[MD] Is Quality a Value?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Platt --

You suggest that Pirsig's Quality is the "transcendent force" behind
existence, the source of all things, whose "only perceived good is freedom
and its only perceived evil is static quality itself -- any pattern of
one-sided
fixed values that tries to contain and kill the ongoing free force of life."

Why do you limit goodness to freedom?   What about the Beauty that you
idolize?  Is that not also a "perceived good" of the source?   Could you
define, ideally with an example, what Pirsig meant by "a pattern of
one-sided fixed values"?

It would appear that any division (patterning) of Quality, is a reduction of
its goodness.  Does that mean that my acceptance of physical reality as a
subject/object duality consisting of a multitude of things is more "evil" or
immoral than the mystic experience of Oneness?  Do you believe your
experience of, or passion for, Beauty or Freedom resolves this duality in
some mystical way?

> Wouldn't you agree that the values you mention
> make up what we often refer to as the "quality of life"?

Yes, but I think think this is a matter of semantics rather than a
philosophical concept.  You can't deny that life has value -- specifically,
the capacity to be aware of being.  I'm simply suggesting that the primary
experiential values we're talking about here are awareness and beingness,
and that these values are "conditional" in that they are derived from an
undivided source.  In other words, the Value of Essence is manifested in the
experience of an "other".  We are that other, and what we experience as
"beingness" is the value of Essence divided within itself.  From the
unconditional perspective, there are no such divisions: subject and object
do not define differentiated existence for Essence because they are "not
other" to this primary source.

> By the way, are you going to answer my question about
> where your standards of morality come from?
> Are they written on a stone tablet, or established by polls?
> Or what?

I don't see standards of morality as a Divine Goodness in the sense that
Beauty and Freedom are.  If they were, we wouldn't need Moses' Commandments
to show us how to be good.  Morality is a social code invented by humans as
a means of controlling the excesses and offenses of social behavior.
Although I'm a "traditionalist", I believe that moral standards carved in
stone can be detrimental to the exercise of individual freedom.  That's why
I side with clergymen and Libertarians on this issue, on the grounds that
morality is relative and that moral sanctions must conform to the changing
conditions of an evolving society in a relational world.

> My cat gives every evidence that he is aware (conscious)
>  when he's not sleeping (unconscious). Awareness is the
> "within" of all creatures great and small, right down to
> what you call "insensate" atoms. The question for you
> is how awareness "emerges" from things, like atoms,
> that you claim are awareless.

I agree that all living creatures have some level of conscious awareness,
and this, too, serves the essential "valuation" purpose.  Animals, however,
are not self-determinant beings; they are not free to choose their values,
but respond instinctively to externally perceived conditions.  (I won't even
touch the notion of atoms making value decisions.)

> DQ creates what we deem to be the physical universe,
> what we deem to have created it (the process of evolution)
> and the experience of it. DQ, together with SQ, accounts
> for everything.

This is not entirely clear to me Platt, and that's surprising coming from
you.  Could you restate this assertion, explaining what you mean by "what we
deem to have created it (the process of evolution)"?   You realize, of
course, that I do not understand evolution to be the creator of my
existence.

Also, you have not answered my question as to how Quality is distinguished
from Value.

Best wishes for the holiday season,
Ham