Hey Magnus,
My two definitions:
1) Metaphysics is the general framework, or understanding, or set of
assumptions, that people unconsciously (with various degrees of
self-consciousness) interpret, or see, or live in the world. As an activity, it
is the attempt to make the unconscious self-conscious (this activity is also
known in some circles as "philosophy").
2) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that attempts to display the basic,
universal, ahistorical underpinnings of reality (this activity is also
sometimes known in some circles as "Platonism," and in a few circles the
acronymic "SOM").
Magnus said:
First, I'd like to remove the SOM from your 2nd definition above. SOM is just
one of many different such underpinnings of reality (in which the S/O division
is primary), and one which I as a Pirsigian think is incorrect. Not sure if
"Platomism" would follow.?
Matt:
No dice. One of our disagreements, then, is that you think M2 is a branch of
philosophy that you can do without being a target of Pirsig's critique in ZMM.
I think that, while technically true there's more than one way to be a
Platonist, Pirsig's journey in ZMM was from the contemporary S/O dilemma to the
more deeply rooted problem of dialectic, "the parvenu." I think SOM is
paradigmatic of modern (post-Cartesian) philosophy, but that it has first been
infected by the larger problem of the Platonic search for basic, universal,
ahistorical underpinnings to reality-as-such, a search that given the
production of individual disciplines of inquiry into how stuff in reality works
(physics, psychology, history, etc.) will naturally give way to the production
of a method--the dialectic. This is Pirsig's enemy in ZMM, and it is an enemy
that is multifaceted in intellectual history.
So, I suppose, if you'd like, you can be a Platonist without being a SOMist
(though Whitehead would've thought that was a step back). But as a Pirsigian
you should avoid the whole thing.
Magnus said:
Second, I may be running counter to Pirsig (in ZMM) by trying to define a
metaphysics, but not more than he does himself in Lila.
Matt:
This, I think, is an ambiguity on Pirsig's part in the books. He sometimes
treats "metaphysics" as this dirty thing (which comes from his version of the
mystic position). But there's nothing dirty about M1. There is something
dirty about M2, though, and if one thought that the two definitions were
implicitly co-extensive, then I could understand why one would treat
metaphysics as both dirty and inescapable, something we have to hold our nose a
little to do.
I think it is one of the virtues of most of the MD interpreters of Pirsig that
they don't get bogged down by this and self-consciously just use M1, but one of
the vices is that they sometimes often turn a blind eye to the ambiguity.
(But, on the other hand, that's a scholastic issue that one can ignore when
doing philosophy.)
Matt said:
I'm not sure what's supposed to be causally independent of physics. This seems
to me to suggest that we cannot give a physical description of everything, but
I'm pretty sure that if you can't give a physical description of a thing, it
doesn't exist. But all that this physicalism excludes--so far as I can
see--are kinds of magic, for instance a God that can willy-nilly interrupt the
causal order of things, so-called miracles. God can exist, because as a
pragmatist I think that as long as it is useful to talk about God, He
exists--and we can give a physical description of our talking and writing.
Magnus said:
First of all, it does seem very logical to assert what you say "that if you
can't give a physical description of a thing, it doesn't exist". However, the
very word "metaphysics" somehow escapes that assertion with its meta prefix.
...
Now, here's where my version of metaphysics comes in. These different universes
have different laws of physics. However, they would all have the same
metaphysics. The most important split of each universe is the DQ/SQ split, i.e.
the division of what's always changing and what's static. They would also have
the same static levels as we see here (which is why I persist using so generic
definitions of them).
Matt:
Sure, the "meta" certainly does seem to imply something before physics--but I
can still give a physical description of all the utterances/inscriptions you
use to describe how metaphysics is outside physics. Why do I point out this
obvious-hood? Because your version of metaphysics sounds pretty much like
Kant's transformation of Platonism--trying to find the transcendental outlines
of existence. In trying to circumvent all the speculative, metaphysical
nonsense of preceding generations, Kant said that, rather than explain kinds of
existence (rather more poorly than other disciplines like the New Science),
philosophy needed to show what was needed for existence to exist: what are the
underpinnings, the structure on which this house exists?
There are a few problems with transcendental philosophy, but the broad
thought--what _has_ to exist for us to be able to do all of the things we are
doing--is largely something that can be done. But there is an infinite regress
problem that arises if you aren't careful: unless you are going to posit a
non-physical kind of existence--which is a dangerous proposition--when somebody
asks you what kind of existence the DQ/SQ split has, one of the few routes
people feel comfortable anymore with is "it has the existence of a metaphysical
proposition," i.e. it's something stated by people (which is Pirsig's answer
with "Western ghosts"). This, it is true, creates a circle that some people
think is damaging--people need to exist for metaphysics to exist, which needs
to exist for physics to exist, which needs to exist for people to exist--but
some of us think that the circle becomes damaging and silly in equal measure:
only by taking it too seriously. Part of what the word "univers
e" means is "that which would exist whether people do or not" and the only
sense in which the universe is dependent on people is the sense in which
"universe" is a word, and only people use words.
So, Magnus, the question that will help elucidate what you think metaphysics is
is: what kind of existence does the metaphysical distinction DQ/SQ have?
Matt said:
Does it work because it is true, or is it true because it works? Pragmatists
think that's a pointless question, but it is basically what Platonism, over the
historical dialectic of two and a half millennia, has reduced to.
