[MD] Metaphysics: what it is good for?

[david buchanan]

In the thread titled "Is experience just DQ?" (on 1/13/13) David Harding wrote:
The MOQ is obviously a Metaphysics.  What is Metaphysics for? To me, it is an intellectual construct which, depending on its quality, can help us to live better lives.   It does this by providing a context for *every* thing.  With a good metaphysics like the MOQ we can compare any two things and use it to help us determine which is better.  Making quality decisions like this help us to become better people.


dmb says:
How does the narrator of ZAMM put it? Metaphysics is fine if it improves everyday life, otherwise forget it. 
Yes, the Metaphysics of Quality is an intellectual construct (sq), a coherent set of concepts and definitions. And yet the MOQ is built around immediate experience itself (DQ), which is pre-conceptual and undefinable. Even further, this primary empirical reality (DQ) is given priority over the conceptual (sq). 

William James used the same analogy for this priority that we find in Lila: experience is the actual food whereas intellectual abstractions are just a menu. Metaphysics is a 30,000 page menu with no food, Pirsig says. (Or something like that.) Likewise, James said something like, "one real pea is better food than all the menus in the world". (Unless those menus are printed on food, I guess.)

Having said that, however, we would like our menus to do a good job as menus. To mistake the MOQ (or any other metaphysics) for reality is to eat the menu. But the menu is supposed to lead us to a good meal, right? And so we want to make sure that all the food is represented rightly and we don't want it to advertise food that isn't in stock. We'd want the thing to make sense and to lead us to the best things in the restaurant. 

Don't forget to tip your server,