[MD] Metaphysics

[Krimel]

[Steve]
Here is the passage in Lila where he talks about metaphysics in general:

"Metaphysics was an area of study that had interested him more than
any other as an undergraduate philosophy student in the United States
and later as a graduate student in India....Metaphysics is what
Aristotle called the First Philosophy.  It's a
collection of the most general statements of a hierarchical structure
of thought.  On one of his slips he had copied a definition of it as
"that part of philosophy which deals with the nature and structure of
reality." It asks 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?""

[Krimel]
While I don't think Pirsig intended confusion to arise from this clearly it
has. Part of the problem lies in terms like "hierarchical" and "structure".
>From my point of view metaphysics illuminates our "most general statements,"
or relation between illusion and reality or perhaps the "nature of reality"
but when talk drifts toward hierarchy and structure we begin to talk about
taxonomy not metaphysics.

A minor flaw with major consequences in the quote above is the underlying
notion of "hierarchy of thought". I think it is more useful to think in
terms of ecologies of thought. And finally, of course, Pirsig clearly is not
familiar with the idea that chaotic interactions are often both orderly and
comprehensible precisely because they are chaotic. 

Steve:
And becuase he doesn't know it, he is the sort that Pirsig is
channelling when he says, "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable
and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics.  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."

[Krimel]
Here you are highlight the idea of "structure" again. Structuralism has been
attractive for various reasons in a number of disciplines. It involves the
idea that the world can be chopped up into discrete parts. This lets us
study how those discrete parts can be reassemble into Structures. Among the
first of these forms of structuralism was psychology. Wundt and Titchner
thought that through the process of introspection, looking inward, they
could identify units of thought. They were looking for fundamental units
analogous to atoms and molecules which were making chemistry and physics
comprehensible in their day. In psychology this train of though was short
lived, perhaps because it was a "train of thought." James convincingly
showed that thought is continuous not discrete and it is best regarded as a
Heraclytian stream and not a Parminidian choo-choo.

Structuralism was later picked up by linguistics via Saussure and became
very influential in Europe with Levi-Strauss in anthropology, Foucault in
history, Barthes on cultural criticism, Derrida in literary studies and
Lacan in psychoanalysis. All of them were highly influenced by structuralism
but ultimately, they all actively contributed to its decline and the rise of
an ill defined post-structuralism. I think, and this could just be me, that
the problem with the idea is just as James laid it out. Experience is not
discrete. Thinking is not discrete. Reality is not discrete. We don't step
in the same stream or have the same thought twice. Any definitions we
construct always carry with them ambiguity.

There is, however, a form of structure that is not discrete. Fractal
structures are continuous and they are ubiquitous in nature. Mandelbrot
showed the even dimensions are not discrete. The distinction for example
between a line and a plane is not abrupt; it is continuous and calculable.