[MD] Ironistic Metaphysics

[skutvik at online.no]

Hello Steve

13 Aug. thou spaketh:

> I think there is a difference in the way we are using to the term, and
> I could easily be wrong about how metaphysics has traditionally been
> thought of since I'm not expert on philosophy, but I tend to think
> that something different is going on with Pirsig other than
> metaphysics as usual. We have Pirsig actually saying that he has
> created a new metaphysics! Has anyone else ever made that claim?

I like that Steve, after ten years finally this realization!

> Pirsig has offered us polar coordinates (MOQ) with the suggestion that
> we may find it better than rectangular coordinates (SOM), while the
> idea of metaphysics had always, as far as I know, precluded the idea
> that there even can be more than one metaphysics. 

The term "metaphysics" is Aristotle's and presupposes an objective 
immutable reality "out there" that we subjectively may find the lay-out 
of. This is what the MOQ opposes and delivers an alternative to with 
its dynamic/static divide, therefore I'm uneasy about the map/terrain 
metaphor as it sort of re-introduces the S/O. The MOQ rather says 
that reality IS the DQ/SQ aggregate .... and that Aristotle's 
reality/theory  in all its shades is its own intellectual level.         

> As far as I know, metaphysics is not taken to be the creation of ways
> of talking about reality/experience but the search for THE way of
> talking about it, i.e. trying to find the language in which the
> universe itself demands to be spoken about and to find the correct
> sentences that the universe demands be said about it. 

I agree. F.ex. to say that the deepest truth is that there is no truth is 
self-defeating and why I have said that language must be kept out of 
metaphysics. The Jamesian "Reality/Concept" - what Pirsig adopted in 
by the "Quality/MOQ" form  - is untenable. Language is the stage 
where everything is played out.    

> Is not Pirsig then using the word "metaphysics" in an ironistic way 
> in contrast with the search for such Truth? I'd like to read him as 
> an ironist anyway.

The MOQ is a meta-metaphysics compared to the Aristotelian-
Academical term, but as I try to convey, it robs SOM of its "M" rank 
and thereby degrades it to a sub-set of its own. Some people show 
their inability to pull themselves by hair or bootstraps out of SOM by 
not seeing this "transformation". To move from Newton physics to 
Einstein's needs a set of equations called Lorenz Transformation, the 
SOL is such a procedure from SOM to MOQ. 

IMO

Bodvar