Hi Bo,
Steve:
In the MOQ, a metaphysics is not an object or a subject. It is an idea
or collection of ideas. It is an intellectual pattern of value. It is
not distinct from reality. It is part of the reality it describes. If
it couldn't describe itself, it wouldn't be much of a metaphysics.
Bo:
I agree with Ian. With SOM the term "metaphysics" as the most basic
understanding of reality was born. In other words SOM began as the
attitude that we are able to understand the workings of reality. This
is
the "cosmologist" (objectivity) but along with it subjectivity
immediately
came into existence (the Sophists). And ever since the S and the O
has been involved in a see-saw play: .
Steve:
Pirsig uses the word metaphysics from the pragmatist's perspective. He
postulates that reality is Quality based on radical empiricism, but
beyond that he does not claim to that he is describing how things
actually are. That is an SOM game that he refuses to play:
"But if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it
becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one
doesn't seek the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest
quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if
the past is any guide to the future this explanation must be taken
provisionally; as useful until something better comes along. One can
then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings
in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the
"real" painting, but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of
value. There are many sets of intellectual reality in existence and we
can perceive some to have more quality than others, but that we do so
is, in part, the result of our history and current patterns of values.
Or, using another analogy, saying that a Metaphysics of Quality is
false and a subject-object metaphysics is true is like saying that
rectangular coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false.
Steve's "In the MOQ, a metaphysics is not an object or a subject"
brings "metaphysics" out of SOM-land, but then to say that "...it is a
collection of ideas" brings it back again and "..it is not distinct
from
reality" retrieves it. It's like LILA that starts with the correct Q
view of
metaphysics as reality itself "No one living in an ordered universe is
outside metaphysics", but then switches to reality as the objective
part
and metaphysics (the MOQ included) the subjective part .. and SOM
rules the waves.
Steve:
How is recognizing that Pirsig's work is a set of ideas a regression
into SOM? What else is Pirsig's body of work supposed to be?
Pirsig doesn't play "subjective/objective" in the ontological sense,
ever. Drawing distinctions about experience and intellectual
descriptions of experience is not subjective/objective. It is merely
the recognition that such intellectual descriptions are a part but not
the whole of experience. Ideas need to cohere with other ideas and with
other experience. Saying so does not mean that any of that is
subjective or objective. It is just experience with no subjects or
objects presupposed.
Best,
Steve
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