John said:
The meaning of "the Universe" is by definition, "completeness" - what I mean by
"the whole enchilada" - everything.
... No person in the Universe, can prove whether the Universe is Good or not
Good.
dmb says:
Yes, the "uni" in "universe" means "one" but there are different ways to
characterize the universe, especially in metaphysics. If everything that exists
is taken to be one unified thing we call it a monism. There are also dualisms,
like the substance dualism of subject-object metaphysics for example. There is
also pluralism, wherein reality is said to include any number of different
things.
There are different and even opposed kinds of monism. Sometimes the universe is
a single unified thing and sometimes it's conceived as the grand total of all
things and those things may have nothing in common except that they exist in
the same reality. You could say the One is a unity while the All is a totality.
If you're a materialist, or a physicalist as it's more properly called, then
the physical universe is what's real and the mental realm can be reduced to the
physical. If you're an idealist then reality is One unified mind or Spirit.
Einstein and Hegel were both monists but oh, what a difference. There is also
neutral monism, which says reality is not physical or mental but a third thing
that is neither. Pirsig and James are both monists of the neutral kind. James
calls this neutral stuff "pure experience" and Pirsig calls it "Quality", but
I'll focus on Pirsig.
"The Quality he was teaching was not just part of reality, it was the whole
thing," Pirsig says, "Quality was the substance and source of everything."
(ZAMM 249 & 252) Those statements are unmistakably monistic, yet the
distinction between static and dynamic means the MOQ is also a kind of dualism
and the further division of static quality into evolutionary levels means that
the MOQ is also a kind of pluralism. (Pirsig pointed this out in his interview
with Julian Baggini.) Still, it makes sense to talk about Quality as a monism
because it is "the substance and source" of static patterns no matter how you
subsequently divide them. And we can say this monism is neutral because Quality
is PRIOR to subjects and objects. "Since all intellectually identifiable things
must emerge FROM this preintellectual reality, Quality is the PARENT, the
SOURCE of all subjects and objects," Pirsig says. "ANY intellectually conceived
object is ALWAYS in the past and therefore UNREAL. Reality is t
he moment of vision BEFORE the intellectualization takes place. THERE IS NO
OTHER REALITY. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had
properly identified as Quality." ZAMM 247).
I think Pheadrus overstates the case a bit here. Intellectualizations, in Lila,
become intellectual static patterns of quality. A sharp distinction between
concepts and reality is maintained, this becomes the difference between Dynamic
Quality and static quality, but it's not quite right to say our concepts and
abstractions are not part of reality. The point is simply to show that Quality
is neutral, that it is neither a physical monism nor a ideal monism. He
attacked scientific materialism because Quality was "just" subjective,
imaginary and unreal. This "seemed to put him in the camp of philosophic
idealism" with guys like Hegel, Royce and Bradley. (ZAMM 235)
"A whole new flood of philosophic associations came to mind. Hegel had talked
like this, with his Absolute Mind," Pirsig says, but "Hegel's Absolute was
completely classical, completely rational and completely orderly. Quality was
not like that." (ZAMM 252) Quality is "not just a vague, woolly-headed,
crypto-religious metaphysical abstractions," Pirisg says, and it's not "some
intellectualized Hegelian Absolute." (Lila 66 & 366) "It is an EXPERIENCE. It
is not a judgment about experience. It is not a description of experience. The
value itself is an experience," Pirsig says. "This value is more immediate,
more directly sensed than any 'self' or any 'object' to which it might be
later assigned. ...It is the primary empirical reality from which ..things
..and self are later intellectually constructed." (Lila 66) This is a mystical
monism, as opposed to a metaphysical monism. The mystics say "the fundamental
nature of reality is outside language," the say "metaphysics is not re
ality. Metaphysics is NAMES about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where
they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food." (Lila 63) "Thought is
not a path to reality," they say. (lila 64)
In the short version, we just say the MOQ is a monism in which Reality is
experience.
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