[Steve] 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?"" [Krimel] While I don't think Pirsig intended confusion to arise from this clearly it has. Part of the problem lies in terms like "hierarchical" and "structure". >From my point of view metaphysics illuminates our "most general statements," or relation between illusion and reality or perhaps the "nature of reality" but when talk drifts toward hierarchy and structure we begin to talk about taxonomy not metaphysics. A minor flaw with major consequences in the quote above is the underlying notion of "hierarchy of thought". I think it is more useful to think in terms of ecologies of thought. And finally, of course, Pirsig clearly is not familiar with the idea that chaotic interactions are often both orderly and comprehensible precisely because they are chaotic. Steve: 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." [Krimel] Here you are highlight the idea of "structure" again. Structuralism has been attractive for various reasons in a number of disciplines. It involves the idea that the world can be chopped up into discrete parts. This lets us study how those discrete parts can be reassemble into Structures. Among the first of these forms of structuralism was psychology. Wundt and Titchner thought that through the process of introspection, looking inward, they could identify units of thought. They were looking for fundamental units analogous to atoms and molecules which were making chemistry and physics comprehensible in their day. In psychology this train of though was short lived, perhaps because it was a "train of thought." James convincingly showed that thought is continuous not discrete and it is best regarded as a Heraclytian stream and not a Parminidian choo-choo. Structuralism was later picked up by linguistics via Saussure and became very influential in Europe with Levi-Strauss in anthropology, Foucault in history, Barthes on cultural criticism, Derrida in literary studies and Lacan in psychoanalysis. All of them were highly influenced by structuralism but ultimately, they all actively contributed to its decline and the rise of an ill defined post-structuralism. I think, and this could just be me, that the problem with the idea is just as James laid it out. Experience is not discrete. Thinking is not discrete. Reality is not discrete. We don't step in the same stream or have the same thought twice. Any definitions we construct always carry with them ambiguity. There is, however, a form of structure that is not discrete. Fractal structures are continuous and they are ubiquitous in nature. Mandelbrot showed the even dimensions are not discrete. The distinction for example between a line and a plane is not abrupt; it is continuous and calculable. 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/
