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

[david buchanan]

Matt, Kevin and all:

Matt said:
....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.

dmb says:
I'll ask you to re-think this. It comes up a lot. What if the mystics' 
distinction between the menu and the food is NOT like the appearance/reality 
distinction?

I think the mystics would tell you that the menu and the food are both real. 
I think the MOQ's distinction between static intellectual qualtiy and DQ 
preserves this distinction in such a way that both are a part of experience. 
And then experience is equated with reality. You could say that in the MOQ, 
appearance is reality. You could if it didn't sound so weird. In any case, I 
do not think its right to construe that mystical claim as marking an 
appearance/reality distinction. Despite the use of the word "reality" in 
that section, its pretty clear to me that DQ is not some kind of Platonic or 
Kantian realm beyond our experience, no reality behind experience or beyond 
experience.

Matt continued:
...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.

dmb says:
Look, its pretty clear that we disagree about how to interpret this 
mystic/positivist section of Lila. I think its perfectly reasonable and 
appropriate to import pieces of the text to support my interpretation. I 
think its perfectly fair and normal to look at the text under discussion or 
in dispute and so I don't understand or respect your resistance to it. It 
seems downright unreasonable. OK, I'm done bitchin. Now back to the actual 
topic...

Matt concluded:
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.

dmb says:
As I just explained, I think Pirsig doesn't REBUKE but rather ADOPTS the 
mystics' position so that it becomes the static/Dnamic distinction of the 
MOQ, which is not an appearance/reality distiction. Other than saying that 
metaphysics is inescapable, that's its just part of life, which is applied 
to both the mystics and the postivisits, he doesn't REBUKE either position 
so much as use his metaphysics, that larger format, to accomodate their 
objections. The mystics insist that (ultimate) reality is distinct from 
names about it and Pirsig says, yep that's right. The positivists insist 
that knowledge be based on experience and Pirsig says, yep that's right. And 
this "antinomy" grows naturally out of the problems in anthropology that are 
discussed just prior to this section. There we have a case of objective 
scientists trying to study the values of some particular Indians, whose 
culture was centered around mysticism. (Remember the term "manito"?) In any 
case, I suspect Kevin would have been better served by a "cleaner" 
explanation, one without the Rortarian critiques. (Although I'm enjoying 
it.) And finally, it seems to me that "the limits of metaphysics" is a very 
crucial issue for you, fairly central to your whole stance. I don't think 
Pirsig is really interested in exorcising the Platonic demons in the same 
way you are, following Rorty of course. Its pretty clear that Pirsig is not 
going out of his way to avoid ocular metaphors or certain vocabularies or 
whatever. At the same time, I don't think the substance of his remarks are a 
problem as far as that critique goes. I think that your anti-metaphysical 
alarm bells go off too easily and so far it always turns out to be a false 
alarm. And I certainly don't think metaphysics can claim absolute and 
eternal truth. I really can't even imagine what that supposed to be and 
strikes me as quite absurd that anybody ever thought otherwise. In that 
sense, yes of course metaphysics is limited. But if we put away the 
theological grandiosity and just do metaphysics, I don't see the problem 
with it. As long as we're not going around postulating gods or realms or 
essences for which there is no basis in experience, then there's no problem. 
The problem with old fashioned metaphysics is that it made claims without 
any evidence. You can't make statements about the nature and structure of 
reality based on speculations or wishes or faith or anything like that. But 
I see no reason to abdondon that branch of philosophy just because others 
have done so. And I don't think Pirsig does either. I think that doing 
metaphysics only makes Pirsig feel a little sleazy, but saying he's 
anti-metaphysical goes too far.

Doing metaphysics makes me feel sleazy too. That's what I like about it.

Thanks.

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