[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Ham Priday <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Horse [Tim mentioned] --
>Horse:
>> '=' in the sense that Quality = Reality is saying that they are the
>> same thing.
>> If I refer to Venus, the Morning Star or the Evening Star by saying Venus
>> = Morning Star = Evening Star, I'm not saying there is an equivalence, I'm
>> saying that they are exactly identical.  The only difference is the form of
>> the linguistic label.  There is no difference in their value.
>Ham:
> Pirsig appears to equate everything that one could call "subjective".  Thus,
> his multi-equivalency equation (Experience = Quality = Reality = Morality)
> postulates a subjectivist worldview.  While that effectively eliminates
> objects as "real", I do not see how it eliminates the subjects who are aware
> of these precepts or aesthetic contingencies.  In my opinion, reducing the
> subjective self  to a pattern (patterns?) of Quality does not make the
> subject "less real" than the precepts it recognizes.

Dan:

I am not at all sure where you get this from? Perhaps you could cite a
source. From my understanding, in the MOQ, social and intellectual
patterns of value are subjective. Inorganic and biological patterns of
value are objective.

>Ham:
> This gives me an opportunity to confirm a statement I made to Tim.  Did
> Pirsig not also equate Quality to Value as the equivalency: Value = Quality?
> As this is important to me, I'd appreciate learning the source for this
> equation.  (We believe it may be included in the SODV paper.)

Dan:

For you, from LILA:

"He saw that her suitcase had shoved all his trays of slips over to
one side of the pilot berth. They were for a book he was working on
and one of the four long card-catalog-type trays was by an edge where
it could fall off. That's all he needed, he thought, about three
thousand four-by-six slips of notepad paper all over the floor.

"He got up and adjusted the sliding rest inside each tray so that it
was tight against the slips and they couldn't fall out. Then he
carefully pushed the trays back into a safer place in the rear of the
berth. Then he went back and sat down again.

"It would actually be easier to lose the boat than it would be to lose
those slips. There were about eleven thousand of them. They'd grown
out of almost four years of organizing and reorganizing and
reorganizing so many times he'd become dizzy trying to fit them all
together. He'd just about given up.

"Their overall subject he called a "Metaphysics of Quality," or
sometimes a "Metaphysics of Value," or sometimes just "MOQ" to save
time."



>Ham:
> In conceding to me that Pirsig had indeed equated Quality to Value, Tim
> added ...
>>
>>  and even though he did equate quality and value (he moreso
>> equated quality and morality), Quality was the source of quality.
>
> In your opinion, is there any difference between Pirsig's 'Quality' (with
> the initial cap) and 'quality' (lower case)?   If there is, I must have
> missed something in my interpretation of the Quality thesis.

Dan:

Anthony McWatt's PhD thesis would be of tremendous value to anyone
seeking to interpret "the Quality thesis"... I would start with 2.8.0
through 2.8.4 to gain a better understanding of Robert Pirsig's use of
the term "Quality" and why he chooses to capitalize it in certain
contexts.

Thank you,

Dan