Hi Andre, all,
> Andre:
> Pardon my ignorance gentlemen but can someone clarify for me what criteria
> is used to determine (hihi!) when something is metaphysically 'significant'
> or has metaphysical 'status'?
>
> If metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the
> fundamental nature of the universe and 'being'(from wiki) in other words
> "Reality" what can be 'legitimately' considered as lacking 'status' or
> 'significance' for metaphysical purposes?
>
> I'd be most grateful to get clarity on this.
Steve:
I would say that when dmb, Matt K, and I use "metaphysical" as a
pejorative term, we are talking about Platonism. Pirsig's MOQ is
certainly (if not completely) anti-metaphysical in that sense.
Unfortunately, Pirsig unveiled his metaphysics of Quality at a time
when metaphysics had gone out of style and had become a term of
derision in the most important philosophical circles, which I think
contributed to the failure of the MOQ to take the academic
philosophical world by storm. But philosophical fashions change and
the landscape is broad, so perhaps all hope for academic acceptance is
not lost (if that is even important to Pirsig).
As to your questions about metaphysics as applied to the MOQ, perhaps
we can help one another get clarity. I have had many of the same
concerns hinted at above and addressed them in a letter to Pirsig a
couple years ago. The reply I got was basically that he wasn't going
to comment and to discuss it at moq.org, but perhaps the letter I
wrote will help stake out the sides of the issue, and you can tell me
on which side you think Pirsig lands...
Dear Mr. Pirsig,
...
...I want to ask you about the term “metaphysics” as used in your
philosophy. I will delineate two possible usages of the term and ask
you to clarify as to which one (if either) you may mean in calling
your philosophy “a metaphysics of Quality.” The labels I’ll use for
the two candidates in question are “traditional metaphysics” and
“ironic metaphysics.”
...
my understanding of traditional metaphysics is that metaphysics is the
concern for the way things really are. The discipline of metaphysics
is the project of getting past all appearances to the one true
description of reality as it is in itself. Metaphysics is not
traditionally taken to be the creation of new ways of describing
reality but the search for THEE way of talking about it. Metaphysics
is the endeavor to find the correct sentences that the universe itself
demands be said about it.
In Lila, when you initially discuss your endeavor to create a
Metaphysics of Quality, while referring to Aristotle you defined
metaphysics as “a collection of the most general statements of a
hierarchical structure of thought” and as "that part of philosophy
which deals with the nature and structure of reality” which also deals
with 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?" I think that all this
could be regarded as accepting a traditional understanding of
metaphysics as the one true description of The-Way-Things-Really-Are.
When you wrote “given a value-centered Metaphysics of Quality, it is
absolutely, scientifically moral for a doctor to prefer the patient,”
you could be interpreted to be wielding a traditional usage of the
term “metaphysics.” You continued, “This is not just an arbitrary
social convention that should apply to some doctors but not to all
doctors, or to some cultures but not all cultures. It's true for all
people at all time, now and forever…We're at last dealing with morals
on the basis of reason.” You could be taken here for not just
asserting that it is possible to reason about morals once we accept
certain premises but as actually claiming to have finally found the
way for a human being to stand outside his historical context to know
the world as it actually is in itself.
You could be taken in the same way here when you described your
motivation for creating a new metaphysics:
“The solution to the anthropological blockage was not to try to
construct some new anthropological theoretic structure but to first
find some solid ground upon which such a structure can be constructed.
It was this conclusion that placed him right in the middle of the
field of philosophy known as metaphysics. Metaphysics would be the
expanded format in which whites and white anthropology could be
contrasted to Indians and "Indian anthropology" without corrupting
everything into a white anthropological walled-in jargonized way of
looking at things.”
Your intention to find “solid ground” on which we can stand outside
our own culture to compare different cultures suggests the traditional
view of metaphysics as a foundational perspectiveless perspective or
God’s-Eye-View. Such usage of metaphysics seems to me to be in tension
with later criticism of Descartes, the father of the “solid ground” or
foundation metaphor in philosophy, for having failed to recognize the
cultural heritage or evolutionary context that made his famous
declaration possible and meaningful in his time. You point out that,
“If Descartes had said, “The seventeenth century French culture
exists, therefore I think, therefore I am," he would have been
correct,” so I see you as explaining a break from traditional
metaphysics. I am wondering if you intended to teach us a new way to
use the term, and if we should not be reading you to be suggesting the
MOQ as a way to stand outside of history as the doctor-patient
passage, for example, seems to suggest.
