Platt, I am glad that you refer me back to my very favourite passage in Lila
(one that I discussed at length in a mysticism thread which you took no part
in), but the advice I have for you is "slow down".
Attend.
My cherished "as if" *is* just this settling for "something less pure" that
RMP speaks of. If I were purist and "doctrinare" about the avoidance of
metaphysical fiction I would be advocating the closing of the regency
theatres, banishment of iconography and popery, wearing of black, and the
exiling of the poets and writers - starting with those who talk openly about
metaphysics - i.e. myself. But as a matter of self-evident fact I'm *not*
insisting that we stop our metaphysical story telling - nor is Pirsig. Nor
am I saying that metaphysics is a limited local indulgence that we can purge
ourselves of. That wrongful extention of the mystic objection to
metaphysics would be the thesis of Wittgenstein, and it is one of the main
reasons why I disagree with him, and prefering RMP and Iris Murdoch as heirs
to Plato's all embracing metaphysics. It is a given than metaphysics isn't
describing the mystic reality. But what you then do about this depends on
whether you think there's any other game in town apart from metaphysics.
That's an important fact that you have to factor in to your understanding of
the "mystic objection to metaphysics" - the whole import of the objection
depends on this. I say, Pirsig says, Murdoch says, that Metaphysics is
unavoidable - it is all around us. The mystic must face facts. Metaphysics
being unavoidable, the thing to do is to do metaphysics in as high a quality
way as possible, and part of that is remembering the "as if".
It certainly isn't higher quality to remove an "as if" which belongs there.
I never saw an actor, however high-quality his acting, go on TV to say that
he *really is* Hamlet, and that he boarding a plane to go and lead Danmark
in a war against Sweden. Nutcases excluded. Do you think that he would be
a better actor if he did try to take command of the Danish military? Perhaps
- after all we must try to remove the troublesome "as if", mustn't we?
Platt, I'm trying to remind you, as Pirsig tries to remind you, that these
metaphysical stories about atoms (the "creative metaphysics" I talked about)
can only have any positive value if we recognise that they *are* stories: if
we remember the "as if". If we take them for reality, then all our
metaphysical tales will take us further and further from the truth, rather
than nearer. Not even the Wizard of Oz can teach you anything of value, if
you are incapable of separating fiction and fact.
Does that give you any reason to begin addressessing the points I made about
the poor quality and incoherence of your tales? For example, perhaps you
would like to address the point I made earlier about only awareness of SQ
being comparable atom-to-scientist, and the way this scuppers your argument
for the atomic-awareness thesis, which is entirely based on DQ. Or would you
rather find some story which creatively satisfies your need to disregard
what I write? Perhaps you will resort to another malformed argument from
authority?
OK.
Elephant
> From: "Platt Holden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 08:11:31 -0400
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: MD Atomic awareness
>
> Hi Elephant:
>
> Pirsig rejects (or is it refutes?) your “as if” theory in Lila, Chap. 5,
> calling
> it a “degeneracy of another sort.” He says all of us pollute the mystic
> reality of the world with fixed metaphysical meanings, not “as if”
> meanings. Here’s the relevant passage.
>
> “What made all this so formidable to Phaedrus was that he himself
> had insisted in his book that Quality cannot be defined. Yet here he
> was about to define it. Was this some kind of a sell-out? His mind went
> over this many times.
> “A part of it said, “Don't do it. You'll get into nothing but trouble.
> You're just going to start up a thousand dumb arguments about
> something that was perfectly clear until you came along. You're going
> to make ten thousand opponents and zero friends because the
> moment you open your mouth to say one thing about the nature of
> reality you automatically have a whole set of enemies who've already
> said reality is something else."
> “The trouble was, this was only one part of himself talking. There
> was another part that kept saying, "Ahh, do it anyway. It's interesting."
> This was the intellectual part that didn't like undefined things, and
> telling it not to define Quality was like telling a fat man to stay out of the
> refrigerator, or an alcoholic to stay out of bars. To the intellect the
> process of defining Quality has a compulsive quality of its own. It
> produces a certain excitement even though it leaves a hangover
> afterward, like too many cigarettes, or a party that has lasted too long.
> Or Lila last night. It isn't anything of lasting beauty; no joy forever. What
> would you call it? Degeneracy, he guessed. Writing a metaphysics is,
> in the strictest mystic sense, a degenerate activity.
> “But the answer to all this, he thought, was that a ruthless,
> doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort.
> That's the degeneracy fanatics are made of. Purity, identified, ceases to
> be purity. Objections to pollution are a form of pollution. The only
> person who doesn't pollute the mystic reality of the world with fixed
> metaphysical meanings is a person who hasn't yet been born—and to
> whose birth no thought has been given. The rest of us have to settle for
> being something less pure. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies
> and writing metaphysics is a part of life.
> “That was all he had to say to the mystic objections to a
> Metaphysics of Quality. He next turned to those of logical positivism.”
>
> Your mystic objection to the MOQ is answered.
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
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