[MD] What is metaphysics to you?

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Magnus,

My two 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").

Magnus said:
First, I'd like to remove the SOM from your 2nd definition above. SOM is just one of many different such underpinnings of reality (in which the S/O division is primary), and one which I as a Pirsigian think is incorrect. Not sure if "Platomism" would follow.?

Matt:
No dice.  One of our disagreements, then, is that you think M2 is a branch of philosophy that you can do without being a target of Pirsig's critique in ZMM.  I think that, while technically true there's more than one way to be a Platonist, Pirsig's journey in ZMM was from the contemporary S/O dilemma to the more deeply rooted problem of dialectic, "the parvenu."  I think SOM is paradigmatic of modern (post-Cartesian) philosophy, but that it has first been infected by the larger problem of the Platonic search for basic, universal, ahistorical underpinnings to reality-as-such, a search that given the production of individual disciplines of inquiry into how stuff in reality works (physics, psychology, history, etc.) will naturally give way to the production of a method--the dialectic.  This is Pirsig's enemy in ZMM, and it is an enemy that is multifaceted in intellectual history.

So, I suppose, if you'd like, you can be a Platonist without being a SOMist (though Whitehead would've thought that was a step back).  But as a Pirsigian you should avoid the whole thing.

Magnus said:
Second, I may be running counter to Pirsig (in ZMM) by trying to define a metaphysics, but not more than he does himself in Lila.

Matt:
This, I think, is an ambiguity on Pirsig's part in the books.  He sometimes treats "metaphysics" as this dirty thing (which comes from his version of the mystic position).  But there's nothing dirty about M1.  There is something dirty about M2, though, and if one thought that the two definitions were implicitly co-extensive, then I could understand why one would treat metaphysics as both dirty and inescapable, something we have to hold our nose a little to do.

I think it is one of the virtues of most of the MD interpreters of Pirsig that they don't get bogged down by this and self-consciously just use M1, but one of the vices is that they sometimes often turn a blind eye to the ambiguity.  (But, on the other hand, that's a scholastic issue that one can ignore when doing philosophy.)

Matt said:
I'm not sure what's supposed to be causally independent of physics.  This seems to me to suggest that we cannot give a physical description of everything, but I'm pretty sure that if you can't give a physical description of a thing, it doesn't exist.  But all that this physicalism excludes--so far as I can see--are kinds of magic, for instance a God that can willy-nilly interrupt the causal order of things, so-called miracles.  God can exist, because as a pragmatist I think that as long as it is useful to talk about God, He exists--and we can give a physical description of our talking and writing.

Magnus said:
First of all, it does seem very logical to assert what you say "that if you can't give a physical description of a thing, it doesn't exist". However, the very word "metaphysics" somehow escapes that assertion with its meta prefix.
...
Now, here's where my version of metaphysics comes in. These different universes have different laws of physics. However, they would all have the same metaphysics. The most important split of each universe is the DQ/SQ split, i.e. the division of what's always changing and what's static. They would also have the same static levels as we see here (which is why I persist using so generic definitions of them).

Matt:
Sure, the "meta" certainly does seem to imply something before physics--but I can still give a physical description of all the utterances/inscriptions you use to describe how metaphysics is outside physics.  Why do I point out this obvious-hood?  Because your version of metaphysics sounds pretty much like Kant's transformation of Platonism--trying to find the transcendental outlines of existence.  In trying to circumvent all the speculative, metaphysical nonsense of preceding generations, Kant said that, rather than explain kinds of existence (rather more poorly than other disciplines like the New Science), philosophy needed to show what was needed for existence to exist: what are the underpinnings, the structure on which this house exists?

There are a few problems with transcendental philosophy, but the broad thought--what _has_ to exist for us to be able to do all of the things we are doing--is largely something that can be done.  But there is an infinite regress problem that arises if you aren't careful: unless you are going to posit a non-physical kind of existence--which is a dangerous proposition--when somebody asks you what kind of existence the DQ/SQ split has, one of the few routes people feel comfortable anymore with is "it has the existence of a metaphysical proposition," i.e. it's something stated by people (which is Pirsig's answer with "Western ghosts").  This, it is true, creates a circle that some people think is damaging--people need to exist for metaphysics to exist, which needs to exist for physics to exist, which needs to exist for people to exist--but some of us think that the circle becomes damaging and silly in equal measure: only by taking it too seriously.  Part of what the word "universe" means is "that which would exist whether people do or not" and the only sense in which the universe is dependent on people is the sense in which "universe" is a word, and only people use words.

So, Magnus, the question that will help elucidate what you think metaphysics is is: what kind of existence does the metaphysical distinction DQ/SQ have?

Matt said:
Does it work because it is true, or is it true because it works?  Pragmatists think that's a pointless question, but it is basically what Platonism, over the historical dialectic of two and a half millennia, has reduced to.

Why is it pointless?  Because _how would you tell the difference_?

