[MD] What is metaphysics to you?

[David M]

Matt's definitions:
1) Metaphysics is the general framework, or understanding, or set of 
assumptions, that people unconsciously (with various degrees of 
self-consciousness) interpret, or see, or live in the world.  As an 
activity, it is the attempt to make the unconscious self-conscious (this 
activity is also known in some circles as "philosophy").

2) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that attempts to display the 
basic, universal, ahistorical underpinnings of reality (this activity is 
also sometimes known in some circles as "Platonism," and in a few circles 
the acronymic "SOM").

Hi Matt & All

I see the best way to understand metaphysics is definition number 1. The 
only reality we have is the reality of our experience. This is a 
metaphysical assumption
I am happy to make about my and our experience. You can try other assumption 
if you like but I think they get us into a bit of a mess, but feel free to 
try you might comeup with something new and better and does not create a 
mess. We try to make sense of our experience-reality. We can do this, I'd 
suggest (in agreement with Pirsig), because we do not live in a static 
experience-reality. The most basic approach/langauge/concepts we adopt to 
make sense of our experience-reality is the free play of metaphysics. These 
assumption change our experience-reality as do all our attempts to 
understand/talk about/conceive our reality. To make sense of our 
experience-reality we have to speculate about and analyse our 
experience-reality because without such embellishment there really is no 
hope of making any sense of it. Without assuming that the world transcends 
our individual experience (in terms of extending beyond our sense, and 
beyond the present, i.e. having a past and future, and that we can make use 
of cultural memory and the accounts of reality-experience that other people 
share with us, and a cosmic past before cultural memory or even life at all) 
we would not be able to make much sense of life-experience-reality). And 
yes, lots of metaphysics and assumptions get laid down culturally before the 
modern world and we need to work hard to make all these assumptions 
conscious, this is the heart of philosophy. The other main part of 
philosophy is creative, like Heidegger & Pirsig, creating and exploring new 
assumptions and concepts and values.

What to make of version two of the definition? I look at it like this. 
Various sets of assumptions/metaphysics are tried out like dualism, 
materialism, idealism. These metaphysics are often rather un-self-conscious. 
They take a few aspects of reality-experience and think that they can 
describe and explain the whole
of experience-reality in somewhat limited terms. So that matter can be 
explained as an idea, or an idea and thought in terms of material 
interactions. Where such approaches are clearly reductive in this sense 
(suggesting there are certain real essences in terms of which every thing 
else must be understood ), and can be seen as repressing one side of fairly 
obviously contrasting opposites, then people like Rorty and Derrida are 
quite right to point out their self defeating analyses and arbitrary values. 
SOM is this making certain qualities of experience into essences. 
Recognising all qualities as grounded in our human experience is to resist 
such type 2 metaphysics. Matt sometimes emphasises language-experience over 
the broader catogory of all of our (thought-felt-said-valued, touched, 
pushed, smelt, tasted, moody, etc) experience and I moan at him about this. 
All these attempts to make sense of our experience and analyse our 
experience and tell a narrative about the coming to be of our experience 
changes our experience, embellishes and makes more complex our experience. 
Such is DQ and the SQ it creates and retains. In this sense there is more to 
experience than actual experience. This is the reality of what is possible, 
that our lives are open to change and the creative embellishing of our 
experience. We slice, dice and select from a very rich plurality to make 
sense of the reality we are involved in chosing to notice. Reality both 
seems to impose itself on us (can't ignore the heat of the sun) and offers 
more possibilities than we can handle so that we have to be selective about 
what we notice and try to make sense of. And there are clearly many 
different ways to make sense of experience and these cultures alter the 
experiences we have. Can we compare these different cultural experiences and 
say which is better? To some extent maybe, but maybe not with certainty of 
which is better. But it makes a difference, and such choices decide what 
future we seek and which we consider better. There isthe danger of much 
conflict here, but perhaps less so if we see each other's cultures as valid 
possibilities. And if we were open in this way we may make room for people 
to make their own free choices about what values they wish to pursue.

But can we really talk about 'reality' in the sort of terms that Bo wants 
to? This is problematic. I do agree that there is something powerful and 
attractive about terms like SQ and DQ. Are they better than SOM's subject 
and object? Maybe. Maybe they are better because SQ and DQ both have their 
value, perhaps equal value.
SOM is more contradictory about the value of subject and objects, setting up 
a kind of war between their different value. Is MOQ closer to reality than 
SOM?
What can we say? Does MOQ give us a better reality? Does MOQ resonate better 
with our experience? Does MOQ give us a reality that makes more sense to
us and relieves us of the contradictions brought into our experience by SOM? 
Maybe. Maybe MOQ is our preferred reality. But it is a reality given to us 
by the sense of our experience we are able to make throught the metaphysics 
of MOQ. It is always a humanly constructed reality but it is undoubtedly one 
embedded
in a more than human cosmos (undoubtedly for the purposes of making any 
sense of our life-reality-experience). And there is always the chance of 
improving our concepts/assumptions/metaphysics to make even more sense of 
our experience.

Any help?