In other words, just as concepts like causality get re-described in
the MOQ such that “A causes B” is understood in a new way as that
stable pattern of preference where B reliably values precondition A,
it seems to me that there may also be some retooling of the term
“metaphysics” itself going on in the Metaphysics of Quality. I am
wondering if you can confirm or correct me about whether we should
understand your use of metaphysics as a break from traditional usage.
You did object to this traditional sort of metaphysics from the
perspective of the mystic who “will tell you that once you've opened
the door to metaphysics you can say good bye to any genuine
understanding of reality. Thought is not a path to reality…It sets
obstacles in that path because when you try to use thought to approach
something that is prior to thought your thinking does not carry you
toward that something. It carries you away from it.” The mystic
recognizes that we can’t get more or less in touch with reality by
coming up with the right sentences to describe reality and the holding
them to be true.
You continued, “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.” Yet, you went on to
use the term metaphysics to name your philosophy anyway, so perhaps
you had a new understanding of metaphysics in mind where there is no
logical contradiction. If “the Buddha rests quite as comfortably in
the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle
transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a
flower,” it seems reasonable to think that if ideas are viewed as
tools, which have evolved like computers and motorcycles for coping
with reality rather than being a mental realm forever detached from
the reality it tries to mirror, then the Buddha rests as comfortably
in a thought or even in a metaphysics as he does anywhere else. To say
otherwise is to demean the Buddha, which is to demean oneself, and the
mystic’s flight from or hatred for metaphysics or any other sort of
intellectualizing is self-defeating.
While you explained the tension surrounding metaphysics between the
mystic’s and the positivist’s objections to the endeavor of creating a
metaphysics as coming from opposite directions, there still remains
the strange notion of “creating a metaphysics.” As far as I know,
traditional metaphysics is not usually thought of as part of the class
of things that get created but rather is one of those things into
which one inquires. In fact, as I type, my word processor is objecting
with a green underline to my use of the article “a” used directly in
front of the term “metaphysics” in the phrase “creating a
metaphysics.”
In this second sort of usage which may be intended as an MOQ retooling
of the term metaphysics, I sense some winking at traditional
metaphysics. For example, you described metaphysics as a degenerate
activity compared to picking up bar girls, a 30,000 page menu and no
food, and “a finger pointing at the moon,” which is why I am calling
this usage “ironic metaphysics.” I am wondering, first of all if I am
right about this note of irony, and if so, is the notion of irony
helpful in either the resolution or acknowledgment of a necessary
discord between the traditional practice of metaphysics and the term
as used in the MOQ. I’ll say more about what I mean by irony below. I
think it may be a fertile enough concept to avoid traditional
metaphysics and still get around the “maybe we just shouldn’t take the
MOQ too seriously” notion as suggested by Baggini in his interview:
BAGGINI: Returning again to your idea that the MOQ is “just anotherfinger
pointing toward the moon”, what would you say to the
suggestionthat we should
see take that comment perhaps more literally than youintended and
say that all
your talk of quality and value should beseen merely as useful ways of seeing
things, and we shouldn't worryabout whether it is literally true?
Should we just
see metaphysics asmetaphor?
PIRSIG: I think that we should see metaphysics as metaphor to
theextent that metaphor is literally true.
BAGGINI: In what sense can a metaphor be literally true? We
normally understand metaphor in contrast to literal truth. “The sun is
shining”is literally true; “The sun is shining in my heart” is
metaphorically true. Whether metaphysics deals in statements of the
first or secondkind seems to me an important question.
PIRSIG: I am really not familiar with the question but seem to
remember reading that if the “mythos-over-logos” line of thought is
followed, then metaphors are literally true since all our
knowledge,including scientific knowledge, is metaphorical. In a
subject-object metaphysics metaphors are clearly subjective and
literal truth is clearly objective. But if the foundations of the
subject-object metaphysics are rejected then the question of whether
metaphysics is metaphor or literal truth goes out the window with it.
It becomes moot.
