AAA NN IIINNNTTTRRROOODDDUUUCCCTTTIIIOOONNN TTTOOO RRROOOBBBEEERRRTTT PPPIIIRRRSSSIIIGGG’’’SSS MMMEEETTTAAAPPPHHHYYYSSSIIICCCSSS OOOFFF QQQUUUAALLLIIITTTYYY Dr Anthony McWatt AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY INTRODUCTION From: Daniel Colonnese To: MOQ.org discussion group Subject: An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Quality Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 08:59:47 -0700 I think that there ought to be a Routledge paperback titled An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Quality. And it should be used in a course for college freshman. They could write essays and stuff. Then it would be a real discipline, and not just some fringe list on the Internet. Think of how much time and energy has been wasted studying outdated and useless things like religion or art history when the kids should have been learning something Good. Maybe some of us could get jobs teaching Quality, then people would have a reason to study it. But the first step is to publish a textbook. The kind with big unchanging chapter headings and review questions in the back. And we’ll need a glossary, so that everybody will be speaking the same jargon, a sort of glue to hold the book together. Well let me know what you think, Dan Colonnese Though this text is largely based on the work for my Ph.D. thesis, it is has been written for the philosophy under-graduate in mind. On other words, it aims to be the kind of text suggested above by Daniel Colonnese. © 2005 ANTHONY MCWATT PAGE 2 OF 132 AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY A NOTE FROM ROBERT PIRSIG Anthony McWatt comes closer than anyone to being a dharma successor of my own work on the Metaphysics of Quality. By ‘dharma’ is meant a duty that transcends one’s own personal self. It was this sense of dharma that made me write Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance over a period of four years when no one, including myself, thought it would ever be published. I think it’s this same sense that has caused Mr. McWatt to study for so many years to produce this clarification and expansion. He has been so painstaking here because he’s not just trying to entertain you or instruct you with philosophic details. His purpose here is to permanently enlarge and improve understanding at the most general levels of philosophic comprehension. The Metaphysics of Quality is a radically different way of understanding the universe but, as McWatt makes it clear in this treatise, its conclusions are not necessarily untrue. Robert Pirsig April 2003 © 2005 ANTHONY MCWATT PAGE 3 OF 132 AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been very fortunate to have been in contact with Robert Pirsig during the writing of this text and to have had the critical support of my supervisor at Liverpool University, Professor Stephen Clark. Without assistance from either, the following would have been a less substantial work. The following people have also made important contributions to the intellectual quality of this text: John Middleton, Dr Piers Stephens, Bodvar Skutvik, Eric Priezkalns, Professor Michael McGhee, Professor Howard Robinson, Gavin Gee- Clough, Dr Robert Harris, Dr Pauline Phemister, Professor Oliver Leaman, Professor Philip Tagg, Professor Bart Kosko, Dr John Ponsonby, Professor Richard Gombrich, Professor Harry Kroto, the MOQ.org contributors and, last but not least, my students. I would also like to thank Frances Ali and Wendy Pirsig (who both assisted with administrative requests), Kevin Lawrence and Dr Barry Dainton (for technical assistance with IT queries), Carol McWatt and Shirley Hadley (for reading over sections of the text for readability) and Antony Jackson (for the use of a scanner a long, long time before my philosophy department had one). © 2005 ANTHONY MCWATT PAGE 4 OF 132 AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY CONTENTS PREFACE ..................................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER ONE: WHY PIRSIG DEVISED THE MOQ ...................................... 12 1.0. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 12 1.1. OBJECTIVITY IN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY ........................................ 13 1.1.1. THE OBJECTIVE APPROACH OF MARGARET MEAD ........................ 14 1.2. THE PARTICIPANT OBSERVER APPROACH OF DUSENBERRY .............. 15 1.3. ANTHROPOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM ............................................................ 16 1.4. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER TWO: A GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE MOQ ........................... 17 2.0. