From: SD19587-AT-swt.edu
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 00:53:29 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Truth?- And a Question


Kate, I hope you didn't read my post about truth as a social and
linguistic construct as an attack on you.  Nor was I ridiculing your use
of the example illustrating the relativity of perspective concerning
chairs and the like.  In fact, I find this relevant to the issue, as I
schematically attempted to suggest with my reference to Quine on ontological
relativity.  Rather, I was trying to provoke a conversation regarding these
issues.  I regard the search for truth with a capital T (as someone else
on the list put it) as itself a mistake.  It is this search, which, because
it is apparently doomed to fail, raises the question of skepticism.  I
find radical skepticism fruitless, and wrong besides.  I wanted to suggest
that there is a sense in which relativism of truth is correct, but that
it poses no serious (or skeptical) challenges of its own.  Regarding the
post which asks "can one construct a truth that is not epistemologically
limited?," I request a clarification.  What do you mean?  I find it
hard to unc


derstand what such a truth might be.  What do you have in mind?

Shane