[MD] Metaphysics and the mystic.

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
...There is enough flexibility with this word [understanding] that Pirsig can use it in sentence as a CONTRAST with intellectual things like definitions and abstractions. "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." This is more or less the same question you asked before about "knowing", except now the term is "understanding". In both cases you EQUATE them with definitions and abstractions rather than CONTRAST them. Isn't it clear that Pirsig is contrasting them, opposing them?

Ron replied:
Now Dave, to CONTRAST an idea that essentially means the SAME as in Dynanic and Static "knowing" or "understanding"  is like contrasting Dynamic and Static "change". In fact, it's the same god-damned thing isn't it? ..If you can say the terms "understanding" and "knowing" have two contrasting meanings then surely "change" can have two contrasting meanings, right? one Dynamic one Static..or am I missing something?

dmb says:
You're ignoring the context, Ron. The meaning of the word is flexible but we can see how Pirsig is using it in the context of the whole sentence, from the sentences immediately before and after, as well as the context of the chapter and the whole book. It should be obvious to the reader that "understanding" Quality is being distinguished from the kind of understanding that involves definitions and intellectual abstracts. He says you understand Quality "without" definition, "ahead" of definition and he says this kind of knowing is "independent of" and "prior to" intellectual abstractions. 
To say this direct experience is "prior to" and "ahead of" intellectual abstractions is one way of drawing a contrast. He's saying that this direct experience is something you "understand" before you have a chance to think about it or reflect on it. When he says this kind of knowing is independent of definitions and without definitions, that is another way to draw a contrast. It should be clear to any reader that he is talking about an intuitive and immediate form of "understanding", a knowing by direct acquaintance and he is describing it in terms of what it is NOT. It is NOT intellectual or abstract. It is direct and concrete. And so, no, it is definitely NOT the same god-damned thing. It is precisely NOT the same thing as conceptual understanding.  



Ron said:
I agree that it strikes one as bizarre that is why I find it a bit unclear when contrasted with the idea of the cultural glasses which points to another meaning of DQ as being unknowable and indivisable (without distinction) so seemingly there exist two meanings of DQ. it is pre-intellectual and posesses a knowing and understanding prior to intellectual linguistic definitions AND DQ is unknowable and preceeds any kind of understanding and knowing. Making DQ in our metaphysical definition BOTH knowable AND unknowable.

dmb says:
Huh?
You're just doing that same thing again. Why is it so difficult to accept the idea that there is more than one sense in which we can "know" or "understand"? Pirsig is drawing a contrast between direct experience and intellectual understanding. This is the MOQ's central distinction. Pirsig says it many ways and this is just one of them. I'm genuinely baffled as to why this confuses you, especially after all this time. 


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.
     "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. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a 'Metaphysics of Quality' is essentially a contradiction in terms, a logical absurdity."



Ron responded to the quote:


Now saying that DQ is both understandable and not understandable is a contradiction in terms it is a logical absurdity it requires an explanation and clarity in meaning it requires context and if you think that a metaphysics that rests on a contradictory statement requires no clarity in meaning then I think there are some problems that need to be addressed.

Pirsig has 2 meanings for One distinction for that first cut given the context of his explanation...[big snip]  ...Seemingly no one can claim that one is more correct than the other nor that Pirsig "meant" one over the other nor that one has primacy over the other.  I see this as unclear.



dmb says:
No, Ron, you're totally misreading that passage. In fact, you've ignored the same contrast once again and relocated the logical contradiction to a different set of terms that aren't even contradictory. There is no contradiction, not unless you insist that there is only one kind of knowing, that intellectual understanding is the only kind. He's saying that DQ is known by direct acquaintance, that it is not intellectually knowable because it comes first. It's called pre-intellectual experience because you know it from first-hand experience, before you can know it conceptually or intellectually. This is not a contradiction but rather two different kinds of knowing, two contrasting ways of understanding. And these contrasting ways of knowing are described throughout both books. In the hot stove example we see this same contrast. In this case, the direct experience of negative value is opposed to intellectual arguments, metaphysical abstractions, judgements about and descriptions of the experience. The value will always come first (DQ) and these "oaths" (sq) will always come afterward. This is perfectly consistent with the quote at the top, wherein direct experience is ahead of definitions or prior to intellectual abstractions. DQ is called "pre-intellectual experience" for this reason.


"Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation; that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly headed crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience … The value itself is an experience … It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible. Of all experience it is the least ambiguous, least mistakable there is … Later the person may generate some oaths to describe this low value, but the value will always come first, the oaths second."


Or, as James puts it, (Pirsig quotes him on this point at the end of chapter 29):
"The immediate flux of life (DQ) ..furnishes the material to our later reflection, with its conceptual categories."
This contrast is presented in the next paragraph, but this time in terms of Dynamic reality and static concepts. The contrast is simply about the difference between experience itself and ideas about experience. DQ and sq are just experience itself and the interpretations that follow. 
One real pea, James said, is better food than all the menus in the world. DQ is the primary empirical reality. It's what you "know" before you know anything else. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a 30.000 page menu and no food, Pirsig says. The point they are both trying to make with this menu metaphor, is that we shouldn't eat menus. We ought not mistake concepts for reality. Menus are fine if you're using them in relation to actual food and it the same way Pirsig wants to make sure that intellect is subordinate to DQ, to empirical reality itself.