[MD] What is the opposite of Quality?

[Ham Priday]

Greetings Bruce and Magnus --


Although I haven't had the pleasure of talking to either of you, this 
question doesn't make any sense, dialectically, epistemologically, or 
metaphysically.  The fault does not lie with you, Bruce, but with an author 
who has posited an externalized esthetic/intellectual property as the 
world's Creator.  This avoids having to deal with a "supra-natural" or 
transcendent source which is anathema to postmodern philosophers.

As Magnus, who I assume speaks for the MoQ, says:


> * Quality is supposed to be all of reality. If Quality had an opposite,
> the reality it was trying to encompass has to be larger than Quality.
> That would mean it had failed to encompass all of reality. I.e. Quality 
> doesn't have an opposite.

Pirsig has equated Quality with Value, stating that "a thing that has no 
value doesn't exist:."  His epistemology is correct, in that things 
(objective phenomena) are experiential constructs or representations of 
value-sensibility.  He is wrong, however, in assuming that Quality or Value 
exists apart from that sensibility.  If there is no sensibility, there is no 
experience, in which case neither things nor Value can be realized.  An 
unrealized world doesn't exist.  The "opposite" of Quality is Nothingness.

This isn't an issue of chaos vs. quality; it's the question of sensibility 
without a referent.  From a metaphysical perspective, the only entity that 
possesses unreferenced sensibility is the absolute Source.  In my ontogeny, 
sensibility is split off (negated) from the Source to actualize existence. 
This allows for Value to be experienced differentially by a free agent which 
is itself value-sensibility.  Yes, I am talking about human awareness in an 
otherness of appearance divided by nothingness.  The "otherness" of 
existence is the realization or experience of differentiated value; 
"nothingness" is what accounts for the differentiation.

Man's existential dilemma is that he exists only in "the present"; he cannot 
negate the nothingness from which he came and which will be his demise. 
Only the Absolute Source can do that.  In that sense, Pirsig has it right: 
without Value there is no existence.  But it is man's value-sensibility 
transformed into experience, NOT VALUE itself, that creates the world of 
appearances.  It's most unfortunate, in my opinion, that Mr. Pirsig failed 
to acknowledge that the realization of Value (existential reality) is 
contingent upon human sensibility.

Your Powerpoint presentation certainly puts disparate concepts together in a 
graphically intriguing manner, Bruce.  It's probably just the kind of 
presentation I need to explain Essentialism to this august group.

Thanks to you both for providing a logical analysis of the MoQ thesis as 
interpreted by the acolytes.

Best regards,
Ham