[MD] The percolating SOL

[Jan-Anders]

Greetings Ham, David, John and Marsha

As I said in #105 I think it sounds like it's time to pick up Phaedros 
knife again.

I wrote a little outcast for a book as a twig growing out from the line 
in ch 19 about quality as an event.

Event is very important because event implies the concept of time as an 
event is something with time, a start, a state and an end. Immanuel Kant 
is interesting in that matter just because of his work with time and 
room as concept. That doesn't mean that all about Kant is interesting 
here, his complete works, where he lived, what he preferred to eat or 
wear, if he liked dogs, his political orientation or what kind of 
temperament he had.

Now I think there are at least three here that are interested in 
discussing an ultimate definition of quality as a concept. Or as Ham put it
"What IS the cause of Value?"

I use to put in some small hints from my work here and there.

Today I'll point at this:

As usual there are three sides of it:
A mathematical, a philosophical and a psychological side of it. This is 
confusing because most people try to make it clean and then it ends up 
as a pure mathematic, a pure philosophic or a pure psychologic work. 
When the conclusion are closing to the borders of the other disciplines 
then there use to be severe authoring problems because the answer is 
then formulated with wrong terms.

What we are looking for could be an answer to the question "What is the 
cause of Value", an answer that explains both the mathematical, the 
philosophical and the psychological side of it. By rhetoric means to 
connect to and honor RMP and ZAMM of course. And the correct answer 
should also verify the question itself to be the ultimate answer.

Unfortunately I have just today begun reading ANTHONY MCWATT's "AN 
INTRODUCTION TO ROBERT PIRSIG’S METAPHYSICS OF QUALITY" so I must ask 
for a short intermission until I've finished the first reading.

sincere

Jan-Anders


>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:10:35 -0500
> From: "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Subject: Re: [MD] The percolating SOL
> Message-ID: <4A3E29A12CFD42E7BCBB5873AD3E2D5D at hamPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=Windows-1252;
> 	reply-type=original
>
> Greetings, David --
>
>
> The Pirsig quotes that you provided in response to Bodvar on 8/23 are 
> seminal to the MoQ thesis, and much appreciated.
>
> There has never been any doubt in my mind that Robert Pirsig is an innovator 
> in the area of Philosophy, and there is certainly a need in our culture for 
> a new reality perspective.
> Dividing the experiential world into a hierarchy of levels is not nearly as 
> important as an understanding that there is fundamental source underlying 
> existence.  Positing this source as "Quality" may be a useful metaphor, but 
> it is fraught with the same epistemological problems as theorizing 
> Consciousness, Energy, Love, or Being as the primary source. These are all 
> intellectual precepts of subjective human experience, and neither quality 
> nor experience is a self-generating source.
>
> This is why the following statement, quoted from ZAMM, is problematic:
>
>
> "Quality is not a thing. It is an event. ...It is the event at which the 
> subject becomes aware of the object.  And because without objects there can 
> be no subject...
> because the objects create the subject's awareness of himself...Quality is 
> the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible."
>
> Subjects and objects are mutually dependent, but objects do not create 
> self-awareness. Keeping in mind the primacy of Pirsig's Quality (I prefer 
> his equivalent term 'Value'), subjects and objects are "secondary" 
> creations.  Subjectivity is proprietary (individuated) value-sensibility, 
> and it is this cognizant sensibility that is aware of objective experience.
>
> What Pirsig calls the "quality event" is what I call experience.  If we 
> substitute Value for Quality, and "experience" for the quality event, we can 
> make sense out of this noteworthy paragraph:
>
> "This means Value is not just the result of a collision between subject and 
> object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from 
> value-derived experience.  The experience is the cause of the subjects and 
> objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Value!"
>
> With this small but significant adjustment, the epistemological problems are 
> resolved and we arrive at a logically plausible premise for existential 
> reality with which I fully concur.  There remains, however, the question: 
> What IS the cause of Value?  And that fundamental question has not been 
> addressed by Pirsig in ZAMM, LILA, SODV, or in subsequent intrerviews with 
> the author.
>
> Thanks again for the quotes, David.  You've selected the cream of the crop.
>
> Essentially yours,
> Ham
>
>