[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[MarshaV]

Greetings DMB,

It is good to have you back with us.


Marsha  



On Jan 25, 2010, at 3:28 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> Steve said:
> It is interesting that you bring up two different senses of the term metaphysics. I just wrote a letter to Pirsig on that exact topic to see if he would offer any clarification.  The letter I wrote is posted on my blog here: http://www.atheistichope.com/2010/01/i-recently-sent-this-letter-to-robert-m.html
> 
> dmb says:
> I saw your letter to Pirsig the other day. Please let me know if he answers and how he answers. 
> Among other things, Larry Hickman compares Rorty's stance toward metaphysics to Dewey's stance in his "Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey" (Hickman is Director of the Center for Dewey Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University.) He makes a case that Dewey reformed metaphysics along naturalistic lines whereas Rorty (and many postmodern thinkers) think metaphysics is dead. He also makes a case that Pragmatism is "a precise theory of meaning, truth, and inquiry, or perhaps better put, it is a closely related family of precise theories of meaning truth and inquiry", most of which Rorty (and postmodernism) also take for dead. He explains how Dewey can reject SOM, Cartesian dualism, foundationalism, essentialism, supernaturalism, reifications and all that other bad Modern stuff, just like Rorty and the postmodernists, while avoiding the problems of postmodernism (such as relativism and the other forms of intellectual paralysis it causes).
> 
> "Dewey's post-postmodernist metaphysics, then, constitutes an attempt to reconstruct that enterprise along naturalistic lines. In EXPERIENCE AND NATURE he works out what he had tentatively advanced ten years earlier, in 1915, in his essay "The Subject Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry." He continues to eschew speculation about first and last things, he continues his attempt to undercut reliance on unwarranted hypostatized entities, and he treats inquiry into Being qua Being as a historical curiosity.
> 
> He also denies the claims of those who argue that there is no longer any place for metaphysics. He attempts to take account of the fact that the generic traits of existence are too complex to be the subject of common-sense observation and too general to be the subject of scientific experimentation. ...
> 
> ,,,Dewey gave up the word, but not the enterprise. As for the enterprise, or what he had accomplished in terms of reconstructing the traditional discipline of metaphysics, he happily stood by that. And why? Simply because the point of recognizing generic traits, as he put it, 'lies in their application in the conduct of life: that is, in their MORAL bearing provided MORAL be taken in its basic broad human sense' (LW 16.389)." 
> 
> This attitude is compared to Rorty's. Hickman quotes him saying, "Liberals have come to expect philosophy to do a certain job - namely, answering questions like 'Why not be cruel?' and 'Why be kind?' - and they feel that any philosophy which refuses this assignment must be heartless. But that is a result of a metaphysical upbringing. If we could get rid of the expectation, liberals would not ask ironist philosophy to do a job it cannot do, and which it defines itself as unable to do." Hickman adds,...
> 
> "Of course there is an irony that Rorty may not have fully appreciated. The positivism he dislikes and the postmodernism he apparently likes, share an interesting trait: they both hold the position that philosophy is incapable of addressing ethical issues such as the ones that Rorty raised in the passage just quoted. In the case of positivism it is because such issues are consigned to the jam-packed realm of everything that is noncognitive. In the case of Rortian postmodernism, it is because there is no adequate common denominator for human experience."
> 
> In the Dewey quote above, the emphasis on the term "moral" is emphasized in the original. By contrast, Rorty thinks our hands are tied morally and the best we can have is "groundless social hope". So which version of metaphysics do you suppose the MOQ is? As I see it, Dewey and Pirsig both expose the positivist's anti-metaphysical stance as itself based on metaphysical assumptions and they both see that kind of scientistic amorality as a pretty serious problem, as one of the central targets in their criticisms of modernity. In that sense, I think, they'd view Rorty's stance as part of the problem, as a particular version of the problem. In both cases, radical empiricism is part of the solution, the pragmatic theory of truth is part of the solution, reintegration of the affective domain is part of the solution and all of this is grounded in experience. Experience becomes the common denominator in this reconstructed naturalistic metaphysics. 
> 
> Now if you go down to the New Age "Metaphysical" book store, they'll tell you something else entirely. There, metaphysics means that transparent rocks can heal you and the universe WANTS you to have a new car and a rockin girlfriend. I'm pretty sure all the pragmatists would disapprove of that meaning for the term.
> 
> I think metaphysical assumptions are the sort of thing you always have whether you think about it explicitly or not. They're like opinions. Everybody has them and most are just unexamined inheritances. For a pragmatist, the question is not about whether or not our assumptions correspond to the way reality really is but rather how well do our assumptions work in experience. How well do the ideas function in explaining the past and guiding the future? As the moral concerns discussed above show, pragmatic truth is not just about bald expediency of course. But we really do need ideas that don't paralyze us with respect to basic things like promoting kindness and preventing cruelty. As I see it, if your stance won't allow that, then it isn't any good and it's time to get a new idea.
> 
> Thanks,dmb 
> 
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