Platt and Jonathan have sought to claim that it is the Pirsigian thing to do to remove the "as if" in "it is as if atoms were aware". I suspect that that in origin the quarrel between Roger and I on the one hand, and Platt and Jonathan on the other, stems form Platt and Jonathan not having acknowledged or recognised the deep importance of Pirsig's "as if" attached to the metaphysics of the levels within the MOQ - attached to the levels but not to the thesis about the fundamental reality of Quality. I'm really addressing the following exegesis of RMP to Platt, but it's an open letter. Reread Pirsig's discussion of the mystical objection to metaphysics at lila 73 on, and note the *precise* nature of his response. Pirsig does not *reject* the mystical objection to metaphysics, in the way that he rejects the logical positivist objection to metaphysics. Instead he overcomes and *incorporates* the mystical objection to metaphysics into his whole programme: "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 undestand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independant of and prior to intellectual abstractions....." p73 Then FFWD to p457: "The same thing that's wrong with philosophology when it tries to contral and devour a philosophy is wrong with metaphysics when it tries to devour the 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 that is "right" for all people at all times, everywhere. Answers to ten questions led to a hundred more and answers to those lead to a thousand more. Not only would he never get it right; the longer he worked on it the wronger it would probably get." The word "chess" appears in both passages and this game playing is something of a connected theme - worth reflecting on what this tells us. In the second passage we are told that there is no perfect chess game. Does this mean that there is no right metaphysics? It seems to mean just that - but then we remember the first passage, which is telling us that Quality isn't a chess piece. Put the two together. Pirsig is here defining "metaphysics" as the attempt to devour the world intellectually. So according to this science is metaphysics, physics is metaphysics (!). Above all the neat structure of the levels that he's been talking about is metaphysics. But by his conception of "metaphysics" Quality isn't a "metaphysical chess piece". RMP is using "metaphysics" in both these passages in quite a precise technical way. In fact it's a precise technical use of "metaphysics" which appears to rule out the possibility of any Metaphysics of Quality as a kind of contradiction in terms. "Quality" isn't a chess piece. But it's also a precise use of "metaphysics" that means that when Pirsig condemns metaphsical chess he *isn't* condemning his basic idea that Quality is the fundamental reality. This means that Pirsig's negative attitude towards "Metaphysics" is meant as a double-flagged "as if" attached to everything he says about the levels, being an intellectual attempt to "devour" the world. This "as if" is not attached by RMP to the point about Quality not being a metaphysical chess peice. So it seems to me that it isn't right, actually, to speak about the MOQ, as if it were one thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In fact there are *two* Metaphysics of Quality. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ One of them is the attempt to devour the world intellectually - the levels and so on. This is the MOQ that Pirsig himself depriciates as he develops it in Lila and marks with a huge flag with "as if" written on it. This is Platt's MOQ - only he doesn't notice the "as if" flag. The other MOQ is the one that Pirsig had already ennuciated in ZMM. This a "metaphysics" of quality which overcomes the mystic objection to metaphysics because in fact it *is* the mystic objection to metaphysics. It is not a metaphysics in the sense that the picture of the levels is a metaphysics (an attempt to devour the world), or as an attempt to play a perfect game of chess, - rather, it is more an analysis of what chess is anyway. This is my (and I think Roger's) MOQ. Confusingly, it's this second sense of "metaphysics" which is closer to one standard way of understanding the "meta" in "metaphysics": as an overview of the whole game, rather than as an attempt to play it. An analysis of movie making, rather than a movie. The only sense in which "metaphysics" is accurate as a description of what the mystics object to in the "mystic objection to metaphysics" is that, properly speaking, even "physical" objects are not simply observed in the physical world, but are created by our intellect working from beyond the physical. That would be one meaning for the "meta" in "metaphysics". But as I have pointed out the "meta" can also apply to statements about even these "metaphysical entities". This is probably the best way of making the confused situation clear: To say that Platt's prefered levels MOQ is "creative metaphysics" - this is the metaphysics against which the mystic objection holds completely sound: an attempt to devour the world. In contrast the pro-mystic MOQ is "analytic metaphysics": a discussion of the nature and limits of chess games, rather than an attempt to play one. Not a creation of a description of the world, but an analysis of descriptions of the world. It's from the point of view of the "analytic metaphysics" (MOQa), that the importance of attaching the "as if" to the "creative metaphysics" (MOQc) is paramount. What MOQa tells us is that particular discrete entities have the features they do only in virtue of the exercise of our creative consciousness. Language. If you just don't 'get' MOQa, you will never understand the animus behind the insistance on the "as if". Instead you will suspect that the MOQaists aren't really Pirsigians at all. But for myself, MOQa is where I began, in ZMM. And I also think that it is where Pirsig ends, in Lila. Elephant MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
