From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 20 2002 - 19:58:58 BST
Scott and Platt,
In this post, my hope is to describe why I don't think metaphysics is
needed and why metaphysics, by definition, falls into an appearance-reality
distinction.
Metaphysics, by a conventional definition, falls into an appearance-reality
distinction because it assumes something is "beyond" reality (by strict
definition, if reality were gleaned by physics). A conventional notion of
metaphysics hopes to incorportate an "ultimate reality." "Ultimate" is
superfluous unless "ultimate reality" is contrasted with "reality." This
retains the appearance-reality distinction. We've gone over why I follow
Rorty in saying that we should get rid of this distinction (and, hence,
metaphysics).
Scott's notion of an "ironic metaphysics" attempts to steer clear of this
by making the "ultimate reality" undefined. This leaves a formless,
ineffable, universal, ahistorical, foundational ultimate reality, while
leaving all formulations of it as contingent. One could make the case that
this is what both Plato and Pirsig were trying to do. Plato's instrument
of irony is Socrates. David L. Hall attempts to make this case (as a
strike against Rorty's narrative) when he says, "Socrates is made to play
edifier to Plato's systematic aspirations. This involves the
institutionalization of doubt." This makes Plato's writings "permanently
ironized." Pirsig can be seen as doing the same thing with Phaedrus as his
mouthpiece. It is, perhaps though, a juxtapostion of the roles Plato and
Socrates played because Phaedrus seems to be the systematizer and Pirsig
(as narrator of ZMM or simply as writer) the edifier.
This, I think, is the best way to try and do justice to the historicist
elements of Pirsig while remaining an essentialist. However, my question
is still the same: "What good is an ultimate reality if you can't
correspond to it?" I realized that Pirsig keeps Quality undefined, but I
couldn't understand trying to correspond to it. Its the same thing that
Locke did in explaining the difference between real essences (or
definitions) and nominal essences (or definitions). Locke thought that
real essences existed, but he didn't think we'd ever know if we correctly
corresponded with them. He thought that all we'd ever have were nominal
essences, which we defined. The question for Locke and Pirsig, in the name
of Ockham's Razor, is why keep the real essences or undefined ultimate
reality. In Locke, at least we could correspond to the real essences, we'd
just never know it. In Pirsig, we can't correspond to Quality because its
not defined and never can be defined. The definition of Quality is
"undefinable."
The use we get out of Quality as ultimate reality is as a foundation for
universality and ahistoricality. The appearance-reality distinction is
retained so that we can touch something universal: a replacement for God.
Scott replied that one can have faith in Quality, which cuts to the quick
of it. The demand for faith in Quality as undefined is a demand for a
foundation. The retainment of the appearance-reality, even when we can't
ever correspond to reality, is a statement for the demand for a foundation.
This is a foundation that Rorty and I dispense with, something we do not
think is needed. So we are still quick to pull out our razors.
This is the bulk of my response to Scott and Platt (since Platt seemed to
agree with Scott on most counts). Scott wants to retain an ultimate
platform on which to place contingent theories about that platform. All
Rorty thinks we need is the contingent theories.
PLATT:
Without individual originality there's no betterment of the human condition.
MATT:
Let me say this: central to Rorty's narrative is the "strong poet." The
strong poet is the person that shrugs off the past in an attempt to say
something original. Rorty, I don't think, quite conceives of himself as a
strong poet, though I would. In relation to this, though I consider Pirsig
to be a strong poet of a sort, I don't think he's as strong as others would
like him to be. Pirsig, to say something new, has to "hold his time in
thought" just like every other strong poet. This means that he has to
understand the past to say something that is his own. The conception of
Quality as an undefined ultimate reality is new, in a way. But this
doesn't mean that he's the most original fellow ever to traverse the Earth.
The position I was trying to stake out by saying that "I take it to be
more important to find more people that sound the same to gather more
support, rather than finding someone that sounds like no one else," was a
way to say that, even though a person is original, does not mean that I
have to like him or think that what he's doing is somehow good for
humanity. Somehow, I don't think you, Platt, would like Derrida simply
based on his originality. I don't want to get into a redescription war or
"Who's the most original?", I simply want to say that I look for more than
originality, which is what I think most people do anyways.
On morality, there's a succinct statement in Philosophy and Social Hope in
his essay "Ethics without Principles." On a comparison of Pirsig and
Rorty, if you retain the notion of an "absolute morality" as coming from
the foundation of Quality, then they don't commensurate very well because
Rorty's project is to blur the line between morality (commonly conceived of
as absolute) and prudence. Prudence says a person does a thing, not
because it is morely good of him to do it, but because it is prudent that
he do it. For instance, running from a tiger is traditionally not thought
of as a moral action, but a prudent action. Pirsig blurs the line, too.
He might say that it is morally good for you to run from the tiger.
However, if you construe this as an absolute morality, then that's where
Pirsig and Rorty disagree. Rorty would retain the morality-prudence
distinction insofar as we conceive of it as a continuum, rather than two
distinct kinds. Suggestions for action that are more general can be called
morality (for instance, "Thou shalt not kill"). Suggestions for action
that are more particular can be called prudence (for instance, "Run from
that tiger in front of you").
On the difference between "describing" and "corresponding," when I describe
a tiger that is making causal impressions in my mind I am describing what's
in front of me. "Correspondence to reality" doesn't reflect me describing
the tiger in front of me, it reflects me describing a "real" tiger i.e.
giving the real, correct essence of a tiger. Its basically the difference
between Locke's real and nominal definitions I described before. A
correspondence theory wants the definitions I use to be real in the sense
of their being a Platonic Form of a Tiger that my description correctly
corresponds to. A nominal definition is simply whatever I turn it into.
If I described a big cat with white fur on its belly and orange fur with
black stripes everywhere else as an "elephant," a correspondece theorist
would say that I'm wrong because I incorrectly named the essence of the
tiger. A nominalist would simply say that the description I gave is
usually called a tiger. And add, "And if you want people to understand
what you are saying, I suggest calling it a tiger, too."
Matt
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