[MD] humpty dumpty

[david buchanan]

Questioner:  This idea of reason and rationality as a cage in itself; in what sense can it be a cage?


RMP:  The cage itself is a definition.  The definition is a cage.  --- Latin phrase --- It's an old Aristotelian construction.  You set limits on what a word is.  You set limits on what your experience is.  And those limits which you set, in order that you can manipulate these words correctly, are also a cage for that word; they can't go beyond it one way or another.  One of the reasons we don't define Quality is because if we do we cage it and if you don't define it then all of a sudden the Quality spreads out all over the Universe, sort of speak.


Dave Thomas said:
DMB cannot give you a Pirsig definition of "intellectual" because as Pirsig indicates above definitions are cages. Neither could he give you a Pirsig definition of "social", "organic", or "inorganic." RMP uses analogies, examples, and context to suggest their meanings thus avoiding the trap having to define the word or to tell you which definition of a word with multiple meanings he's using.



dmb says:
Words are SUPPOSED to be definable. To say that Quality cannot be defined is to say that Quality can't be caged. I think it's a huge mistake, however, to construe this as a condemnation of words and definitions. We need the meaning of words to be limited, otherwise they're quite useless. Without definitions, you can't do metaphysics or any other kind of thinking.

RMP:  "The central reality of mysticism, the reality that Phaedrus had called 'Quality' in his first book, is not a metaphysical chess piece. Quality doesn't have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions."

Notice how the cage quote and the quote from Lila both strike a contrast between intellectual abstractions and direct experience? It's important to keep this in mind; it's the MOQ's central distinction. "There must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality." 

Quality, as direct experience, is what you know before you have you can think about or reflect on it. You "know" it immediately as experience, but it's not "knowing" in the sense of conceptual knowledge. 

RMP: "Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and a known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." 
In other words, Quality can't fit into a cage BUT we need those cages to think and talk, to practice the art of philosophical reflection. 
If you want mystical enlightenment, maybe you join a monastery or something. If you want to discuss Pirsig's metaphysics, however, these "cages" are exactly what you need. Excellence in thought and speech is unlikely to be achieved with an anti-intellectual rendering, which is what happens when you hate the cages, see them as traps to be avoided. The idea that Pirsig would try to achieve a "root expansion of rationality" while refusing to define words and concepts is fairly ridiculous, don't you think?

Mysticism and metaphysics have very different relations to intellect. One cannot include it and the other must include it. Imagine the confusion that would result in mixing up the two.