[MD] Distinguishing Levels

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Ham, Case,

Ham said to Case:
> But what really struck me was your conclusion:
> "Betterness" is a value
> judgment that you can make if it makes you feel
> "better".  How true!  Why is
> it that the Pirsigians can't see this?  Why do they
> insist on promoting the
> doctrine that "betterness" is programmed into some
> extra-corporeal dimension
> called Quality?  Perhaps a better question is: What
> would become of
> "betterness" if there was no subjective awareness?
> 
> As a voice of reason -- for me, at least -- possibly
> you can explain why
> proprietary awareness is anathema to the MoQers.

Steve:

MOQers postulate along with Pirsig that experience is
Quality. It is an intellectual postulate that either
bears fruit or not. Pirsig's analogy or polar and
rectangular coordinates applies. The MOQer argument is
not that the Quality postulate is a fact and that any
metaphysics that does not include that same postulate
is false. You can examine philosophical systems like
paintings in a gallery rather than like solutions to a
math problem.

I would invite you to see where that postulates takes
you rather than simply proclaiming it to be false. It
could only be true or false in relation to other
postulates that you made prior to the Quality one,
which isn't playing fair.

If you are unwilling to begin with "experience is
Quality" as an intellectual postulate then it seems to
be you have no business participating in this
discussion.

On the other hand, it seems completely appropriate to
say, look, if we make that assumption it leads us to
this wierd place, do we really want to go there? 

So I'm not saying that it is inappropriate to
criticize the MOQ in this forum. I just think it needs
to be done based on at least accepting the Quality
postulate for the sake of argument.

Does that make sense?

Regards,
Steve


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