[MD] Does Quality exist?

[Redsky235 at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/1/2007 4:46:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
moq_discuss-request at lists.moqtalk.org writes:

Matt:
I think you've picked up on a subtle point I only became  attuned to later on 
in my thinking about Pirsig.  I think it is important  to emphasize it: in 
Pirsig's philosophy, Quality is synonymous with the making  of distinctions, in 
any kind of distinguishing.  In other words, the  functioning of the "analytic 
knife" from the beginning of ZMM is a direct  function of there actually 
existing Quality.  (He brings up this point  again in Lila when he talks about 
babies and  differentiation.)
That makes sense, but then the exercise in which he asks his students to  
rank the papers becomes somewhat meaningless, correct?  He might as well  have 
asked them if the two texts were the same paper.  In that context,  "quality" is 
somewhat trivial.

>Pirsig's just trying to point out how  commonsensical the existence of what 
he's talking about is.  It's a  >beginning point.  His more controversial 
points require different  arguments.  That argument is a softening up >move before 
the more  interesting stuff about Plato.
 
Ok, so he's just saying that humans have the capacity to differentiate  
between items?  You can't really assume that in all cases.  Carrying  that idea to 
its extreme; I present you with two glasses of water that look  equally full, 
but one is actually very slightly lighter.  You might say  that there's no 
real difference, while someone equipped with a scale might say  otherwise.


> I have a lot of difficulty also with Pirsig's  assertion that we already 
know what Quality is, but I'm not sure if he isn't  saying that we already know 
how to identify Quality, we already know how to  distinguish higher from lower 
value because doing so is _the_ basic feature of  living life.
 
Assuming that humans can indeed accurately distinguish between items  (doing 
so without bias?), there's still no real justification for thinking that  
there is even a "higher" value and a "lower" value.  We might assign  higher 
priority to action "A," but maybe that's only the result of our society's  
influences on us.


>If you are looking for definitive answers to  _any_ question, let alone 
traditional aesthetic questions, you are >looking  in the wrong place if you are 
looking some place other than what you yourself  think.  That's Pirsig's 
>point.  It is a philosophical  individualism that begins with each person.  
Granted, it doesn't end there,  which >I don't think Pirsig emphasizes enough in ZMM, 
but it has to begin  there.  
 
"Trust yourself?"  I'm a great believer in the power of instinct or  
intuition (whatever you wish to call it, whatever scientific hangups one might  have 
about it), but I'm not sure I can trust what I think.  Anyone's  thoughts are 
going to be impacted by the effect his culture has on him.  No  one is truly 
"individual."
 
>But I also think you're going at it in the wrong direction, which is  in 
looking for a proof.  Granted Pirsig's the >one that brought it up,  but while 
the first question might be, "Is his argument successful and on what  >grounds?" 
the second and more important question, given his revaluation of  the 
relationship of dialectic to >rhetoric, might be, "Why would Pirsig  forward this 
argument the way he did?"
 
First of all, it doesn't make sense that Pirsig can present his theory  and 
then claim that, because of the nature of his theory, no proof is  required.  
It's similar to "You cannot question the Bible, because it  is the word of 
God." 

>Right, the objective criteria set  down by the literary world, which is what 
a community of individuals agree  >to. 
 
But even there you get into some discrepancies.  The "objective  criteria" of 
the literary world is always in flux (witness the constantly  changing MLA 
guidelines, and lest we forget, "Moby Dick" was panned when it was  first 
published).


>Pirsig is eliminating the pernicious  subjective/objective distinction in 
order to undermine the notion of "these  (arbitrary) literary criteria" so that 
we can instead see any sort of criteria  that might be set forth by a 
community as set forth by individuals, though none  the worse for it because 
_anything_ set forth is set forth by _somebody_, every  view the product of the far end 
of the movement of an individual's brandishment  of the "analytic knife."
 
Ok, but again, wouldn't that individual's use of the knife still be  affected 
by his cultural bias?  His actions would still reflect at least  some part of 
the literary world's judgment.


<  Pirsig would  certainly object to the notion that a critic's opinion is 
more "valid," but that  does not destory the notion of authority derived by 
communal attention, for  instance the authority granted to specialists, like 
physicists.  With art,  more people have the chance to be specialists (unlike 
physics, where people are  less likely to have a chance with an electron machine).  
But that still  doesn't mean we can't allow for different ways to appreciate 
a text.  Some  literary critics (not all, only the worst--who are the source 
of Pirsig's  distaste) may think that their way is the only way, but that view 
is as bad as  Plato's.
 
But if there is indeed an absolute Quality, then a well educated (or  
experienced) critic would have more knowledge when approaching a text and,  
theoretically, should be able to discern its elements that ultimately reveal  Quality.  
If there is an absolute Quality, and an absolute way to reveal  that Quality, 
then there is a definitive way of constructing and reading a  text.  


>But doing so will be one more view set forth by an  individual.  For 
instance, Harold Bloom has done so on >occasion to  enunciate why he doesn't enjoy 
one particular poet but isn't about deny the  poet's place in the >Western 
canon.  All we have to do to get a  distinction like that is to distinguish liking 
a text for highly  >idiosyncratic reasons and placing it in high esteem 
because of its  originality.
 
Well, then you could ask, why value originality itself?  Isn't that  a 
"Quality" judgment?
 

>if we take God to be coextensive with existence itself, then yeah,  God must 
exist because existence exists.  But what kind of argument is  that?  It's 
not, but we should instead wonder why Pirsig would make  it.  The pernicious 
view that he is trying to surmount is that there are  objective criteria or 
things or whatever that exist outside of what anybody  thinks of them, which then 
sets as pejorative anything that _does_ have to rest  on what people think of 
them--things like aesthetic judgments.  Pirsig's  trying to help us reconceive 
our view by showing how judgments sit at the very  bottom of things.
 
So he's employing a flawed argument simply to spark discourse and  thought?  
Or is he using the argument just to spark a certain theory, which  one then 
has to take on faith?

















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