From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Sep 09 2005 - 13:30:02 BST
Paul,
[Platt previously]
> >First, you state "All intellectual patterns are provisional." Now to me
> >that is an absolute statement, like "All men are mortal." Logically if one
> >asserts that all x is y, he asserts an absolute, nonrelative truth. Am I
> >wrong?
[Paul]
> It is a general propositional statement but it is not necessarily absolute.
> For clarity, at the expense of brevity, we could prefix all such statements
> with something like - "It is provisionally true that..."
>
> However, I want to argue that that shouldn't be necessary because I am
> writing within a philosophical context which repudiates the prior
> assumption of an appearance/reality distinction which is a necessary
> corollary of the absolute/relative distinction. (Provisional, in this
> dichotomy, is 'relative' to time i.e. it is true now but may not be true at
> other times.)
First, thanks for taking the time and effort to clearly state your
assumptions. If we all did that all the time, our conversations might be
much more productive. It's at the level of basic philosophical assumptions
that all the complex edifices of beliefs and persuasion begin.
Also, thanks for defining "provisional" as you use the term. I understand
that it carries the assumption that what is true now may not be true at
other times. I question that assumption on the grounds that philosophy
itself depends on life and living as opposed to death and decay. In other
words, I begin with the assumption that life and death are absolutes, and
that philosophy ought to acknowledge such at the very beginning.
> You see, for something to be 'absolutely true' does not mean it is just
> expressed in a general propositional statement e.g. all x are y. It has to
> be more than that. It has to correspond to reality, and not just any
> reality, but 'reality itself', as first envisaged by the ancient Greeks.
> In ZMM, Pirsig describes how correspondence to 'reality itself', and hence
> Truth, won out over Good which is why western philosophy has been more or
> less fixated on the appearance/reality distinction ever since. The
> epistemological consequence of this metaphysical distinction is the problem
> of how you know when a statement corresponds to reality and not just to
> appearance - when it is absolutely true and not just relatively true. This
> is the context in which metaphysics has mostly operated. To my knowledge
> this debate has never concluded, philosophically speaking.
Speaking of absolutes, I would say it's an absolute that all truth is
relative to man, whether the truth be merely an appearance of reality or
reality itself. Further, there are different kinds of truth. There is
truth you feel instinctively as a survival mechanism, like the difference
between a bear and a rabbit. There are truths you are told, like the
Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. And, there is truth gained
from perception and reason, like pigs don't fly. Now perhaps those kinds
of truth all go back to the fundamental appearance-reality assumption, but
in practice they serve to build man's knowledge on which evolution at the
current level depends.
> So one takes a step back and says that, since there is no way of knowing
> which statements, or which of our experiences, correspond to 'reality
> itself' and not just to 'mere appearance', there is no point in making that
> putatively obvious distinction. When this distinction goes, a whole
> edifice of distinctions goes with it. Absolute and relative truth being
> one of them. The usual response to this is to just see the loss of
> absolute truth without seeing that relative truth cannot survive without
> its opposite. If there is no absolute benchmark, what, exactly, are
> relative truths relative to?
Good question. :-)
> Nonetheless, in the absence of an absolute benchmark, it is normal to ask -
> what other criteria are there for working out which statements to keep and
> which to dispense with? There have been several philosophical responses
> but the one which is forwarded by Pirsig is - we keep those beliefs which
> have intellectual quality and in LILA this is broadly defined as, amongst
> other things, logical consistency, agreement with experience and economy of
> explanation. So as I see it, nothing is lost by the rejection of absolute
> truth except for the need to demonstrate what it is that makes it absolute.
> Some beliefs are still better than others and are not easily discarded
> because they are too valuable. And beliefs are only as arbitrary as the
> purposes for which we use them. This is the pragmatic context in which the
> MOQ operates, as I understand it.
I agree. But I then I would go on to argue that to assert that "Some
beliefs are better than others" is a statement that has been, is now, and
will forever be "true" I know we cannot predict the future, but if you
admit that there's even a slight possibility in the future for one belief
will be as good as another and another and another, then the entire
structure of the MOQ, built on the opposite assumption, will come tumbling
down. Of course, not being omniscient, we should probably admit the MOQ as
well as a lot of what you and I believe could be wrong anyway. But, that
won't cut it if we want to save lives, including our own..
> With these two contexts in mind, I can return to the statement which
> started this thread - "It's true that there is no truth." Firstly, this
> statement was made within the context of absolute/relative truth.
> Moreover, it was made on the 'absolute' side, in order to look paradoxical.
> But this is exposed as an equivocation when you attempt to pass it off as
> the 'postmodern' position. Hence, my 'solution' was to show that 'truth'
> in the first part of the sentence is not the same as the 'truth' in the
> second part i.e. to show how the statement contains both sides of the
> absolute/relative context. This 'solution' is okay as far as it goes in
> that it reduces the paradox to innocuous circularity but what I really want
> to do is deny both sides of this context completely i.e. I want to stay in
> the MOQ context (where truth is a measure of intellectual quality and is
> neither absolute nor relative).
Makes sense.
[Platt previously]
> >Secondly, it seems to me that even though "everybody uses it" may make
> >something valuable, it doesn't necessarily make it true. Do you agree?
[Paul]
> Yes, I agree that the value of "everybody using it" is only one of the
> values which contribute to something being true. The point I was making
> was that our friend Leah would not normally be encouraged to invent a new
> number system because it would not be very valuable for her to use her own
> proprietary system which nobody else could use even if it were entirely
> consistent.
I hope little Leah's self-esteem doesn't suffer too much when she finds
out her new number system isn't very valuable. :-)
> >Finally, you asked at the end of your post:"Why can't a general truth be
> >provisional?" My answer is that a general truth has to be accepted and
> >used in the process of asserting that it is provisional, as in "All truth
> >is provisional." Does that make sense?
>
> Well, again, I think that is the same equivocation as your original
> statement. I think the answer outlined above applies.
Thanks for your answer. Much appreciated.
> Yeah, I don't think you'd find that in any rhetoric text books! Anyway, I
> don't expect you to agree with me but hopefully you understand my position
> a little better.
Indeed. When assumptions are revealed, understanding follows if not
agreement.
Best,
Platt
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