Hi Marsha, Bo, All, Marsha: >I still like to hear an agreed upon definition of metaphysics.
The issue between Bo and I is that we don't agree on the meaning of the word. I think what's of issue is the more specific question of what the "M" in Pirsig's philosophy "the MOQ" means. We should consider what Pirsig himself says he means by the term "metaphysics." Here is the passage in Lila where he talks about metaphysics in general: "Metaphysics was an area of study that had interested him more than any other as an undergraduate philosophy student in the United States and later as a graduate student in India....Metaphysics is what Aristotle called the First Philosophy. It's a collection of the most general statements of a hierarchical structure of thought. On one of his slips he had copied a definition of it as "that part of philosophy which deals with the nature and structure of reality." It asks such questions as, "Are the objects we perceive real or illusory? Does the external world exist apart from our consciousness of it? Is reality ultimately reducible to a single underlying substance? If so, is it essentially spiritual or material? Is the universe intelligible and orderly or incomprehensible and chaotic?"" Steve: So there you have your definition straight from Pirsig. Bo of course disgrees. He says that metaphysics IS reality. Some philospphers may use metaphysics the way Bo uses it, while others perhaps agree with Pirsig's definition, but that isn't of ussue. It doesn't really matter what metaphysics REALLY means in this discussion. It only matters how Pirsig uses the term in the phrase that he coined: "the Metaphysics of Quality." Again, the question should be, "What does Pirsig mean when he calls his philosophy "a metaphysics"?" First of all, his use of "a metaphysics" rather than simply "metaphysics" is an interesting and unusual use of the term since in the subject-object picture there is only one correct construction of things--one possible correct metaphysics. But Pirsig has a mystical bent. He says, "Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too "scientific." Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food." SOM philosophers have been eating at this restaurant for thousands of years. Since Bo agrees with the SOMers that metaphysics is reality, he is looking to the MOQ as the one true understanding of reality. While Andre wants to paint Bo in this regard as the true believer in this forum, he is just one more customer like the rest of us at the restaurant with no food. Bo is just the one who doesn't know it. And becuase he doesn't know it, he is the sort that Pirsig is channelling when he says, "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a "Metaphysics of Quality" is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity." In other words, from the SOM perspective, the MOQ is no true metaphysics (a logical absurdity in fact), but we already knew that. However, from the MOQ perspective--using the word "metaphysics" in Pirsig's retooling of the term--SOM is also a metaphysics of Quality, since both SOM and Pirsig's MOQ satisfy Pirsig's definition of metaphysics: "It's a collection of the most general statements of a hierarchical structure of thought...that part of philosophy which deals with the nature and structure of reality." Marsha: >Well, in that case I would say the MoQ is a metaphysics that includes within >it >four static levels of patterns of which the fourth (top) level is >comprised of >intellectual patterns based on a Subject/Object Metaphysics. Steve: Since metaphysics is just a part of philosophy and since philosphy is only a subset of all intellectual patterns, then all intellectual patterns are not based on subject/object metaphysics. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