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 17 2.1. THE TERM ‘METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY’ .................................................. 17 2.2. SUBJECT-OBJECT METAPHYSICS ................................................................. 19 2.3. THE TERM ‘QUALITY’ ..................................................................................... 21 2.3.1. THE VIEW THAT QUALITY IS SUBJECTIVE ........................................ 22 2.3.2. CRITICISM OF PIRSIG’S USE OF THE TERM ‘QUALITY’ .................. 23 2.3.3. THE UNDERSTANDING OF QUALITY IN THE FAR EAST ................. 24 2.3.4. WHY PIRSIG USES THE TERM QUALITY ............................................. 24 2.3.5. MYSTIC CRITICISM OF NAMING THE ULTIMATE REALITY ........... 25 2.4. STATIC QUALITY PATTERNS ......................................................................... 26 2.4.1. INTELLECTUAL QUALITY PATTERNS ................................................. 28 2.4.2. SOCIAL QUALITY PATTERNS ................................................................ 29 2.4.3. BIOLOGICAL QUALITY PATTERNS ...................................................... 31 2.4.4. INORGANIC QUALITY PATTERNS ........................................................ 32 2.5. DYNAMIC QUALITY ......................................................................................... 33 2.5.1. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DYNAMIC QUALITY AND GOD ... 34 2.6. COSMOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ....................................................................... 37 2.6.1. THE RATCHET PROCESS OF EVOLUTION ........................................... 40 2.6.2. THE MORAL FRAMEWORK DERIVED FROM EVOLUTION .............. 40 2.6.3. THE IMPORTANCE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY FOR THE MOQ 41 2.7. THE PRAGMATIC NOTION OF TRUTH ......................................................... 43 2.7.1. HEMINGWAY’S CHALLENGE ................................................................. 43 2.8. PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS IN RELATION TO THE MOQ ..................... 44 2.9. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER THREE: SUBJECT-OBJECT METAPHYSICS ............................... 46 3.0. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 46 3.1. THE ORIGINS OF THE TERM ‘SOM’ IN PIRSIG’S WORK ........................... 46 © 2005 ANTHONY MCWATT PAGE 5 OF 132 AN INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY 3.2. WHAT PIRSIG MEANS BY SOM ...................................................................... 47 3.3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOM ........................................................................ 47 3.4. STRAWSON’S CONTENTION THAT SOM IS SIMPLY A STRAWMAN .... 50 3.5. VALUES IN SCIENCE ........................................................................................ 52 3.6. LIMITATIONS OF SOM IN MODERN SCIENCE ............................................ 53 3.7. WHY BELL’S THEOREM IS STILL AN SOM THEORY ................................ 55 3.8. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 56 CHAPTER FOUR: METAPHYSICAL PROBLEMS OF SOM ........................... 57 4.0. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 57 4.1. DESCARTES ........................................................................................................ 57 4.2. GALILEO & NEWTON ....................................................................................... 58 4.3. LOCKEAN SPIRIT .............................................................................................. 59 4.3.1. LOCKE’S UNANSWERED QUESTION .................................................... 60 4.4. SOM SOLUTIONS TO THE MIND-MATTER PROBLEM .............................. 60 4.4.1. NORTHROP’S CONCEPTS BY INTUITION AND POSTULATION ...... 60 4.4.2. THE NEGATION OF MATERIALISM ...................................................... 61 4.4.3. IDEALIST & DUALIST SOLUTIONS TO THE MIND-MATTER PROBLEM .............................................................................................................. 63 4.5. THE MOQ SOLUTION TO THE MIND-MATTER PROBLEM ....................... 64 4.6. FREEDOM & DETERMINISM ........................................................................... 67 4.6.1. KARL POPPER’S THEORY OF PROPENSITIES ..................................... 68 4.6.2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN POPPER AND PIRSIG ................................. 68 4.7. HUME’S ‘IS-OUGHT PROBLEM’ ..................................................................... 69 4.8. THE SOM NOTION OF CAUSATION ............................................................... 70 4.9. CHALMERS’