[MD] Metaphysics: what it is good for?

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:35 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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).

Dan:
Exactly. This relates directly to the core of our (David H. and my)
disagreement. How is Dynamic Quality given priority over our
conceptual world? By seeing Dynamic Quality and experience as
synonymous. We use qualifiers like 'primary' and 'empirical' to modify
the term 'experience' but once this primacy of experience is
understood (in relation to the MOQ) it is no longer necessary do so.
Dynamic Quality is experience. All that which comes after is static
quality. Note if you will this exchange between Robert Pirsig (RMP)
and myself (DG):

RMP:
In a subject-object metaphysics, this experience is between a
preexisting object and subject, but in the MOQ, there is no
pre-existing subject or object. Experience and Dynamic Quality become
synonymous. Change is probably the first concept emerging from this
Dynamic experience. Time is a primitive intellectual index of this
change. Substance was postulated by Aristotle as that which does not
change. Scientific “matter” is derived from the concept of substance.
Subjects and objects are intellectual terms referring to matter and
nonmatter. So in the MOQ experience comes first, everything else comes
later. This is pure empiricism, as opposed to scientific empiricism,
which, with its pre-existing subjects and objects, is not really so
pure. I hope this explains what is said above, “In the MOQ time is
dependent on experience independently of matter. Matter is a deduction
from experience.”
DG:
Yes, this does help, thank you. What bothers me slightly—I am sure I
am not seeing it in the proper light yet—is how experience can be
synonymous with Dynamic Quality? Isn’t experience that which we
define?
RMP:
Dynamic Quality is defined constantly by everyone. Consciousness can
be described is a process of defining Dynamic Quality. But once the
definitions emerge, they are static patterns and no longer apply to
Dynamic Quality. So one can say correctly that Dynamic Quality is both
infinitely definable and undefinable because definition never exhausts
it. [Lila's Child]

Dan comments:
This never-ending defining process brings the world as we know it into
being but according to the MOQ, this isn't to be confused with
experience. In subject/object metaphysics it is quite natural to state
we experience objects but in the MOQ, experience comes before objects.
There are no pre-existing objects to experience. They arise from
experience.

This was a huge 'ah-ha!' moment for me and I had hoped David Harding
might experience (:)) it as well. So far he hasn't. He clings to the
notion that we experience the world of objects, not realizing our
world and everything in it arises from experience. There are no
pre-existing objects. Perhaps if he reads this it will help?

>
> 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.

Dan:
I agree completely. Which of course is why I keep harping on this much
to the dismay of David Harding. It is very easy to read our own
world-views into something like the MOQ (remember Bodvar and his
obsession with SOM as intellect?) and this is something we need to
guard against. We don't experience the MOQ or any intellectual
patterns of value for that matter. In the MOQ they are seen as
symbolic representations of experience.

>
> Don't forget to tip your server,

Dan:
Don't know about you, Dave, but I accept Visa and Mastercard. Paypal
too. I mean,  just in case anyone is wondering.

Thank you,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com