[MD] Is Quality Different from (Mother) Nature?

[Ham Priday]

Mark and All --

On 11/23/09 Mark posted a query concerning the nature of Quality and how 
(if?) it can be separated from Nature itself (i.e., the evolutionary 
universe).

> Nature is used as a specific term in evolution, as in Natural Selection.
> Originally evolution was thought to proceed through a dynamic
> interplay between the environment and the species. In this way,
> to correlate the two terms, Quality is the environment and everything
> else (help me here) is what Quality creates and inter-plays dynamically
> with. Quality itself does not evolve but pushes reality towards a certain
> direction. Opposed to this is the notion that everything contains
> Quality as an inner Nature, and it is not possible to separate things
> from Quality.  In this way, Quality would simply be a descriptive
> terms for something. ...
>
> So my question is, what is different about Quality?

I don't claim to speak for the MoQ or its author, but I would like to pass 
along part of an article by Dinesh D'Souza which addresses Mark's question 
and (I think) may apply to the MoQ thesis as well.  D'Souza may be familiar 
as the author of  "Life After Death: The Evidence," (which my wife is now 
reading), or "What is Great about Christianity", among other books that 
preceded it.

This article appeared in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer 'Currents" section 
under the heading "Mind over Matter."  I was not so much intrigued by his 
premise that Socrates may have "made a case for life after death" as I was 
by his insightful analysis of the difference between intellectual  knowledge 
and what he calls "inner quality" (sensibility, in my philosophy).  The 
complete article may be accessed at 
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/70734737.html.

"We all know that there is something that it feels like to be in love, just 
as there is something it feels like to watch a sunset by the ocean, or to 
smell fresh-brewed coffee.  Philosophers call such sensations 'qualia,' a 
term that refers to the inner quality of an experience on the part of the 
one who is having it.

"It seems that no amount of scientific or objective analysis can capture 
this inner quality, this 'what it is like' to have a particular sensation. 
...It seems that no amount of scientific or objective analysis can capture 
this inner quality, this "what it is like" to have a particular sensation. 
To demonstrate this point, philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a famous essay in 
1974 with the provocative title "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"...

"Nagel's point was that there is something that it is like to be human, or 
male, or a dog; by the same token, there must also be something that it is 
like to be a bat.  But however much we learn about bat physiology, bat 
brains, and echolocation, Nagel says we can never fully understand what it 
is like to be a bat.  The clear implication is that an objective physical 
understanding is necessarily incomplete, apparently because there is 
something to living organisms that transcends the physical.

"In 1986, philosopher Frank Jackson broadened Nagel's argument into a 
refutation of all materialist attempts to explain mental states in purely 
physical terms.  In what has come to be called the 'Mary problem,' Jackson 
envisioned a brilliant scientist named Mary who is locked in a 
black-and-white room from which she investigates the world by way of a 
black-and-white television monitor.  As a specialist in the neurophysiology 
of vision, Mary knows everything there is to know about color.  She 
understands how different wavelengths of light stimulate the retina, and how 
those are channeled to the visual areas in the brain, resulting in such 
statements as 'The sky is blue' and 'Tomatoes are red.'

"Now here's Jackson's question: Suppose Mary finally gets a color TV monitor 
or is released from her black-and-white room into the outside world.  Will 
Mary learn something that she didn't know before?  Jackson says she 
obviously would.  She would for the first time know what it's like to see 
the blue sky or red tomatoes.  These experiences would teach her something 
about color that all her previous knowledge could not."

Maybe it's just that I'm more sensitive to color than temperature, but this 
simple demonstration of Quality (eg., value-sensibility) was far more 
enlightening to me than was Pirsig's legendary "hot stove" analogy.  Anyone 
agree?

Happy Thanksgiving to All,
Ham