[MD] The Quality/MOQ meta-metaphysics

[Ham Priday]

Platt, Arlo, Bo, All --


What is "subject-object metaphysics"?  Despite countless references to SOM 
throughout these discussions, and Bodvar's use of it as a model for his SOL, 
I've never understood the meaning of this term.  And "meta-metaphysics" is a 
nonsensical parody.

But now Platt has produced what is apparently a letter by Pirsig stating 
that the MOQ opposes the SOM.  It addresses Platt's conclusion that "The MOQ 
is the best S/O answer."

[Pirsig]:
> I think this conclusion undermines the MOQ, although that is
> obviously not Platt's intention. It is like saying that science is
> really a form of religion. There is some truth to that, but it has
> the effect dismissing science as really not very important. The
> MOQ is in opposition to subject-object metaphysics. To say
> that it is a part of that system which it opposes sounds like a
> dismissal. I have read that the MOQ is the same as Plato,
> Aristotle, Plotinus, Hegel, James, Peirce, Nietzsche, Bergson,
> and many others even though these people are not held to be
> saying the same as each other. This kind of comparison is what
> I have meant by the term, "philosophology." It is done by people
> who are not seeking to understand what is written but only to
> classify it so that they don't have to see it as anything new. ...

If "subject-object metaphysics" is intended to mean the perception of 
reality as a pluralistic system whose physical components evolve and move in 
orderly fashion, it is the physical world we all experience, not 
"metaphysics".  How can any philosophy be "opposed to" experience or 
existence?  Even a metaphysical thesis that transcends space/time existence 
(definitely not the MOQ) cannot be "opposed" to it.

The experiential existence we participate in is made up of subjects and 
objects, awareness and beingness, and the attributes and qualities these 
constituents reveal to us.  To stand opposed to existence, or to claim it is 
not included in the whole of reality, is not a "metaphysical concept" but 
irrational thinking on the part of a philosopher.  Nor do ideas borrowed 
from Aristotle or Hegel automatically make one author's philosophy the 
equivalent of another.

We argue over philosophical concepts as if they were political initiatives 
demanding our 'yea' or 'nay vote, while in fact they are premises offered to 
explain the true nature of reality.  Certainly words and symbols used to 
convey a concept are not the concept itself, but they do not "oppose" the 
concept they represent.

Differentiated existence and the physical laws that apply to its dynamics 
does not a metaphysics make.  By the same token, objects and entities whose 
existence is dependent on a source beyond finitude do not constitute 
ultimate reality.  The role of metaphysics is not to explain the relations 
of evolutionary events but to distinguish the phenomenal world of 
appearances from the essential reality that underlies it.

Otherwise, I see this dispute as a tempest over a teapot.

Essentially speaking,
Ham