From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sun Oct 20 2002 - 17:18:46 BST
Matt,
Matt the Enraged Endorphin wrote:
> 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).
Say what? If I interpret this correctly, you are saying that reality is
physical reality, and a metaphysician is one who claims that there is
something else that is real. In other words, you are stating the
absolutely metaphysical position known as materialism. Darwinism, for
example (meaning evolution through chance and natural selection), can
only be taken seriously by a committed materialist.
A conventional notion of
> metaphysics hopes to incorportate an "ultimate reality." "Ultimate" is
> superfluous unless "ultimate reality" is contrasted with "reality."
"Ultimate" reality is distinguished from "contingent" reality. The
signigicance of doing so is that it reminds the thinker that whatever he
or she senses, thinks, etc, is contingent. The contingent can be called
"real" since it has effects, but what it affects is also contingent.
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.
[skipping]
> 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?"
As I said in a recent post I made to John B., the importance of taking
an undefineable, etc., ultimate reality on faith is that it reminds one
that one is insane (because the Ultimate Reality is not obvious -- hence
by definition one has lost contact with the only Reality of absolute
importance), but that sanity is possible (that is, one has faith in the
authenticity of the mystics who say so). That is why I reject Rorty, in
the end. His secularism ignores the possibility of transcendence, while
if one takes Ultimate Reality on faith, then achieving sanity becomes
the Most Important Thing.
Therefore, one's thinking does not go toward trying to find a
correspondence to reality, but toward self-transformation. Metaphysics
becomes more an undermining of idolatry (= mistaking a contingent
reality for a permanent one), which in this age is the belief in a
self-existent physical reality. (Metaphysics is also attempting to
understand the thought of the (presumed) sane, eg, the Buddha).
- Scott
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