[MD] The Quest for Quality

[Ham Priday]

 Hi Bo --


Your responses are few and far between, so I tend to lose track of where we 
were.

On 9/22, you paraphrased my 'being-aware' epistemology as follows:

> As I understand it your thesis is that there is a "cognizant" entity
> that formulates the axioms that separate ALL world views,
> thus this entity is the rock bottom of existence.  Is this your point?

I then asked you what "separate all world views" means.

[Bo]:
> I just mean that - according to you - there is a cognizant
> something who thinks and as such is prior to any thought system.

YOU are the "cognizant something", Bo.  The entity I described in my 
long-winded paragraph is the individual subject.  Does it make sense to say 
that thinking is prior to a thought system?  What is a "thought system", 
anyway?  Is systemized thought how you understand Intellect?

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

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..

> All right. I understand and agree, no use denying that
> mankind is the only species that think and that the most
> basic thought is the above. In ZAMM Phaedrus arrived
> at much the same conclusion, and according to him the
> Sophist's expressed it with "Man the measure of all things"
> sentence. Quality is the Essence and humankind is its
> arbiter or antenna.

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?

[Ham before]:
> My cosmogeny posits Difference as the primary cause of
> experiential reality.  Difference breaks the absolute source
> into two essential contingencies - sensibility and otherness.

[Bo]:
> Right, Essence or Quality (Qualisence) as the primary cause
> is stale in the long run and Pirsig started on a MOQ in ZAMM
> that was completed in LILA in which Quality is split into DQ
> and SQ. Your split is essential sensibility and essential otherness.
> Do we have agreement this far?

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.  Something has to become differentiated before existence can 
appear.  Both quality and value are proprietary judgments (i.e., 
"measurements") of the individual.  Logically and epistemically, no value is 
realized without a sensible subject, without a being aware of objects. 
Thus, the differentiation of Essence into subject/object is fundamental to 
value perception.

Pirsig starts with the "Quality experience" but fails to acknowledge a 
primary source.  He has no Essence, Being, Creator, or Potentiality from 
which to derive experiential (SO) existence.  The MoQ is a multi-level 
paradigm for the physical universe, not a metaphysical theory.  Now you come 
along with a theory of Intellect that is supposed to fill in the gap between 
the physical and the psychic world.  But intellect, like Quality and Value, 
is a human attribute, so SOL doesn't cut it as the ultimate reality.

This is where we disagree, Bo.  Logic is an intellectual construction, but 
not even intellect can be prior to subjective awareness.  Ex nihilo, nihil 
fit (nothing comes from nothingness).  Don't be discouraged, though, because 
MoQists in general reject the concept of a supra-natural source on the 
grounds that it is tainted with "theism".

Now that you see what the Essence of Essentialism is, you can understand why 
our theories are moving in different directions than intended by MoQ's 
author.  I sincerely hope that this difference will not prove a barrier in 
our discourse, but am not very optimistic.

Anyway, I appreciate your willingness to seriously consider my ontology, at 
least up to the fundamental definition of experiential existence as 
being-aware.

Thanks, and best wishes,
Ham