Frank Kogan

The key to FN's "theory of truth" is what's come to be called "perspectivism"

FIRST:
Any given one of us is [a] unable to gather all the data there is; [b] unable to process usefully even all the data we COULD gather; [c] operating from within a solitary biological unit placed somewhere in place and time that is (by definition) far from most of the other places and times

So what we any one of us know is inescapably delimited. What FN argues is that we select from the data practically available to us, in a hierarchy of priorities -- sometimes simply pre-selected, sometimes evolving* -- and similarly select the strategies we adopt for adjusting this availability.

So are different perspectives commensurable? Well, possibly they are if they are more or less distorted reflections of an underlying reality, reachable or othwerwise. But FN has no faith in any such idea; not least because he is -- and this I suspect is a new idea with him? -- deeply unsure whether commensuration is a good thing, whether or not it's achievable. "Just because my perspectgive-truth is useful to me in this circumstance, it DOESN'T follow it would be useful to YOU in this same circumstance."

OK, we should also quickly break down what he means be "useful" (which is a pragmatist's word, not a nietzschean word).

1: he means "is this perspective necessary for your survival"?
1a: which is sometimes glossed as "is this perspective necessary for the survival of the species"?
2: he means "does this perspective help enrich life and experience?"
2a: which is sometimes glossed as "does this perspective help enrich your very particular life and experience?"

He does NOT believe these four related "usefulnesses" amount to the same thing; anything but -- they may well pull in entirely different directions.


However re, 2a I think be believes this aspect -- taken in number (ie arguing that there are and should be multiple individual perspectives, not necessarily commensurable -- is important to 1a (" something like: biologically speaking, the presence of multiple warring perspectives leafing to richness is necessary for the survival of the species")

Somewhere out of all this, we get to refine his idea of "will to error" as a value. Our perspective, as a selectivity, is necessarily error-bound -- we have chosen to prioritise some data over others, based on all kinds of caprice and shortcuts. Even if our simplifications and generalisations and data-triage are the best we feel we can do, we KNOW we have taken these shortcuts (whether for enrichmnent or survival). At the point they become dogmatised, as they do in certain social systems of data-selection and simplification and prioritisation (christianity/platonism, acc.FN) -- which is to say, if they declare themselves the ONLY system that can lead to truth ( notwithstanding individuals aligned with said systems opting for their own perspectival error), then they are doing so KNOWING that they are falsifying the situation. The data is not yet in; and never will be. (FN was quite pessimistic about ratio of potential data to data the species will ever gather...)

HOWEVER: FN's attitude to such systems -- especially the less dogmatic ones -- is ambiguous. He recognises that simplification and clarity bring joy -- they are a good thing in the sense that they make us feel good. And also a good thing insofar as they allow us to survive. (Note subtle difference between these two types of good thing...)