[MD] Oneness, Dualism & Intellect

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo]
I see "betterness" as the reason anything moves from  point A to point B. Can
you think of anything that moves from A to B because of "worseness"? Or, if its
a completely indifferent state, why move?

[Jos]
Err, Jos scratches head.... Try this:

[Arlo]
Don't scratch your head, I think this is straightforward Pirsig.

Consider the amoeba on a petri dish. When acid is placed nearby, it moves. Why?
Because of Quality. Or, I could say, because Point B was "better" than Point A.
When a carbon atom bonds with an oxygen atom, it does so because of Quality,
because bonding was "better" than not bonding.

This is all simply stated by Pirsig in ZMM. "The easiest intellectual analogue
of pure Quality that people in our environment can understand is that 'Quality
is the response of an organism to its environment'".

When I said that evolution is the visible manifestation of Quality, this is what
I had in mind. With Quality as the response of an organism to its environment,
the aggregate of those responses is what we call "evolution". 

[Jos] 
Various chambers contain inert (and uncharged, helium, xenon, argon etc) but
comercially valuable purified confined gases, dividers are removed such that
spontaneously the gases diffuse into one another.  Which state is "better",
pure usefull substrates or the melange? 

[Arlo]
While I'm sure the gas particles really care about what YOU think is better for
them, their mixing indicates that for them "better" is diffused. Our
manipulation of inorganic patterns (or biological patterns) for social and
intellectual value notwithstanding, I think you are confusing "better" with
human-derived social value. 

[Jos]
The only difference is subjective cultural/intellectual value in the eyes of the
observer, to whom the resulting spontaneously occurring result is has almost no
value as compared with the highly valuable starting point.

[Arlo]
Well, exactly. But "better" is not just "what's socially or intellectually
better for people". A platypus evolved a bill because it was "better" for it to
have one than not have one. "We" weren't consulted, because its not just all
about "us". 

"Now this vagueness is removed by sorting out values according to levels of
evolution. The value that holds a glass of water together is an inorganic
pattern of value. The value that holds a nation together is a social pattern of
value. They are completely different from each other because they are at
different evolutionary levels. And they are completely different from the
biological pattern that can cause the most skeptical of intellectuals to leap
from a hot stove. These patterns have nothing in common but the historic
evolutionary process that created all of them. But that process is a process of
value evolution. Therefore the name "static pattern of values" applies to all."
(LILA)

I think this may have been the issue Marsha had with regard to my using
"betterness" than "Quality". I don't see any difference between these terms. If
something moves because of Quality, it moves because of "betterness". The
betterness/value/Quality that causes those gas particles to diffuse is
different than the betterness/value/Quality that makes a person find greater
value in keeping those particles apart. 

"When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality
postulates that they've done so because it's "better" and that this definition
of "betterness" -this beginning response to Dynamic Quality-is an elementary
unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based." (LILA)