[MD] -elitist ideas

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
You're answering a question with a question?

[Arlo]
I was trying to figure out what I was saying that was shocking you.

[Marsha]
In my little world, Quality/DQ is not moral in any way, not 
'betterness, and not comparative.

[Arlo]
OK. In my little world, Quality/Value/Betterness all point at the 
same "thing". They are not "subjective" nor "objective". They precede 
the S/O dualism. That is, there is no "subjectivity" in the amoebas 
response to biological value, or biological quality.

Quality is valuative, we experience "low quality" and we experience 
"high quality". The amoeba moving away from the acid and the person 
jumping off the hot stove just had a significant valuative 
experience. S/O dualism and the ability to symbolically compare 
represented experience comes later (and only for the person, not for 
the amoeba).

Pirsig explains this better than I can. "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' (he used this example because his chief questioners 
seemed to see things in terms of stimulus-response behavior theory). 
An amoeba, placed on a plate of water with a drip of dilute sulfuric 
acid placed nearby, will pull away from the acid (I think). If it 
could speak the amoeba, without knowing anything about sulfuric acid, 
could say, 'This environment has poor quality.' If it had a nervous 
system it would act in a much more complex way to overcome the poor 
quality of the environment. It would seek analogues, that is, images 
and symbols from its previous experience, to define the unpleasant 
nature of its new environment and thus 'understand' it." (ZMM)

Is the experience for the amoeba "comparative"? Not in the sense we 
compare things, using symbols and such. But it is not a stretch for 
me to call that experience "comparative". Its just that the only 
things being compared is the near-immediate value of the environment 
in terms of "betterness". When the amoeba finds a higher-quality 
environment, it will stop.

Plus, I continue to not know how you can use "Quality" divorced from 
"betterness". ("But some things are better than others, that is, they 
have more quality." ZMM)