It sounded to me like you were annoyed at first by Baggini’s initial
question. Baggini had already asked a bunch of insulting questions and
seemed intent on dismissing the MOQ, so his question about metaphor
probably sounded like another attempt to discredit your work, but I
actually thought this one was a good question. I think it relates to
the long-running debate about whether the MOQ itself has a container
logic problem as suggested by Bodvar Skutvik in being considered
itself to be an intellectual pattern. Would such a container logic
problem actually exist as Bo claims if the MOQ were traditional
metaphysics, and is this problem instead a non-issue as the term
metaphysics is understood in an MOQ retooling of the word?
You wrote about objections to metaphysics coming from two camps: the
positivists and the mystics. I think that there is also a third camp
that includes modern self-identified post-metaphysical philosophers
coming out of the existentialist tradition in Europe and the American
pragmatist tradition. Such philosophers have made similar critiques as
you have against the subject-object picture and claim to have rejected
metaphysics all together. In MOQ terms, however, perhaps we may see
such philosophers as having rejected only subject-object metaphysics
just as anyone subscribing to the MOQ has rather than rejecting
metaphysics as the word is used in the MOQ. So I suspect a
clarification of how the term metaphysics is used in the MOQ may also
be of use in response to the third group of people who may be inclined
to object to the MOQ as more of the traditional metaphysics that
they’d rather do away with. Matt Kundert, who I quoted above, is a
good example of someone who has rejected SOM but objects strongly to
the doctor-patient passage where he reads the MOQ as looking a lot
like traditional metaphysics. I’m wondering if both the objections of
Bo and Matt come from taking your use of the term metaphysics as
something other than intended--not from taking the MOQ too seriously
or not seriously enough as metaphysics but rather from a lack of
understanding of how metaphysics is to be understood in your
philosophy.
How do we take metaphysics seriously as metaphor where metaphor is
literally true? I asked Matt Kundert off-list about the metaphor
exchange in the Baggini interview, and he unpacked it for me as
follows:
“When Pirsig says that "metaphors are literally true" he is saying
paradoxically
(and very Zenly) that all ideas are causal players in reality…A
more direct way
of responding to Baginni's follow-up question would have been,
then, to say that
both "The sun is shining" and "The sun is shining in my heart" are on an
epistemological par--both can be literally true, just depending on
what kind of
language game you are playing at the time. If you are playing the language
game of physical science, the second statement is false, but if
you are playing
the language game of love, then it can be perfectly true. Pirsig wants to
say that since all languages are built on a set of metaphors,
there's no reason
to distinguish one set of metaphors as "more true" than another,
since truth can
only be ascribed once you've picked a language, a metaphoric, to play by.”
Matt’s explanation sounds good to me. What do you think about it?
Words put things in relation to other things, and patterns of relating
things in certain ways are intellectual patterns. The patterns of
relations that we call true in one context are different from the
sorts of relations that we might call true in another context, and no
particular context for relating things to other things need be
privileged as being concerned with the essence of what things really
are. But metaphysics is supposed to be that context that is concerned
with the essence of what things really are, so it seems to me that
some sense of irony is needed to talk about metaphysics in this way or
to talk about talking this way as “a metaphysics” (even with scare
quotes around it my word processor still objects).
So I am wondering if your use of the creation metaphor with regard to
metaphysics indicates a degree of irony surrounding the Metaphysics of
Quality as metaphysics as illustrated above in the case of my students
who may be agreeing with and being critical of an assertion at the
same time on various levels. I’ve suggested that the MOQ might be
called an ironic metaphysics or say that the MOQ calls on is to have
an ironic attitude toward metaphysics, because the MOQ seems to me to
be a metaphysics for those of us who have lost hope in the project of
traditional metaphysics—the endeavor to get past appearances to
reality as it really is, to find the one true account of
The-Way-Things-Really-Are. On the other hand, there are some on
moq.org who seem to think that you have discovered this one true
account, that the MOQ is reality and as noted previously, I think
there is some significant support for that reading in the text—that
the MOQ should be read as metaphysics as usual.
