[MF] A thirty-thousand page menu with no food?

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

DMB said:
The mystics and the positivisits are both anti-metaphysical, but for 
opposite reasons. ... The mystics aren't saying that we don't need menus, 
they're just saying that looking at menus and eating lunch are two different 
things. But, again, I don't think its correct to construe Pirsig as 
"splitting the difference" between the two kinds of anti-metaphysical 
positions. I think its pretty clear that he's trying to use metaphysics to 
build a bridge between the two. "if there is a bridge between the two", he 
writes, "metaphysics is where that bridge is located".

Matt:
Pirsig does say he's building a bridge.  But I also think you're right that 
Pirsig constructed the mystic and postivist positions to both be 
antimetaphysical (which does make one of the things I said confusing).  And 
if they are both antimetaphysical, than I don't think you can build a bridge 
without splitting the difference between the two sides, saying, "Hey, you 
mystics are right about this against the positivists, but you positivists 
are right about this against the mystics," and thus rehabilitating 
metaphysics as a bridge between two antimetaphysical positions.

Pirsig (much like Kant with the rationalists and empiricists) created a 
quasi-artificial antinomy out of the two traditions so that he may resolve 
them.  The positions he constructed are a little artificial because his goal 
isn't detailed fidelity to actual mystics and positivists, his goal is to 
make a point about very general presuppositions between the two.  So when 
you seemingly contradict me and say that, rather than siding with the 
positivists in saying that language is non-metaphysical, "Pirsig sides with 
the positivists in saying that knowledge has to be based on experience," I 
think you're cutting at cross-purposes.  What you say is true, but it 
doesn't help us read this section of the text because it doesn't create the 
desired opposition because Pirsig doesn't want to deny that mystical 
knowledge is based on experience (which is what the antinomy would have to 
say).

When I interpreted that section of the text, I took certain liberties to 
draw out the spirit of what Pirsig is saying.  One place was when I said, 
"the positivists are right in thinking that language can help us, in fact by 
pointing the way towards the food."  Maybe I should have been more clear 
(though it would've taken longer), but my point was that positivists think 
language (specifically, for them, scientific language) helps us with 
reality, whereas mystics don't.  So in the watered down version of 
positivism that Pirsig would think is right, the positivists are right that 
language helps.  The comma was there to disjoin the two clauses, but it 
apparently didn't work very well.  The "pointing the way" phrase is the 
common one of mystics who agree that language can be helpful, pointing at 
the moon and all that, which would mark their agreement with the watered 
down positivism.

Your other main bafflement of my reading was when I said "In that section it 
would seem that mystics take language itself to be metaphysical."  I said 
that because Pirsig says that mystics think 1) metaphysics is a menu with no 
food and 2) thought leads you away from reality.  (As I told Kevin, I've 
already construed "thought" to be coextensive with "language," and I see no 
reason why such a construal should lead to a misreading of Pirsig's point.  
At the least, language is one part of thought, so you can think of me 
dealing with just one part of what leads us away from reality.)  When you 
put the two together, you get what I just said: mystics take 
language/thinking to be metaphysical.  Now, by constructing the mystics' 
position on metaphysics as he does, I think Pirsig constructs for them a 
version of "metaphysics" in the bad sense of the appearance/reality 
distinction.  Thought leads you away from reality, thought/metaphysics are 
appearances that present obstacles to our understanding of reality.

For the time being, Pirsig accepts that understanding of "metaphysics" so 
that he can create his antinomy.  The postivists on the other hand (and here 
is definitely where I do some reading in to create the antimony) think that 
scientific language gets us at reality, but it is certainly no reality that 
the mystics might be thinking of.  Whatever the mystics are thinking of 
doesn't exist because science hasn't found it (and in fact is defined, by 
the mystics, as _never_ being able to find it).  This reading of the 
mystic/positivist dispute in terms of the menu/food analogy creates for us 
this antinomy: mystics think menus are pointless and all we need is the 
food, positivists think food doesn't exist and that all we need are the 
menus.  Pirsig resolves the antinomy by reconstructing "metaphysics" into 
non-appearance/reality terms, thus rebuking the mystical position _and_ the 
positivist positions he created for thinking in those terms (mystics say who 
needs appearances/menus when you have reality/food, positivists say we'll 
never find reality/food so all we have are appearances/menus).

Am I reading this antinomy into Pirsig?  A little bit (but then I didn't say 
before that I wasn't).  But I think the antimony is directly out of Pirsig's 
philosophy and sentiment, in between the lines of the pages, specifically in 
between the lines of the menu/food analogy.  I was giving what I think the 
"Pirsigian line should be," which means that we start to try and think as 
Pirsig might think, on our own feet, rather than just quoting Pirsig.  I 
think the quasi-artificial construction of "Pirsig's quasi-artificial 
antinomy" from the menu/food analogy helps in seeing how Pirsig sees his 
Metaphysics of Quality, which was the question of Kevin's that I was 
answering.  It helps because it expands on the answer of how and why Pirsig 
rebukes the mystics' position against metaphysics in LILA.  Pirsig does it 
by acknowledging, as I first said, the limits of metaphysics.  Metaphysics 
will not cut past appearances to reality.  But it will help with life.

Matt

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