[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[MarshaV]

Steve and dmb,

Would you gentlemen explain how if context and history are key factors in determining truth (conventional), why can it not be said that truth (conventional) is relative to context and history?  It seems obvious: truth (conventional) is relative.  


Marsha 






On Jan 30, 2010, at 12:26 AM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> dmb says:
> 
> You don't see how I could differ without an ahistorical foundation? Well, that certainly explains why the all-or-nothing-ism been so hard at work here. But I don't need irony any more than I need a foundation to believe that liberal democracy is better. I don't even agree that they are the products of different provinces, let alone different contexts. I think most of us know what fascism sounds like in standard American english. And the fundamentalism he's happy to eradicate in his students is just as distinguishable from just about any principled position, let alone one based on rights, laws and the consent of the governed. In Pirsig analysis, context and history are key factors. There you see a way of asserting the difference in terms of evolved value systems so that the clash between them is painted as a conflict between social and intellectual values. This is a way to assert one over the other without any ahistorical foundations or unrealistic claims about eternal certain
> ties. (And doesn't that seem kind of grandiose and quasi-theological anyway?) But we can find warrant in the past to make assertions about one being better than the other for the future. 
> 


 
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