I think this quote from Lila has some support for both views: “The
culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to
interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects
and objects is built right into these glasses.” In this first sentence
of the quote, metaphysics is likened to a worldview—not reality
itself, but a lens through which we view reality. Holding on to one
such worldview is unavoidable, because, as you say elsewhere, “As long
as you're inside a logical, coherent universe of thought you can't
escape metaphysics.” But perhaps metaphysics can be rendered benign if
we recognize that we do not have to “insist on a single exclusive
truth.” In perhaps my favorite Lila quote, you wrote:
“…if Quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality then it becomes
possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek
the absolute "Truth." One seeks instead the highest quality intellectual
explanation of things with the knowledge that if the past is any
guide to the
future this explanation must be taken provisionally; as useful
until something
better comes along. One can then examine intellectual realities the same
way he examines paintings in an art gallery, not with an effort to find out
which one is the "real" painting, but simply to enjoy and keep
those that are of
value.”
Treating the MOQ as provisionally useful may read to some as you
suggesting we not take the MOQ too seriously as metaphysics, but
perhaps only those who are using a traditional view of metaphysics
rather than a retooled MOQ usage will take it that way.
The intellectual glasses quote referenced earlier continues and, I
think, swings back toward a traditional view of metaphysics:
“If someone sees things through a somewhat different set of
glasses or, God help
him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who
still have their
glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird, if not actually
crazy.”
The question I have about this quote is what would it mean for someone
to take his glasses off? I took your lens metaphor for SOM as
suggesting also that the MOQ is a different set of intellectual
glasses. Or are we to take the MOQ as what reality looks like without
a lens intervening between a mental eye and its object--that one true
account of The-Way-Things-Really-Are? Surely not. But then, how should
we understand what taking one’s glasses off means here?
I don’t think there is a way to take off the glasses by finding the
right metaphysics (which may be a good way of stating the mystic’s
objection to metaphysics). I think the MOQ can help us “see better,”
in the undefined Quality sense as well as in some particular
context-sensitive definable ways like dissolving philosophical
Platypi, but to continue the lens metaphor, I don’t think we should
think of the MOQ as helping us to see more clearly. I also doubt that
such is what you intended since the notion of “seeing clearly”
presupposes an objective Way-Things-Really-Are to which subjective
philosophical systems should try to conform.
Is the dynamic-static division of Quality to be understood as the best
way of diving Quality that you could think of, or the best way
possible such that reality literally is DQ/sq? Is reality Quality, or
is Quality one possible way of thinking of reality that may be better
or worse than some other way? I think the second question is different
from the first here since “better or worse” presupposes Quality but
not the DQ/sq way of thinking about Quality. “Reality is Quality” may
be more literally true in the traditional sense of metaphysics than
“reality is DQ/sq” since I don’t think that you assert that DQ/sq is
necessarily the best way that anyone will ever think of for dividing
Quality.
Perhaps such an ironic attitude toward metaphysics as I’ve been
attempting to describe can be helpful to wrap our minds around the
Metaphysics of Quality being a “contradiction in terms,” provisionally
useful, and also something that we should take seriously as literally
true. As I understand the MOQ, it is not metaphysics in the
traditional sense of discovering the essence of the “way things really
are.” The Metaphysics of Quality describes itself as a description,
and in the MOQ there is no “way things really are” to precede
descriptions.
You described anthropology as practiced within a subject-object
metaphysics as “Whacko science. They were trying to lift themselves by
their bootstraps. You can't have Box "A" contain within itself Box
"B," which in turn contains Box "A". That's whacko. Yet here's a
"science" which contains "man" which contains "science" which contains
"man" which contains "science"-on and on.” Likewise, someone may
object that “here’s the MOQ which contains the intellectual level
which contains the MOQ.” Do you think some comfort with irony may
prevent someone from considering the MOQ “wacko metaphysics” by this
same logic? If not, how do you see the MOQ avoiding this conclusion?
Perhaps the ironic usage of metaphysics that I am gleaning from parts
of your work is more like an eye trying to see itself than it is like
a finger pointing to the moon. If we understand metaphysics as like an
eye trying to see itself, we recognize that it is impossible for a
metaphysics to succeed, but at the same time, a metaphysics that
acknowledges this fact has still seen itself better than any that came
before which had not recognized this fact. So, ironically, it is still
a success.
In short, my questions for you are basically these:
(1) Is metaphysics itself a term that needs to be understood in a new
way as part of an MOQ understanding of itself, and if so, could you
clarify that new understanding?
(2) Assuming a new understanding was intended, have I gotten anything
right in my attempt to unpack what this new understanding might be
like?
With your permission, I’d like to share any response you may have with
the MOQ.org forum.
Regards,
Steve
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