[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[David Thomas]

Bo
>> [dmb] 
>> You can think of DQ as
>> unpatterned value. Pirsig's remark about things not existing until
>> they are valued refers to static valuations.
> [Bo]
> The MOQ says that the first static fallout is the inorganic level and
> that's aeons before any "evaluation". The notion that all takes place in
> the human mind is SOM's idealist stance and is as foreign to the MOQ
> as SOM's materialist stance.
[Dave T]
Here may be the source of all our misunderstandings. In ZaMM RMP's alter ego
Phaedrus exits India and his discussion of empiricism this way,

"He¹d entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical
scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he¹d come."

Since we have no other discussion of this subject does not one have to
conclude that at the end of ZaMM, at the end of his understanding of Quality
there, RMP is still in some fashion in the empirical camp?

If we move on to Lila RMP claims:

"The Metaphysics of Quality restates the empirical basis of logical
positivism with more precision, more inclusiveness, more explanatory power
than it has previously had"

Pretty clear that RMP is still in the empirical camp. When we move on in
Lila we read:

"James really had two main systems of philosophy going: one he called
pragmatism and the other radical empiricism.".........
....... "The second of James' two main systems of philosophy, which he said
was independent of pragmatism, was his radical empiricism. By this he meant
that subjects and objects are not the starting points of experience.
Subjects and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something
more fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which
furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual
categories.' In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of
reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject
and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms which we make
them. Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it
logically precedes this distinction"

So when you say above, "The MOQ says that the first static fallout is the
inorganic level and that's aeons before any "evaluation", you are in effect
either misunderstanding or rejecting empiricism of any flavor.

The empirical claim is that all human knowledge comes from experience or our
thinking about that experience. Experiencing DQ in all ways humanly possible
and then "thinking" about them in all ways unaided individuals and groups
can, plus all the ways we can devise to extend our "experience" or our
'thinking" mechanically or electronically, IS HOW we detect, evaluate, and
order static patterns of quality. Even if they evolved eons before we
existed. 

So the fundamental question is: "Do you subscribe to any empirical theory?"
And if not, why not?

Dave


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