Why is it pointless? Because _how would you tell the difference_?
Magnus said:
I would say the MoQ answer to that is to ruthlessly demote what philosophers
are currently doing to "philosophology", i.e. to discuss different
philosophies. It simply realizes that it takes a leap of faith to embrace any
metaphysics, regardless of whether it's SOM, the MoQ, or the logical land where
philosophers discuss philosophies.
However, it's still not possible to tell if it's the correct blueprint. As in
science, it's only possible to reject a hypothesis/metaphysics, which is
probably why we here at MD too often end up pointing fingers and stating how
wrong others' points of view are.
Matt:
Sure, it is easy to make fun of academic philosophers for their vices, and in
fact it makes great rhetorical sense to make fun of them because Pirsig does.
Unfortunately, the demotion doesn't pass muster with me as I've worked quite
hard to pinpoint that exact area in Pirsig's writing as his weakest.
(Particularly in "Philosophologology" in the MoQ Forum.) I won't go on one of
my little "Save the Academics" rants here since we all know, like appearances
and whales, they do need to be saved. But what I would like you to notice is
how little the one has to do with the other in the movement of your line of
thought: what does the difficulty of answering the question "Does it work
because it is true, or is it true because it works?" have to do with
philosophers discussing different philosophies? The question is one that you
could pop on anyone at almost any time to make them stutter, with no utter
connection to whether the person was preoccupied with the philosophies of their
predecessors (Pirsig's philosophy-reduced-to-philosophology, which more
showed how little Pirsig knew of the anglophone academic scene). You wouldn't
need to know anything about Plato or Kant or the history of philosophy, you
wouldn't need any historical sense at all to understand the question and be
able to struggle with it.
However, there is a connection between the impassibility of the question and
your "leap of faith." That connection, however, requires you to think that the
question is forced on us by something, like reality itself. It requires one to
think that the question is deep and real and forced, which when one finally
capitulates to the impossibility of its answering, requires one to start
talking about "leaps of faith."
As I understand it, leaps of faith are things taken where there are no lines of
reasoning linking a section of professed beliefs to the rest of your
beliefs--it's a chasm the yawns before the intrepid explorer of background
assumptions, or foundations to reality, one that cannot ever be explained
without falling into its depths, ne'er to return. I, however, don't think
there are many real leaps of faith, fewer still philosophical or metaphysical
ones. The ones I'm acquainted with all have to do with love, divine or fallen,
and rarely do we find a person Greek enough to fall in love with wisdom anymore
(which in the Greek is divine and unknowable).
I think most philosophical exhortations of "leaps of faith" stem from a
confusion, or rather conflation, of the intractability of a problem or question
with its depth in the human condition, its "forcedness." I don't think there
are any natural questions because I think people are the only ones who can ask
questions and people were the ones who created language, which means that we
were the ones that created the questions. If we created them, then we created
them for specific reasons. If we learn those reasons (through a sense of
history), then we might loosen the hold of the questions if we also come to
understand that we live in a different context, one that doesn't find those
reasons persuasive. It is no "leap of faith" on the part of those philosophers
who choose to steep themselves in intellectual history--they are searching for
something just as surely as those who don't, but they have been led, for
various reasons of which the above is only one example, to think th
at an historical sense will help them.
So, Magnus, my question would be, why do you think we need any leap of faith at
all? I see an intractable question and think it stupid and withdraw it. You
see an intractable question and think it powerful and producing of blind
stabbings in the dark. If it is impossible to know a piece of universal,
reality-scaffolding when you see it, then why do we need to look for them if we
have all the regular pieces of reality that we need? Is it just because you'd
be bored if you didn't? It's fine if that's true, but that isn't a compelling
reason for others. ("Well, I finished putting in 10 hours at the steel plant.
Time to do some metaphysical speculation because if I don't, Magnus will get
bored.")
Magnus said:
1. As I said above, the "SOM" in the 2nd must go. I hope you agree on this.
Matt:
Nope--my point in including it was to cut the Pirsigians from the
non-Pirsigians. There are ways to be a Platonist and non-SOMist (Plato and
Aristotle, for two examples), but not a way to be a Pirsigian and a Platonist.
Magnus said:
2. The first definition either assumes that metaphysics as an activity is a
personal endeavor, or that all people share the same unconscious assumptions
about our reality. The former doesn't sound as something we should (nor could)
discuss with other people, and it doesn't take much reading here on MD to
realize that the latter is false.
Matt:
Yeah, endlessly repeating the definitions at the head of each post has made me
realize that I forgot an important function to the activity of
philosophy/metaphysics-1: the changing of the general framework, or
understanding, or set of assumptions that we interpret, or see, or live in the
world.
All people certainly do not share the same assumptions, unconscious or not,
about reality (though, I would hasten to add, most of our assumptions are the
same). That is certainly not the case. I think there is an important point in
saying that metaphysics _is_ a personal endeavor, and the most important
counter-example to your pessimism about that is, first and foremost, Pirsig:
what else was he doing in ZMM? And second, and more generally, Socrates: "know
thyself;" "the unexamined life is not worth living." The first definition was
simply to recall the Socratic impulse to philosophy, which itself had a strong
reformist ring to it: in the communication of how we think to both others and
ourselves, we shall change how we think as those ways hazard up against other,
possibly better, ways.
Matt
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