[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[skutvik at online.no]

Dave T.

27 Jan. :

[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:


Interesting input Dave T. However, in a MOQ backlight, isn't it more 
appropriate to say that RMP went to India a SOMist and left it a 
SOMist (I would like to say "an intellect levelist", but never mind) for it 
is SOM that have spawned all  philosophical "ism". The social level's 
mythologies and religions weren't considered "isms" from inside that 
level, and the - er - levels beyond SOM  (Buddhism that RMP 
encountered in India and the MOQ that coined made himself) don't 
regard themselves "isms".

Now, the MOQ is out of the immensely fortified Western SOM and in 
order to transcend it he had - like the wrestlers do - use his opponent's 
own strength to fall it, why  young Phaedrus initial efforts (in ZAMM) 
was to use SOM's own kind of argument to refute its "horns" and 
through long strings of objective argumentation arrived at final  
conclusion that SOM is a Quality sub-set.            

Then the even more elaborated MOQ (the DQ/SQ configuration and 
the static levels) in LILa . All this the Oriental could skip because their 
philosophical stage did not develop into a SOM and why the 
philosophical platform for Buddhism is so "mystic" (woolly I call it) and 
the reason for Phaedrus' giving up on it when the teacher said that the 
atom bomb was illusory. I mean Buddhism may be good enough, but 
so difficult to approach Westerners.

LILA:

    "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.

Course I reject empiricism, I reject all "isms"  and all academic efforts 
because they are SOM, and now it may dawn on you why SOM must 
be made into MOQ's intellectual level. It must be a MOQ subset, or the 
MOQ will forever remain be a SOM subset -  a philosophical "ism".  
And Pirsig actually made intellect a MOQ level, why he then went and 
said it was an intellectual pattern  ...??? Will we ever know? I guess 
not.   

> The empirical claim is that all human knowledge comes from experience
> (and?) or our thinking about that experience. 

If experience is the world "out there" reaching us by our senses  and 
"our thinking"  is another realm this sounds uncannily like SOM

> 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. 

To enter into a dynamic state is a frightening experience, it was what 
sent RMP into hospital. He was however a path-finder and now we can 
wander safely beyond SOM and see that it REALLY is a static level of 
a still greater system. 
    
This is your half.baked MOQ where the intellectual level has taken 
over from SOM's "mind" and I can't for the life of me see how this 
differs from ordinary SOM where matter allegedly develops mind that 
enables it to become conscious of itself.

> So the fundamental question is: "Do you subscribe to any empirical
> theory?" And if not, why not? 
 
Hope I have explained it.

Bodvar