[MD] Wanted: A proper foundation

[Michael Poloukhine]

Jumping into this discussion way late, I apologize. But reading it from the start, I 
am struck by two things. 

ham wrote:
Value is the measure of a thing's relative worth or significance.

mel wrote:
[something Marsha IMO rightly described as A lovely symphony...]


Pondering mel's words against ham's quest, I can't help but feel that "value" as 
understood by Pirsig is not "value" in the traditional comparative sense. Seeking 
to find a word to adequately describe it may be like asking a child to draw a 
picture of perfection. Assuming the child can even comprehend the concept of 
perfection, anything the child draws will be by nature imperfect, and will fail to 
accurately describe it. The best that the child can do is draw to the best of his or 
her abilities a representation of something that the child feels best conveys 
perfection as the child understands it; a stick figure of Mom, for instance.

But the inability to fully understand or describe something using human intellect 
which is beyond the capacity of human intellect does not mean it doesn't exist.

And back to ham's quest for a proper foundation; maybe there is no such thing 
because we are using the wrong tool (human intellect.) Maybe we can only 
approximate it with that tool and have to let the rough edges be there. Put it 
another way; reality is doing *something* that we can (so far) only best describe 
as "Quality that needs no comparative to exist." It makes no sense called that, 
but only because we can't make sense of it (yet?)