From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 22:03:09 GMT
Dear Wim,
MATT:
I don't think metaphysics is needed and ... metaphysics, by [a
conventional] definition, falls into an appearance-reality distinction.
WIM:
The conventional definition of metaphysics you use as proof that metaphysics
implies this idea of a reality beyond experience is not the only possible
definition, so your proof is not sound.
MATT:
I certainly grant that, since I really wasn't offering an argumentative
proof of anything. I was merely pointing out that people who work under
conventional definitions of metaphysics (which I would say Pirsig sounds
like he's doing this sometimes) are working with an appearance-reality
distinction. If you rework the definition of metaphysics to mean something
other than the appearance-reality distinction, I would probably reply that
it doesn't really help to hold onto "metaphysics" as the title of what
you're doing. For instance, when you say, "The MoQ substitutes this with
'experience/value is the only ultimate reality'", I would say that by doing
that you are no longer doing metaphysics. You could more properly call it
'biology,' 'chemistry,' 'anthropology,' 'sociology,' etc., depending on
what part of reality you are talking about. Because, once you delete the
"ultimate" from the description of metaphysics, you start treading on other
traditions of knowledge that have already set up some of there own
respected and tried and true tested "methods" with which they handle these
parts of reality.
WIM:
I agree that the idea of a reality beyond experience is not needed, even if
it is a high quality idea according to the MoQ. The existence of reality
separate from individual experience is an idea with high value, because it
induces people to reconcile when iniatially expressing different ideas.
MATT:
I wouldn't even say that there is a reality seperate from individual
experience. I think that formulation sets up a subject-object,
appearance-reality distinction again. Because you are naturally led to
start asking questions like, "Well, how does my individual experience match
up, or correspond, to this separate reality?" These are questions
pragmatists don't think we need to ask.
WIM:
I agree that a formalized metaphysics is not needed. It can help us sort out
communication that gets stuck because of implicit answers to
epistemological, ontological and meta-ethical questions however. Implicit
answers to these questions ARE inevitable if we want to communicate with
others, don't you think. In that sense we can't do without an -implicit-
metaphysics.
MATT:
I think what you are calling for are implicit answers to implicit
questions. An implicit question is the same thing as an unasked question.
I don't think we have to have implicit answers to unasked questions. The
notion of an "unasked question" is that there are ahistorical questions
that each historical epoch or each individual philosophy has to own up to.
I don't think this is case. In the historicist rendering of philosophy,
questions are created by the language we use. As such, they can be
dissolved by changing our language. For instance, say we think that
Descartes was successful in solving the mind-body problem. What would that
do for us? Would it do anything for the children starving in Africa or the
people being slaughtered in mass genocides or the scientists working
towards cures for diseases and less polluting machinery? I don't think so.
And because I don't think an answer to Descartes' question would do
anything for us, I don't think we need to spend any time looking for an
answer to Descartes' question (considering nobody thinks he was successful
in solving it). It is better to dissolve the problem and move on to more
pressing and important things.
Now, I'm not knocking communication. It is helpful to understand the final
vocabulary you are working with. But I don't think one's final vocabulary
can usefully be described as an implied metaphysics. The only way I think
this might be useful is if you make an ironist/metaphysician distinction
between people's views about their final vocabularies: antiessentialist or
essentialist, respectively. If you're an ironist, you don't think there's
anything more real about your vocabulary than the next guy's. You enjoy
communicating to peruse through the diverse panoply of vocabularies that
others use, looking for things that work better. If you are a
metaphysician, then you think that your view is grounded by some true final
vocabulary, like Nature's or God's vocabulary.
MATT:
In Pirsig, we can't correspond to Quality because it's not defined and
never can be defined.
WIM:
Yes, but he goes on to split Quality in Dynamic Quality and static quality.
If we apply Scott/Nishida's 'logic of contradictory identity' we can say
that Quality is BOTH undefinable (as DQ) AND definable (as sq). Metaphysics
then becomes
NOT about correspondence of subjective reality with ultimate/objective
reality,
BUT about correspondence of the different types of sq and the patterns we
recognize in them with each other
AND -given the impossibility of their 'correspondence' with undefinable DQ-
about the metaphors and paradoxes we can use to communicate our insights in
the relation between DQ and sq.
MATT:
I'm all fine with the dialectical, Oedipal dynamic between DQ and static
quality. Its when we start using "correspondence" that things start to
look representationalist (i.e. raising the appearance-reality distinction)
again.
Matt
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