[MD] Ironistic Metaphysics

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
Yea, maybe that's what it means to be ironic about metaphysics. The ironist holds a metaphysical view that says there is no way to choose a metaphysical view.

Steve replied:
I don't understand the claims that metaphysics is unavoidable. Why must we call "not seeing a way to privilege one metaphysical system above all other possible views" itself a metaphysical view? Why not call this a post-metaphysical perspective?

dmb says:
I wonder who you're quoting there. And isn't it true that the ability to privilege one metaphysical system above all others would require what you were calling a meta-metaphysics or something? And isn't it true that Rorty's description of an ironist depends on a key phrase (final vocabulary) that still hasn't been explained? I mean, this whole debate is pretty damn sketchy if you ask me. No offense, Steve, but it seems that nobody is quite sure what we're even talking about here and our resident Rorty fan has apparently decided not to offer much help.
As I understand it, Rorty uses the term "metaphysics" quite differently than Pirsig does. For Pirsig, it just means one's worldview. Like opinions, everybody has one. For non-philosophers, a person's metaphysical assumptions might be relatively unexamined and unarticulated but as long as a person has some way to make sense of the world they have one. That's how he can say "the application of the [analytic] knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does". For Rorty, "metaphysics" means Platonism. In academic circles in general, the word is used to mean something like "religion" so that a metaphysical claim is a claim about divine entities, supernatural forces or realities beyond our experience. One of the texts assigned in the philosophy of religion course I took, for example, is called "Religion after Metaphysics". It's a collection of essays by various authors, each of which grapples with the same problem. "How should we understand religion" now that "the metaphysical assumptions which supported traditional theologies are no longer widely accepted", the back cover asks. Not to confuse matters, but I think Pirsig would agree that "metaphysics" in that sense is no good. Radical empiricism would prohibit its subscribers from positing any such "transexperiential entities", as James calls them, and that certainly include the prohibition of any supernatural or theological claims. 


While we're in the neighborhood of religion, maybe one way to think about Rorty's "post-metaphysical perspective" is by comparison to atheism. I like the joke that says atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby. As Sam Harris puts it, we all know what it's like to be an atheist with respect to Zeus. It's not that we go around militantly insisting that there is no such thing as Zeus, we just don't believe it. We don't even care about Zeus enough to bother denying his existence. I think there really are such atheists. They don't make any positive claims that oppose theism so much as they are simply not theists. But then there are the militant atheists and their devoted opposition gives credence to the claim that atheism is itself a religion. As we see in the case of Richard Dawkins, the positive claims that oppose theism are usually scientific claims. But I'm with Joseph Campbell on this kind of debate. He says that the theists take religious myth as fact and they say that it's true while the atheists takes religious myth as fact and says that it's not true. Campbell says that religious myth is not supposed to be taken as fact and so they are both equally wrong. In case you haven't guessed by now, I'm suggesting that Rorty's understanding of the term "metaphysical" makes him similar to the militant atheists. Ironically, his denial that we can make claims about the nature of truth and reality entails some claims about the nature of truth and reality. Since Pirsig is only using the term to designate what we all do and never denies that he's doing it too, his "metaphysics" does not require any such irony. For Pirsig, the question is not whether or not we should do metaphysics but which one do we most need in the present circumstances, which one is best for now.
And no, I don't think Pirsig counts as a militant atheist. That comment is part of a wider opposition to any form of social control of the intellect. To the extent that there are intellectual forms of religion, Pirsig's anti-theism would not extend to them. And of course the MOQ itself is a form of philosophical mysticism, something a guy like Dawkins could never swallow. And neither could Rorty, I suppose. 

I don't know that this all hangs together, at least not all by itself, but hopefully you see what I'm getting at.

Thanks.



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