[MD] "100% confident"

[Ham Priday]

Ian writes, in part:
> Hi Ham, it wasn't meant to be provocative bait, in any
> negative sense ... the question / the point was serious ...
> it was FORTUNATE that he [Pirsig ignored metaphysics]
> - in my humble opinion naturally. Since the quest for a
> metaphysics is the greater error - he was fortunate that what he
> ended up with doesn't need to be considered a metaphysics
> in order to be useful / valuable.

DMB adds:
> Apparently there is no shortage of disparaging remarks about
> metaphysics among professionals. Its considered a dead end in
> most places and there are very good philosophical reasons for that.
> In Pirsig's case, he hesitates to construct a metaphysics of Quality
> simply because of what Quality is. Its not an "accident of history".
> ... But the real problem here is not that MOQers love science above
> all or that that somehow fear intuitive concepts, its that the MOQ is
> radically empirical.  Like other pragmatists, Pirsig wants to get rid of
> all the extra-experiential, fictional metaphysical entities
> such as your "essence".
> Radical empiricism says that no experience and be ignored in our
> account of reality nor can our accounts assert realities unknown in
> experience such as your "essence".  Basically, this view equates
> experience and reality and this renders certain concepts obsolete,
> such as your essence.

Apart from making it clear that "my essence" is a fictional, experientially 
unknown, and (yet) obsolete concept in David's opinion, he asserts above 
that "the MOQ is radically empirical."  He also says that its author 
"hesitates to construct a metaphysics...because of what Quality is," not, as 
Ian had suggested, simply "an accident of history."  I wonder if this is 
true.  If it is, I think we've all been deceived.

I lost Ant's doctoral thesis when my PC broke down early this year, but in a 
message to Kevin Perez in February of 2006, Ant wrote: "Pirsig is telling us 
that Value is a name that we give for the unknown that
makes it all go. And makes us go (inside of us). It is unknown. We shall 
never know it. We must work with, and make sense of what we see, assuming 
that something there is an earlier cause that 'makes the world go'. We can 
try to project backwards from what we know, to something earlier in an
assumed causal chain. Our discoveries can take us earlier and earlier in an 
assumed causal chain. But earlier is ALL we may expect. We can't get back to 
the origin of value."

If, indeed, "there is an earlier cause the makes the world go" which is also 
"the origin of value", shouldn't that unknown be accounted for in a 
metaphysical thesis?  Especially considering that we can't directly 
experience it?  Especially since, as DMB insists, "the MoQ is radically 
empirical"?

But I shall not pursue this line of criticism further, since it is obvious 
that Pirsig's own pronouncement of his philosophy as "not just atheistic but 
anti-theistic" has been taken to mean that there is no metaphysical reality, 
and that whatever is "unknown" cannot be significant because it is 
inexperiencable.  This of course limits the MoQ to experiential knowledge, 
denying the ineffable, and reducing the Oneness of Eastern mysticism to an 
amalgam of empirical patterns.  (And Marsha couldn't understand why I found 
this philosophy nihilistic! )

I'll address Ian's remaining comments about the importance of definitions 
when I'm in a less depressed mood.

--Ham