Horse said:
The way I see it is that the only thing that's real is Quality - and Pirsig/MoQ
splits this into Static Quality and Dynamic Quality.
Arlo replied:
Right, "Quality is the primary empirical reality of the world" (LILA). But then
you seem to go on and say that only DQ is "reality", and SQ is "illusion". I
think this is a mistake, and I think it's because it continues to use the
"real" in some existential sense rather than an empirical one. ...its
apparent we define "illusion" differently. To me being "not entirely correct"
does not make something an "illusion". What is an illusion is the consideration
of subjects and objects as primary existants. Failing to see Quality, failing
to see that "reality" is empirical and not existential, this is the illusion.
...When Pirsig talks about "gooning out" when he meets Redford, he says, "It
was no subjective illusion. It's a very real primary reality, an empirical
perception." (LILA) Our empirical perceptions, they are what is real, they
define what is "real" as precisely a experiential phenomenon and not as an
existential one.
dmb says:
I think that's a very clear and neat way to put it, Arlo. We could think about
this in terms of the basic set up. As Pirsig is just about to launch into the
MOQ proper, he addresses the concerns of the two main opponents of metaphysics;
the positivists and the mystics. They oppose metaphysics for two completely
different reasons. The positivists, operating with materialist assumptions, say
that metaphysics is meaningless. They'll be extremely skeptical, if not
completely dismissive, of any statement that can't be verified through direct
observation. For them, physical reality is what's real and true statements are
the ones that correspond to it. The mystics, on the other hand, reject
metaphysics because they're operating on the view that reality is outside of
language and beyond all concepts. Ideas don't bring you closer to reality, they
say, it has to be known directly, through non-conceptual experience.
Rather than simply take sides with one or the other, Pirsig sort of splits the
difference here and proceeds with his metaphysics despite their objections. He
agrees with the positivist's empiricism but says that positivism was rejecting
metaphysics for metaphysical reasons and he says these empiricists aren't
empirical enough. He agrees with the mystic's assertion that metaphysics is
just a menu and ought not be confused with the actual food. But he also says
that forming a coherent picture of reality is just part of life. The only one
who doesn't pollute the mystical reality with conceptual understandings hasn't
been born yet, he says. And to make a long story short, the MOQ splits the
difference in such a way that we get pragmatism and mysticism at the same time.
The MOQ is both. And experience is central to both.
So the MOQ says that experience is what's real. The primary empirical reality
(DQ) is the food and the menu (sq) is valuable and helpful to the extent that
it helps you get the food. In other words, the point and purpose of static
quality is to successfully guide the ongoing course of experience, to serve
life. The intellect isn't rejected so much as it is demoted, stripped of it's
pretensions to eternal truth and absolute certainty. This was James's purpose
too. Like Pirsig, he traces the problem all the way back to Plato and the
ancients. James calls it "vicious abstractionism". Intellectualism becomes
vicious, he said, when concepts are reified, deified and the empirical reality
from which they were abstracted in the first place is denigrated as less than
real. And so James and Pirsig push back against this. They see the dominance of
the intellect as a distortion and they both say concepts are always secondary
and subservient. There is a point and purpose to this abstracti
ng function. It's definitely not something we want to throw away or dismiss as
an illusion. Static patterns of the menu are only an "illusion" if you're
confusing them with the food.
It's concepts AND reality, you know? Not concepts vs reality.
In what sense were those 1945 bombs not real? Shall we just shrug it off
because all that death and destruction was ultimate and eternal? Because it
only ruined "conventional" realities or contingent beings? No that is exactly
the problem with vicious abstractionism. It doesn't explain human suffering so
much as it explains it AWAY. Betterness or meliorism is at the heart of the
move against this kind of nihilistic otherworldliness.
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