Magnus said:
I would say the MoQ answer to that is to ruthlessly demote what philosophers are currently doing to "philosophology", i.e. to discuss different philosophies. It simply realizes that it takes a leap of faith to embrace any metaphysics, regardless of whether it's SOM, the MoQ, or the logical land where philosophers discuss philosophies.

However, it's still not possible to tell if it's the correct blueprint. As in science, it's only possible to reject a hypothesis/metaphysics, which is probably why we here at MD too often end up pointing fingers and stating how wrong others' points of view are.

Matt:
Sure, it is easy to make fun of academic philosophers for their vices, and in fact it makes great rhetorical sense to make fun of them because Pirsig does.  Unfortunately, the demotion doesn't pass muster with me as I've worked quite hard to pinpoint that exact area in Pirsig's writing as his weakest.  (Particularly in "Philosophologology" in the MoQ Forum.)  I won't go on one of my little "Save the Academics" rants here since we all know, like appearances and whales, they do need to be saved.  But what I would like you to notice is how little the one has to do with the other in the movement of your line of thought: what does the difficulty of answering the question "Does it work because it is true, or is it true because it works?" have to do with philosophers discussing different philosophies?  The question is one that you could pop on anyone at almost any time to make them stutter, with no utter connection to whether the person was preoccupied with the philosophies of their predecessors (Pirsig's philosophy-reduced-to-philosophology, which more showed how little Pirsig knew of the anglophone academic scene).  You wouldn't need to know anything about Plato or Kant or the history of philosophy, you wouldn't need any historical sense at all to understand the question and be able to struggle with it.

However, there is a connection between the impassibility of the question and your "leap of faith."  That connection, however, requires you to think that the question is forced on us by something, like reality itself.  It requires one to think that the question is deep and real and forced, which when one finally capitulates to the impossibility of its answering, requires one to start talking about "leaps of faith."

As I understand it, leaps of faith are things taken where there are no lines of reasoning linking a section of professed beliefs to the rest of your beliefs--it's a chasm the yawns before the intrepid explorer of background assumptions, or foundations to reality, one that cannot ever be explained without falling into its depths, ne'er to return.  I, however, don't think there are many real leaps of faith, fewer still philosophical or metaphysical ones.  The ones I'm acquainted with all have to do with love, divine or fallen, and rarely do we find a person Greek enough to fall in love with wisdom anymore (which in the Greek is divine and unknowable).

I think most philosophical exhortations of "leaps of faith" stem from a confusion, or rather conflation, of the intractability of a problem or question with its depth in the human condition, its "forcedness."  I don't think there are any natural questions because I think people are the only ones who can ask questions and people were the ones who created language, which means that we were the ones that created the questions.  If we created them, then we created them for specific reasons.  If we learn those reasons (through a sense of history), then we might loosen the hold of the questions if we also come to understand that we live in a different context, one that doesn't find those reasons persuasive.  It is no "leap of faith" on the part of those philosophers who choose to steep themselves in intellectual history--they are searching for something just as surely as those who don't, but they have been led, for various reasons of which the above is only one example, to think that an historical sense will help them.

So, Magnus, my question would be, why do you think we need any leap of faith at all?  I see an intractable question and think it stupid and withdraw it.  You see an intractable question and think it powerful and producing of blind stabbings in the dark.  If it is impossible to know a piece of universal, reality-scaffolding when you see it, then why do we need to look for them if we have all the regular pieces of reality that we need?  Is it just because you'd be bored if you didn't?  It's fine if that's true, but that isn't a compelling reason for others.  ("Well, I finished putting in 10 hours at the steel plant.  Time to do some metaphysical speculation because if I don't, Magnus will get bored.")

Magnus said:
1. As I said above, the "SOM" in the 2nd must go. I hope you agree on this.

Matt:
Nope--my point in including it was to cut the Pirsigians from the non-Pirsigians.  There are ways to be a Platonist and non-SOMist (Plato and Aristotle, for two examples), but not a way to be a Pirsigian and a Platonist.

Magnus said:
2. The first definition either assumes that metaphysics as an activity is a personal endeavor, or that all people share the same unconscious assumptions about our reality. The former doesn't sound as something we should (nor could) discuss with other people, and it doesn't take much reading here on MD to realize that the latter is false.

Matt:
Yeah, endlessly repeating the definitions at the head of each post has made me realize that I forgot an important function to the activity of philosophy/metaphysics-1: the changing of the general framework, or understanding, or set of assumptions that we interpret, or see, or live in the world.

All people certainly do not share the same assumptions, unconscious or not, about reality (though, I would hasten to add, most of our assumptions are the same).  That is certainly not the case.  I think there is an important point in saying that metaphysics _is_ a personal endeavor, and the most important counter-example to your pessimism about that is, first and foremost, Pirsig: what else was he doing in ZMM?  And second, and more generally, Socrates: "know thyself;" "the unexamined life is not worth living."  The first definition was simply to recall the Socratic impulse to philosophy, which itself had a strong reformist ring to it: in the communication of how we think to both others and ourselves, we shall change how we think as those ways hazard up against other, possibly better, ways.

Matt
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