[MD] Fw: Is Quality a Value?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt (Arlo mentioned) --

After acknowledging my mistaking Arlo's quote for yours, he's now suggesting
that the heading should read: 'Is Quality Value?'  I have no objection to
that change, or to making it 'Is Value Quality?', for that matter.  You
express concern about Arlo, yet I don't think your epistemological positions
are that far apart.

It amuses me to hear you say "I know you think this is nuts" when positing
your belief in insentient value, inasmuch as Pirsig's main concern was that
"essence" and essential "value" might be considered nutty by the
positivists:

"My problem with 'essence', is not that it isn't there or that it is not the
same as Quality. It is that positivists usually deny 'essence' as something
like 'God' or 'the absolute' and dismiss it experimentally unverifiable,
which is to say they think you are some kind of religious nut. The advantage
of Quality is that it cannot be dismissed as unverifiable without falling
into absurdity. The positivist cannot say, for example, that his experiments
have no value, or that he does not think that anything is better, or worse,
that is, of more or less value, than anything else."
                                       [RM Pirsig's 7/18/04 response to my
query letter]

Evidently, then, I shouldn't be surprised to be considered a religious nut
by true Pirsigians!  I have always believed in a metaphysical "Creator"
whose essence is not limited by anthropomorphic notions of religion.
(Possibly that makes me a pseudo-theist?)  The problem, as I see it, is how
to identify this Essence from our finite perspective.

You suggest that Pirsig's Quality is the "transcendent force" behind
existence.

> He doesn't reject a transcendent force. It is Quality
> --the force of goodness.

The force of goodness?  I don't mean to be sarcastic, but is there also a
force of evil?  If so, would that be "minus quality" or simply "low quality"
like the effect of the hot stove on the sitter?  I can't see that a force
for goodness has meaning independent of man's sensibility, or that it is
immanent to man in the way that Value is.

Your dictionary definition for immanence is: "remaining or operating within
a
domain of reality."  Isn't it true that in Pirsig's MoQ the "domain of
reality" is really individual Experience?  You yourself have maintained that
the individual is the "locus" of reality.  If "things" are intellectual
constructs we create from experience, it makes your argument that "immanent
means within all things" somewhat ambiguous.

I assume you would agree that such human precepts as Freedom, Love, Honor,
Morality, Contentment, and Truth are more commonly regarded as values than
qualities.  You also agree that a transcendant source would possess Value,
whether experienced or not.

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

When I define Essence as the absolute embodiment of Value, I intend
"embodiment" in this context to imply sentience (i.e., sensible awareness).
Do you envision Quality -- your force of goodness -- to be an Absolute
Source that experiences itself?  Would that not be "sensible awareness" as
I've applied this faculty to proprietary human experience?

I also asked you:

> Which is "more nuts"... to assert that God creates the world?
> ... or, to assert that things create themselves?

You replied:

> Darwinian theory asserts things create themselves.
> The MOQ rejects the God of religion, but posits
> a creative force called Dynamic Quality.

To clarify your thesis, I'd like to know whether you believe DQ actually
"creates" a physical universe or only the "experience" of a universe, in
which case Evolution and Newtonian physics operate on their own without a
primary cause.  (You have previously asserted that "evolution created humans
and their capacity to think", which suggests that evolution is independent
of the creative force.)

> All I know is that you think your metaphysics is better
> than Pirsig's while I think the opposite.  It's in the
> "betterness" that I rest my case.

Well, the "betterness" is your subjective judgment, so the verdict you've
made is a proprietary one.  Or, as Riley used to say, "my head's made up."

Sorry I can't penetrate that intellect of yours.  You can settle the score,
though, by giving me your personal opinion -- or a Pirsig quote -- on what
distinction there is, if any, between Value and Quality.

Regards,
Ham