Marco:
> My point is and was that there is not one only truth, according to
> Pirsig's words "The Metaphysics of Quality says there can be many
> competing truths and it is value that decides among them" (SODaV paper).
Elephant:
Or rather that we decide between them according to their value - Yes. But
what precisely is the picture RMP is painting here? Is it, as Marco seems
to think, that before during and even after value "decides" between them,
all those other "competing" propositions are just as true as the truth which
value "decides" on? Is Marco right to think that there is on the one hand a
multiplicity of truths, and on the other hand, separately, this deciding
value?
No.
If value "decides", and if only one road produces tranquility, then it
follows that only one road is true. "Truth" is in this context a variety of
the good - this is the Jamesian statement to which RMP refers when he says
that value decides.
Look, we need to think this through slowly. It's even possible that there's
something wrong in the way Pirsig has expressed himself in Marco's quote, so
that we either have to say that Pirsig didn't manage to say all that he
meant, or maybe even (but I wouldn't jump to this conclusion) that Pirsig is
just plain wrong.
Because in the passage that Marco picks on, Pirsig makes it sound a little
as if the role of value in this question relates to *choice*, and to
*decisions* ("decides") between *options* ("competing truths"). And that's
not the whole picture. It's not the case that value enters in at the last
moment, simply on the *choice* between pre-existing propositions ("competing
truths"), as if those propositions were in themselves value-free. No, when
RMP thinks of the *competion* involved here, he's thinking of value right
down the line. The conflict of competing truths is the conflict of
competing values. There were *advantages* to sticking with the Newtonian
conception - advantages we have to give up if we go over to the Einsteinian
picture, or to Quantum Mechanics. The competion is a competion of
advantage, or of added value.
So at this point, it looks like we ought to be agreeing with Marco some of
the way but not all of it. What is "true" in this context is what we value,
so yes, insofar as we value different things that might not all fit together
on first try, then yes, there *are* competing truths. But there's a 'but'.
Because maybe Marco has forgotten what Plato has to say about all this, and
what I've been trying these last few months to say on his behalf (Plato is
detained elsewhere, having taken up a career in saloon car racing). And
what Plato has to say about truth isn't, actually, very far from what Pirsig
has to say. And that is that, fundamentally, there are *not* a whole bunch
of competing things of value in reality. *In reality*, the only thing of
value is Quality itself - everything else we call "good" is just a static
shadow of that Dynamic reality, and borrows it's being from this strange
intervention of language where, in our pursuit of DQ, we constantly
mis-ascribe it to all these particular and static quality "events". It's
that plurality of particulars which give rise to all the competion and this
idea of many truths which Marco has. It's our valuing of those discrete
particulars, each and all of them falsifications of a continuous reality,
that gives rise to the competion of different values, and thus different
"truths".
But wait a minute (Plato says) - you can't go around calling all these
competing valued statements "truths", when it turns out that the stuff they
are all supposed to be true about - (the discrete particulars) have no
existence at all, except for our language. I mean, a truth has to be a
statement *about* something. Claiming that these statements about
particulars can be "true" would be like saying that discriptions of the
mating behaviours of unicorns can be true or false. They are neither of
course - they are a whole different category besides true and false, and
that category is fiction, myth. Make-beleive. It's not *false* to say that
unicorns pair for life, because of course there just aren't any unicorns.
When it comes to different metaphysics (and these are the different "roads"
we have been talking about), then the "unicorn" objection doesn't hold good.
We can't say that different metaphysics are just different fictions. Truth
and falsehood does come into it. That's because a metaphysics isn't a
collection of statements about particular objects at all, but about
universal realities that pervade the continuum of everyday experience, and
structure the move to describe it in discrete terms. So we don't say that
competing metaphysics are competing fictions like the stories about unicorns
- not a bit of it.
So, competing metaphysics - are these competing truths? Nearly. They are
competing *candidate* truths - that much we have to agree on. But whether
they are any of them *actually* true depends on whether we could get to call
them "living" truths, that is to say, whether we could successfully live out
their truth.
Living the truth - I think that both Marco and I agree that ultimately, this
cashes out in terms of producing some kind of tranquilty. A living truth is
a high-quality truth.
Where we differ can now be more precisely located. What I think is that as
you converge on higher and higher quality assertions you necessarily
converge on one body of truth and one body of truth only. This is for two
reasons.
Firstly, as I have argued before, only one kind of truth (all be it called
by different names in different traditions) can really satisfy. It would be
fine not to give motorbikes oil if not giving them oil produced tranquility,
but, as a matter fact, motobikes need oil. And, as a matter of fact, only
an enlightened transcendence of the realm of opinion "about" created
particulars produces tranquility in human beings.
Secondly, and this point I have not made so explicit before, it seems to me
that as you come to realise the high quality (and also analytic) truths
about the disjunction between the continuuous and the discrete, you
necessarily lose attachment to just that competing multitude of particulars
which alone could cause the "competition" of divergent "truths" that we have
been talking about. The enlightened would not disagree, because they would
have that much less to disagree *about*.
In short Marco, it's the fact that I continue to feel the need to state my
lowly opinion which may constitute the most telling, complete, and final
proof that I do not (yet) know what I am talking about.
(exeunt elephant stage left)
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