[MD] The Quest for Quality

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Ham

30 Sep. you wrote:
 
> Your responses are few and far between, so I tend to lose track of
> where we were.

I have a job to do besides I'm hampered by having to think, a limitation  
you (folks) seemingly are above ;-) 

I had arrived here: 
> > When the smoke clears, what's left is "man the measure"
> > sentence, adding "man's intellect" isn't significant.
> > Is that about it?

Ham commented:
> Well, there's intelligent thought, conceptual thought, creative
> thought, and stupid thought, I suppose.  Where you draw the
> "intellectual" line isn't particularly significant to me, as long as
> you acknowledge that it is the individual who does the thinking..
 
OK, the individual does the thinking, that's pretty obvious in the 
thought/world reality (AKA SOM) OK, I know that you reject any way of 
transcending it but wait.

> Protagoras (5th C. BC) is credited as stating: "Man is the measure of
> all things."  I believe this to be an astute observation of man's
> value-sensibility as it relates to the objective world.  Considering
> that Pirsig equates Quality with Value, this statement seems to
> support his idea that "experience is the cutting edge of reality".
> Wouldn't you agree?

Protagoras and his fellow Sophists was part of the New Age (intellect 
or SOM) that had been brewing long before Socrates, Plato & Co. thus 
that of Man (to become "mind" or "subject") as everything's source (in 
contrast to the old myth age where such an approach was unknown) 
was already established. And from THOSE premises humankind is the 
"cutting edge". I refrain from the Quality terminology at this stage.    

> Aside from the fact that Value (valuism) is more comprehensible
> derivative of Essence than Quality (qualityism), I have a problem with
> either term posited as the pimary source.  I view Difference, not
> Quality or Value, as the "causative" factor of existence, and this may
> be a stumbling block in our discussion.  

No stumbling block in OUR discussion, I have long since pointed out 
that Quality in itself says nothing, the basic difference is DQ/SQ. I 
guess yours is Sensibility/Otherness. And here is the crux. This is 
SOM in a MOQ context, and you maintain that this can't be 
transcended, it's given, as existence IS! Is this a way of seeing it that 
you can accept? 

This is slow going but I must find some common ground before 
proceeding. 

Bo