> "Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them."
> (Emphasis is Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)
> "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any
> metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 64.)
Ron commented:
Often the rhetorical device is brought into play of not having to make sense in
a philosophical, reflective conversation because what they mean is outside of
languages conceptual ability to entirely, wholly and absolutely encapsulate and
ultimately define what they mean. This is regularly confused with explanations
of the ineffiable appearing as cryptic and enigmatic to those not "in the
know". Their arguement being more based on the consequences of esoteria rather
than the ouright rejection of meaning they believe thay are defending. And
the confusion grows from there.
dmb says:
If I get what you mean, the "rhetorical device" (not having to make sense)
isn't really a deliberately used technique. It's actually just the result of
Marsha's own confusion and conflation of the key concepts and central
distinctions of the MOQ. It's a result of the way she defines static patterns,
which is approximately the opposite of Pirsig's. It's a result of the way she
conflates conceptualization and definition with reification. The result is a
meaningless salad of misused words.
In both cases, the Pirsig quotes come from a context in which he is talking
about the discrepancy between intellectual definitions and undefined Quality.
This same discrepancy or distinction can be talked about in terms of static and
Dynamic, the menu and the food, or concepts and reality. We could say that
definitions are secondary and intellectual but the primary empirical reality is
pre-intellectual and pre-verbal. Those are just different ways of saying the
thing. There are slightly different terms used but they all express the same
basic concept, the same distinction. And this is probably the most important
distinction of all, assuming the goal is to understand the MOQ.
Pirsig is saying that concepts are secondary and they are distinguishable from
the primary empirical reality precisely because they can be defined while the
primary empirical reality cannot be defined. But Marsha completely misses the
point of this central distinction and somehow construes it to mean that words
and concepts can't be defined. This effectively erases the distinction between
what is definable and undefinable thereby erasing the distinction between
concepts and empirical reality, between static quality and DQ.
Ironically, that's exactly what reification is: the inability to distinguish
concepts from reality.
That's what Pirsig is pushing back against when he attacks Plato's fixed and
eternal Form of the Good and when he attacks the notion of a single, exclusive
objective reality. Those are both cases of reification. This is what's behind
his attack on subject-object metaphysics too. He and James are both saying
"subjects" and "objects" are concepts rather than the structures of reality
itself. If Marsha understood the concept of reification properly she would be
bringing Buddhism in to support the MOQ central distinctions, not undermining
them. She thinks the Buddhist claim against permanence is something other than
the MOQ's claim against the fixed and eternal, as if permanent and eternal
don't mean the same thing because she can't translate english into english.
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