[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[david buchanan]

Steve and Marsha:

I bumped into a nice little piece of supporting material and thought I'd add it. It comes from chapter 24 of Lila. The context is a discussion of race relations but it serves this discussion of relativism just as well.

"The root.. goes all the way back to square one, to the subject-object metaphysics wherein man is an object wo possesses a set of properties called a culture. A subject-object metaphysics lumps biological man and cultural man together as aspects of a singular molecular unit. It goes on to reason that because it is immoral to speak against a people because of their genetic characteristic it is therefore also immoral to speak against a people because of their cultural characteristics. The anthropological doctrine of cultural relativism reinforces this. It says you cannot judge one culture in terms of the values of another. Science says there is no morality outside of cultural morality..."

"By contrast the MOQ, also going back to square one, says... Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their contribution to the evolution of life."

He says, "a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not", for example. 

This SOMish notion that "lumps biological man and cultural man together" would explain why some contextualists could think culture dictates our beliefs in an almost causal and deterministic sort of way. It might be worth mentioning that Rorty, at one point in his career, believed that the brain and the mind are identical. He had softened up a bit on that with age but at the end of his life still believed that minds are caused by brains and still held to a modified brain-mind identity theory (non-reductive physicalism). I don't think it would be too unfair to say this looks like a sophisticated version of the "lumping" in Pirsig's complaint. Rorty says, in fact, that all talk about minds could be eliminated from the language entirely and we could instead talk about the same things in terms of brains and neural processes. The only real reason we don't eliminate the mind from our way of talking is the inconvenience it would cause. I want to say that it's hard to see how such views could lead to anything but relativism, but instead I'll just say these views probably factor into it.

Thanks,

dmb

> Marsh said to 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.
> 
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> dmb says:
> 
> There are lots of different kinds of relativism and the word "relative" has several related meanings too. The debate between Steve and I have been engaged in has mostly been about what would probably be called "truth relativism" and "cultural relativism". Since you're question involves contextualism and historicism, you seem to be asking about cultural relativism. But the use of "relative" in the phrase "truth is relative to context and history" is really just a synonym for "related". Anyway, because of your question, it occurred to me that there might be a very important but unspoken difference between the way Steve and I understand how context and history is related to truth and then what that means for the notion of truth.
> 
> I'm going to guess that Steve (and/or Rorty) thinks that context and history aren't just important factors in determining truth but are more like the only factors. This is true for some relativists. As they see, context and history dictate what we can think and believe in an almost deterministic, cause and effect sort of way. Others are softer about this contextualism and think the historical situation is certainly something we need to take account of and factor into our deliberations but they don't believe we are hopelessly trapped in our perspectives in a way that prevents us from making valid judgments about and comparisons to other times and cultures. I think this latter position is pretty obviously true just because there are so many people who are multi-lingual, multi-cultural and can earn a good living as a translator. I mean, as a practical matter people transcend their inherited context in all kinds of ways besides literally functioning in another context. Education 
>  and personal growth is practically a deliberate and predictable means of expanding one's context and one of the most important features of human intelligence is the ability to put yourself in the other gal's shoes. Nobody could successfully lie without that skill and we all know human civilization was built on lies. That's why I believe in truth. The world couldn't function normally without it. If you say, "that's not true" then all I can say is, "see, I told you so". ;-)
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