorical questions that pragmatists ask at this point are, "Was
> Galileo more honest than Plato? Did Newton check his examples against
> his criteria better than Aristotle did? Was Copernicus more trustworthy
> than Ptolemy? Did Kepler check his results with his peers more often
> than Socrates did?" Pragmatists think that all of these questions are
> out of point. If the concept of truth and a theory of truth are central
> to people being honest and truthful, than it must be clear that
> Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy were lying, cheating, dishonest
> sons-of-bitches and when people utter their names we should wash their
> mouths out with soap (the utterers, not the Greeks). The reason being
> that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy were all working with
> different conceptions of truth and different theories of it, conceptions
> and theories us Pirsigians would consider to be wrong. So, if there is
> a connection, then they must be liars and cheats, right?
Regarding truth in a social context, we recognize a distinction between
a person being ignorant and knowingly being deceptive. So your example
doesn't wash.
Platt
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