[MD] Is Quality a Value?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt --

First off, let me apologize for attributing your statement to Arlo.  I
couldn't
locate  the original post and got confused in distinguishing the ">" from
the and  ">>" references.  (It it's any consolation, I've been known to do
this with other people.)

> Since "immanent" means "within all things," your question
> "for whom" seems irrelevant.

That's strange.  My dictionaries define "immanent" as "inherent, existing in
consciousness or the mind and not in an extra-mental world"; also, "innate"
or "intrinsic", inferring what is immediate to the senses.  This is the
meaning I have always understood "immanent" and "immanency" to suggest.
And, whatever your dictionary says, it is extremely important that you
understand that it is this kind of immediate accessibility which I attribute
to Value.

> 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.

A behavior can have morality only as a judgment of man.  (We've been down
this road before, Platt.)  Only an entity endowed with conscious
self-determination can be considered moral or immoral.  Is a bolt of
lightening  immoral for electrocuting a dog?  Is a dog immoral for biting
the postman?  The first is an inanimate act of nature; the second is what we
call "bad behavior" on the part of the dog.  But neither act can be called
"immoral" because it was not the result of a freely-determined conscious
decision.  Nor can an inert object be understood to express "preference" in
any way other than euphemistically.  Whatever meaning a fiction writer may
choose to impart to his words, they cannot change reality.  "Preference"
does not exist where there is no conscious choice.  This is not some
ingenious new epistemology that Pirsig has dreamed up -- it's verbal
sleight-of-hand to make us think so.

> 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, 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.

Platt, I don't think it's crazy to recognize that existents in our universe
move in a course directed by their CREATOR.  What is "nuts" is to regard
this teleology as self-motivation, choice, preference or morality on the
part of insentient objects.  I dislike being so blunt, but it should be
obvious that the MoQ's author chose to win over the atheists by rejecting a
transcendent source.  In the absence of a supernatural designer, the only
way he could account for the existence of consciousness, volition, and moral
understanding was to impart these attributes to THINGS and the UNIVERSE
ITSELF.

I ask you: which is "more nuts"... to assert that God creates the world? ...
or, to assert that things create themselves?

> 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 lement" in our lives about which the current
> scientific paradigm is completely clueless.

How do mechanistic behaviors such as magnetism and atomic attraction explain
the "beauty element"?   Value derived from Essence is a much more plausible
explanation for Beauty than Newton's laws ever will be.

I'll skip the misquoted paragraph where you assert that "evolution", rather
than the source, "created humans...", since you now state that the Creator
(Quality) created the process whereby evolution produces man.  This is like
the old-fashioned Sunday School notion that God "starts the ball rolling",
and Nature takes over from there.  It's the exact antithesis of what I mean
by immanence.

Let's get to the questions I posed:

1)  Is it more logical to say that the essential nature of reality is
Quality rather than Essence?

[Platt]:
Yes. Quality infers values. Essence doesn't. A world without values would
be unrecognizable.

[Ham]:
Quality may infer "value judgments".  But it doesn't imply essentiality.

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

[Platt]:
Yes.  It is what you know before you know anything intellectually.

[Ham]:
No. Quality is a blank slate on which value judgments are written.  In the
absence of consciousness quality is not only intellectually meaningless but
non-existent.

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

[Platt]:
Yes. Value (Quality, Morality) is coincident with experience.

[Ham]:
Agree.

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

[Platt]:
Yes. Since an Absolute Source would experience itself it would possess
Value.

[Ham]
Agree.

I suppose two out of four isn't bad for starters.  Now for those who weren't
listening, I'd like to repeat the metaphysical proposition I tossed out to
you and Arlo (with a couple of minor corrections):

> 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.
> We all cherish life because we realize that without it
> we would lose awareness of being -- our most valuable asset.

Did Platt jump up and down and shout "Hooray!" at this revelation?  No.  He
matter-of-factly allowed as how there was nothing new or different in the
statement.

> Nothing there to argue against. All creatures value their survival for the
> very reason you cite.

Ham then went on to underscore the novelty of this concept:

> I'm suggesting that awareness and beingness are
> "conditional values" of the primary source (Essence),
> which is itself the absolute embodiment of 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.

Unfortunately, he loses Platt in the process.

> 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."

Because Essence does not embody all these things.  It embodies only the
VALUE of these things.  Essence is the absolute "coincidence" of
contrarities like Beingness/nothingness, Consciousness/unconsciousness,
Individuality/universality, Subjectivity/objectivity.  Such contradictory
conditions (appearances) of existence represent the valuistic split of the
essential "not other".  They are all metaphysically linked to the Value of
Essence.

> 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.

Consider me a "child", then.

In my childlike innocence, I accept my existential reality as a divided,
multi-phenomenal system of relational constituents.  This is my finite,
proprietary cognizance of absolute reality.  But it's an intellectual
construct separate and apart from the "not-other" of Essence.  Only the
values that I sense conditionally have essential value.  All the
"existential constructs" that I synthesize intellectually, including my
notion of selfness, equate to the "not" of the "not-other".  I and my
thoughts constitute the "negate" of otherness that is denied by Essence.
Value -- not intellection or knowledge -- is my essential reality.

Any light coming in?

Essentially yours,
Ham