[MD] Is Quality a Value?

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, 

Some answers to your questions.

> Well, if "values were immanent from the start" -- and I would ask "immanent
> for whom?" -- then would not Value be a more fitting name for the source
> than Quality?

Since "immanent" means "within all things," your question "for whom" seems 
irrelevant. Furthermore, Quality-Value-Morality -- all mean the same in 
Pirsig's metaphysics. He has freed morality from the bonds of applying it 
to human behavior alone by extending it to explain the behavior of 
everything, right down to quantum particles. Remember that he substitutes 
"prefer" for "cause." A magnet does not "cause" iron filings to come to 
it; iron filings "prefer" to come to the magnet. The preference of iron 
filings to behave in that manner was locked in eons ago so that today we 
can predict their behavior. However, which way an ant will turn at any 
given moment is unpredictable -- an so forth on up the evolutionary 
hierarchy to man who is the least predictable creature of all with a wide 
spectrum of preferences based on values available to him at any given 
moment. Now I know you think this is nuts. But when you ponder the whole 
kit and kiboodle of the MOQ, you begin to realize that maybe it's not so 
crazy after all. At least it's not crazy to me, especially since it 
explains the "beauty element" in our lives about which the current 
scientific paradigm is completely clueless.    

> Arlo also thinks "evolution created humans and their
> capacity to think", which (according to my thinking capacity anyway)
> dismisses the primary function of the source: that of Creator.  Clearly,
> there is a great deal of confusion about the nature of Quality and the
> epistemology by which man realizes it.

First, as said, it wasn't Arlo. It was me. Since the Creator (Quality) 
created the process of evolution which depends on the force of Dynamic 
Quality to work, I see no confusion as to how we realize it. It is our 
primary experience, built right into what we know to be real.

> By way of encouraging clarity in our dialectics, let me pose some questions
> that have troubled me:
> 
> 1)  Is it more logical to say that the essential nature of reality is
> Quality rather than Essence?

Yes. Quality infers values. Essence doesn't. A world without values would 
be unrecognizable.

> 2)  Is it epistemologically accurate to assert that Quality is
> "pre-intellectual"?

Yes. It is what you know before you know anything intellectually.

> 3)  If the primary source is Quality, is it perceived as Value in
> experience?

Yes. Value (Quality, Morality) is coincident with experience. 

> 4)  Assuming that there is an Absolute Source, would that source not
> possess Value, whether experienced or not?

Yes. Since an Absolute Source would experience itself it would possess 
Value.

> Platt often reminds us of his love for Beauty, and we both experience
> pleasure in listening to music.  I've suggested that man's passion for
> esthetic delights of this kind is a response to their Value.  Beauty,
> harmony, symmetry, goodness -- these are all values realized by man's
> psycho-somatic sensibility.  While, we may assess the "empirical quality"
> of such values intellectually, the valuistic nature of these experiences is
> more sensual than intellectual.

Yes, I agree. Since the atoms that make up our nervous system possess 
valuation abilities, so too our entire nervous system constantly 
evaluates. We experience this ongoing evaluation as being "sensual" rather 
than solely intellectual.  

> Now, I'd like to introduce a new concept for discussion.  This is based on
> Essentialism but has not previously been suggested, to my knowledge.  (I
> expect Platt to promptly refer me to a source that proves it has.)
> Since you all seem to accept Quality as the Source (creative or otherwise),
> what about the idea that the primary difference is a metaphysical
> separation of values?  I submit that "sensible awareness" is a value.  And
> since the beingness we all know as "beings-aware" is our very reality, the
> property of "being" is also a value.  In other words, we treasure life
> because we realize that without it we would be denied awareness of being --
> our most valuable asset.

Nothing there to argue against. All creatures value their survival for the 
very reason you cite. 
 
> I'm suggesting that awareness and beingness are "conditional values" of the
> primary source (Essence), which is itself the absolute embodiment Value.
> Creation, then, may be posited as the experiential separation of sensible
> awareness from substantive beingness, both values representing what is "not
> other" to the essential source.

Here you lose me. Why not simplify things by just saying the primary 
source (Essence) includes (embodies) awareness, beingness, experience and 
value all at the same time? After all, you say that as far as Essence is 
concerned, there is "no other." Nor do I see a fundamental separation 
between awareness and beingness. As Erwin Schroedinger put it, "The 
external world and consciousness are one and the same thing." Of course, 
an intellectual S/O based metaphysics balks at this and finds it very hard 
to accept. Children have no problem with it.

Best,
Platt