Hi DMB,
dmb said:
Yea, maybe that's what it means to be ironic about metaphysics. The
ironist holds a metaphysical view that says there is no way to
choose a metaphysical view.
Steve replied:
I don't understand the claims that metaphysics is unavoidable. Why
must we call "not seeing a way to privilege one metaphysical system
above all other possible views" itself a metaphysical view? Why not
call this a post-metaphysical perspective?
dmb says:
I wonder who you're quoting there.
Steve:
It's not a quote of anything, I was just trying to group that
statement as a single thing.
DMB:
And isn't it true that the ability to privilege one metaphysical
system above all others would require what you were calling a meta-
metaphysics or something? And isn't it true that Rorty's
description of an ironist depends on a key phrase (final
vocabulary) that still hasn't been explained? I mean, this whole
debate is pretty damn sketchy if you ask me. No offense, Steve, but
it seems that nobody is quite sure what we're even talking about
here and our resident Rorty fan has apparently decided not to offer
much help.
Steve:
I've been to trying to describe the issue to avoid needing to talk
about specialized terms like "final vocabulary." I guess I'm not
doing a very good job.
As for "meta-metaphysics," that was someone else's suggestion. I've
just been arguing that we don't have to work within a metaphysical
system but rather choose among them like paintings in a gallery
without thinking of any of them as the true painting or as a bunch of
different attempts at trying to be the true painting. They can all be
used for whatever they may be useful for.
DMB:
As I understand it, Rorty uses the term "metaphysics" quite
differently than Pirsig does. For Pirsig, it just means one's
worldview.
Steve:
I agree that Pirsig often seems to use metaphysics that way, and if
that is what we always mean by metaphysics, it is indeed impossible
to argue about having one. But then we can still ask, do we need to
model our thinking about knowledge on vision at all? Do we have to
think of ourselves as wearing cultural glasses that come between a
mental eye and its object and prevent us from knowing the world as it
really is?
Pirsig "The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual
glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy
of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses. If
someone sees things through a somewhat different set of glasses or,
God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those
who still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as
somewhat weird, if not actually crazy. But he isn't. The idea that
values create objects gets less and less weird as you get used to
it. Modern physics on the other hand gets more and more weird as you
get into it and indications are that this weirdness will increase.
In either case, however, weirdness isn't the test of truth. As
Einstein said, common sense-non-weirdness-is just a bundle of
prejudices acquired before the age of eighteen."
Steve:
Okay, so Pirsig likes the ocular metaphor and imagines the
possibility of being able to take off the glasses all together and
see the real thing, so he doesn't sound like an ironist in that
quote. But I'm very attracted to the paintings in a gallery bit:
RMP:
".. 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."
Steve interjects:
If he expects something better to come along, then he sounds to me
like an ironist about his own creation.
RMP continues:
"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. A map with the
North
Pole at the center is confusing at first, but it's every bit as
correct as
a Mercator map. In the Arctic it's the only map to have. Both are
simply
intellectual patterns for interpreting reality and one can only say
that in
some circumstances rectangular coordinates provide a better, simpler
interpretation."
Steve:
He is not willing to say that any particular metaphysics is true,
then he sounds like an ironist to me.
Best,
Steve
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