[MD] Definitions.

[MarshaV]

dmb,

I do not have a negative stance toward static intellectual quality, and never have had a negative stance towards any static quality, and I have not suggested one abandon reason, only know its real limitations   I have never suggested concepts or language was a "contemptible prison".  So I will repeat what RMP, himself, wrote in the final chapter of LILA: 

" ... Strictly speaking, the creation of any metaphysics is an immoral act since it's a lower form of evolution, intellect, trying to devour a higher mystic one. The same thing that's wrong with philosophology when it tries to control and devour philosophy is wrong with metaphysics when it tries to devour the world intellectually. It attempts to capture the Dynamic within a static pattern. But it never does. You never get it right. 

"So why try? It's like trying to construct a perfect unassailable chess game. No matter how smart you are you're never going to play a game that is 'right' for all people at all times, everywhere. Answers to ten questions led to a hundred more and answers to those led to a thousand more. Not only would he never get it right; the longer he worked on it the wronger it would probably get."
 
           (RMP, LILA,  Chapter 32)

Here he answers why he wrote the MoQ:
 
 "Maybe when Phaedrus got this metaphysics all put together people would see that the value- centered reality it described wasn't just a wild thesis off into some new direction but was a connecting link to a part of themselves which had always been suppressed by cultural norms and which needed opening up. He hoped so. The experience of William James Sidis had shown that you can't just tell people about Indians and expect them to listen. They already know about Indians. Their cup of tea is full. The cultural immune system will keep them from hearing anything else. Phaedrus hoped this Quality metaphysics was something that would get past the immune system and show that American Indian mysticism is not something alien from American culture. It's a deep submerged hidden root of it."
  
          (RMP, LILA,  Chapter 32)
 
 
So RMP is explaining that "mysticism is not something alien" and he wrote the MoQ as a  "connecting link" to a part of ourselves which had always been suppressed by cultural norms.  In other words, he is trying to explain and pointing to experience not limited by concepts and language.  
 

Marsha 
 



On Feb 14, 2013, at 10:15 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> "Definitions are the FOUNDATION of reason. You can't reason without them." (Emphasis  Pirsig's. ZAMM, page 214.)
> 
> "A metaphysics must be divisible, definable and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics." (Pirsig in Lila, page 6
> 
> Marsha said:
> Yes, but the above sentence does not state that Dynamic Quality is divisible, definable and knowable.  ...Can you explain what the higher, mystic form might be?
> 
> 
> 
> dmb says:
> Dynamic Quality is the mystic reality, of course. Pirsig tells us that this is his meaning in clear and explicit terms. 
> 
> In fact, we see can see this by simply quoting a larger section of the the same passage.
> 
> "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." 
> 
> The trick is to realize that metaphysics and static intellectual quality is limited to those things that are definable. The MOQ puts this mystic reality at the very center but leaves it undefined. This is what I mean by the eyeball plucking analogy. Are we supposed to hate our eyes because they don't have infinite range? Does this mean we ought to be careless about describing the things we can see? By analogy, this is how it is with intellect. Concepts not going to do you any good with respect to the pre-conceptual empirical reality but that doesn't mean we should hate concepts or view language as a contemptible prison.                           
>