[MD] Ironistic Metaphysics

[Steve Peterson]

Hi DMB, Gav, John, Bo,

I waited for Matt to weigh in, but it looks like he's staying out of 
this one.


> Steve said:
> What we would need to adopt any of these systems and what no one has 
> ever invented is a method that stands outside of metaphysics that 
> tells us how to choose between such systems. I think the recognition 
> of the shortcomings of the project of creating a metaphysical system 
> is what Rorty means by ironism. To be ironist about a metaphysical 
> system is to use it for whatever purposes it is useful for without 
> thinking of it as closer to the one true account of the way things 
> really are than any other since the ironist when it comes to 
> metaphysics doesn't think of metaphysics as the project of getting 
> past some Kantian barrier between language and reality as it really 
> is--that we can get more or less in touch with reality by coming up 
> with the right sentences to describe reality and holding them to be 
> true.   So my question about whether Pirsig is an ironist is concerned 
> with whether Pirsig sees the MOQ getting us in touch with reality as 
> it really is...Or something like that. I'm s
>  till hoping that Matt or someone will jump in and tell me what it is 
> I want to ask.
>
> dmb says:
>
> Okay, thanks. Here I can see a similarity with what Pirsig is saying 
> but there also seems to be a very importance difference. Both of them 
> would deny that they have crossed that Kantian barrier and both of 
> them would deny that our sentences correspond to reality as it really 
> is. In other words, they are both rejecting the notion of a single 
> objective truth or the correspondence theory of truth. Although this 
> description doesn't use the terms "subjective" or "objective", we can 
> still see that this would be Rorty's way of rejecting SOM. I strongly 
> suspect that this is the sort of thing Paul Turner had in mind when he 
> said that Rorty's view of things is about 90% the same as Pirsig's 
> view. But I want to talk about where that remaining 10% resides.


Steve:
I'm glad you see it that way. I think the "paintings in a gallery" 
image shows Pirisg's ironist side. I think this term might be a good 
way of talking about Bo's use of metaphysics and Pirsig and Rorty's 
ironism.

DMB:
> It seems to me that the ironist has to be ironic because he denies 
> that the Kantian barrier could ever be crossed but the MOQ's attack on 
> SOM has a way of getting unstuck. It says the Kantian barrier is a 
> product of the underlying metaphysical assumptions, not a schism in 
> nature of things as they really are. Further, the MOQ says there are 
> no "things" as they really are, no Kantian things-in-themselves.

Steve:
My reading of Rorty is that he would completely agree. His 
anti-essentialism denies that there is an intrinsic nature of a thing 
that we need to worry about. To know a thing is to me able to use a 
thing or put it in relation to some other thing rather than to develop 
a relationship with some essence of the thing as it really is beyond 
appearances.

DMB:
>  I mean, I think Pirsig DOES see the MOQ as a way of getting us in 
> touch with reality as it really is but, because of the concept of pure 
> experience, the primary empirical reality is not composed of "things" 
> or any other kind of objective, pre-existing reality. In the MOQ, 
> experience is reality and so there is no such barrier to cross in the 
> first place.


Steve:
Though Rorty doesn't talk experiences and thinks of knowledge as a 
linguistic activity, he also doesn't see anyway for language to be a 
barrier between us and reality. It is instead a way of using reality to 
get what we want or predict what others will do.


DMB
> But I still like to know what it means to have a "final vocabulary" or 
> a "metavocabulary". I always understood the word to mean the total 
> body of words either in the language as a whole or the total body of 
> words knows to a particular user. It seems pretty clear that Rorty's 
> terms refer to subsets within the total body (final) and to something 
> beyond that total body of words (meta). This doesn't make sense in 
> such a way that there must be some big idea missing that would make 
> sense of it. It might seem like a flippant question, but in what sense 
> can a person have more than one vocabulary? Is he talking about the 
> various kinds of jargon used in various fields or is he talking about 
> the examination of metaphysical assumptions as such? The use of such 
> terms really needs some context, you know? Where is Rorty coming from 
> with these terms and what's he trying to do with them?
>
Steve:
I haven't read enough yet to try to unpack these terms.

Best,
Steve