[MD] Language Games (was Theatre and Definitions)

[david buchanan]

Matt and all MOQers:

Matt said to dmb:
...Pragmatism is only anti-metaphysical if by metaphysics we mean "find out 
what reality really is behind the appearances" (what Plato was doing), but 
it is not anti-metaphysical if by metaphysics we mean "setting up a general 
vision or paradigm for thinking about stuff" (what Pirsig is doing).  Nobody 
is antimetaphysical in the second sense.  Pragmatism just means that 
_everything_ is practical, including what we do we when we create big, large 
general visions of things.  There is no distinction between "metaphysics" 
and "practical purposes" as you were using it. ...The way you keep saying 
things like this is why your type of dialogue looks more like slander.  
"Look, look, he's anti-metaphysical!  Pirsig does metaphysics, so he must be 
crazy to like Pirsig!"  The trouble is that it is just plain _wrong_ to say 
that I'm antimetaphysical because by _your_ lights, by _your_ definition of 
"metaphysics," I'm as metaphysical as you.

dmb replies:
Slander? Really? I thought you described yourself as anti-metaphysical. And 
it certainly seems like your central neo-pragmatic purpose is to convert or 
redefine DQ so as to remove mysticism from the MOQ. This is meant to 
describe your position, not your character. In any case, I was trying to get 
you to fess up with respect to the assumptions behind your linguistic 
approach. I asked if there was an anti-metaphysical stance inherent in it, 
because that is true historical. Is it not? Weren't the professionals 
engaged in cleaning up the language, of scrubbing out all the metaphysical 
non-sense?

Let me zero in on one of your points. You said there is no distinction 
between 'metaphysics' and 'practical purposes'. I'm not so sure I agree, but 
it seems to be your working definition of the concept so let's go with it. 
Its anti-metaphysical enough for me and I think this pin points the problem 
I have with your approach about as well as anything else. I'd agree that 
metaphysics should be useful in some sense, but useful for practical 
purposes? Just on an aesthetic level, if nothing else, don't you think 
metaphysics should be grand and sweeping rather than mundane or practical? 
And doesn't Pirsig go after Pragmatisim on exactly this point; because 
practicality can be wildly immoral and becasue that social level good is not 
the only good? And isn't it true that usefulness replaces truth in this 
approach too? The point is, I still think that your approach precludes the 
MOQ from being what it needs to be.

I think its interesting that Ken Wilber had just started writing his Sex, 
Ecology, Spirituality when he realized that postmodernism had taken over in 
academia and, as he explained, there were four key terms in the very first 
paragragh which had been banned, which were no longer acceptable for use in 
philosophical discourse (deveopment, hierarchy, transcendental, universal). 
He says he had to go back to the drawing board, not so much to adopt the new 
perspective but to invent a new vocabularity to deal with it. He also 
explains that the tone of his book is rather nasty because he finds the 
whole thing quite exteme and destructive. I can relate to that feeling. My 
point? Maybe it feels like slander because you're taking heat as the 
defender of a whole movement. From his intro...

"Deconstructive Postmodernism often degenerated into the nihilism and 
narcissism for which it is ow so well known, and the vacant, haunted, hollow 
eyes of professional academia, peering through the smoking ruins, told the 
tale most sadly.     One thing was very clear to me as I struggled with how 
best to proceed in an intellectual climate dedicated to deconstructing 
anything that crossed its path: I would have to back up and start at the 
beginning, and try to create a vocabulary for a more constructive 
philosophy. ...I sought a world philosophy. I sought an INTEGRAL philosophy, 
one that would believably weave together the many pluaristic contexts of 
science, morals, aesthetic, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the 
world's great wisdom traditons. Not on the level of details - that is 
finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations; a way to 
suggest that the world really is one, undivided whole, and related to itself 
in every way..."

That what I'm talking about when I use the word "metaphysics". And I think 
the "world philosophy" as Wilber describes it here is pretty much what 
Pirsig is doing with the MOQ. The are both trying to overcome SOM 
(flatland), they both subscribe to the perennial philosophy, include 
mysticism, bridge East and West, and he even wants to revive Plato as a 
mystic etc, etc. This is what I mean by "grand and sweeping". Not absolute 
or eternal truths, but something like intellectual truth about grand and 
sweeping things. Its scope is so much larger than practicality. This, it 
seems, is what your approach will not allow. Would you say that there is no 
way to "weave together the many pluralistic contexts"? Wouldn't you say that 
the world's great wisdom traditions have meaning only within those 
traditions? Wouldn't you insist that we can only ask what it does rather 
than what it means and such. I don't know, you tell me.

And here's something I was getting at a while back. You may recall I have a 
problem with the assertion that neurological terms were just another way to 
describe a mystical experience. The emphasis is Wilber's in the original 
text...

"Thus, for example, somebody who is having a spiritual experience will show 
changes in objective brainwaves that can be measured on an EEG machine. But 
conscious states, values, depth, adn intention connot be REDUCED to material 
brainwaves because, although one value is better than another, one brainwave 
is not. You experience compassion and you know it is better than murder; 
while you are thinking that, your brain will be producing brainwaves that 
can be registered on an EEG. But although you know that compassion is better 
than murder, there is nothing on the EEG machine that says, 'This brainwave 
is more valuable; this brainwave is more moral; this brainwave is more 
beautiful.' The EEG machine can ONLY show that one brain wave is DIFFERENT 
than another; it cannot say that one state is BETTER than another. To make 
that judgement, you have to rely on interior consciouness, depth and value 
recognition - holarchies of QUALITY - while the EEG machine can only 
register holarchies of QUANTITY. To reduce Left to Right is to reduce al 
quality to quantity and thus, as we have seen , land directly in the 
disqualified universe, also known as flatland."

Note: If this isn't MOQish enough for you already and for the sake of 
clarity, "holarchy" is basically Wilber's term for "level" as its used in 
the MOQ. It means something like "holistic hierarchy".

Thanks
dmb

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