[MD] Betternes - 4 levels of!

[Andre Broersen]

Horse to Andre:

Do you have a reference to where Ant makes a distinction between Value
and Quality in his PhD. As far as I can see he seems to equate the two
as per Pirsig.

Andre:
Hi Horse, the 'distinction' is found in Anthony's PhD sections 2.2 and 2.3 under 'Pirsig's understanding of Quality' and 'Pirsig's understanding of Value'. He spends 9 pages on the first and roughly seven on the second section.

Now my understanding, (keeping in mind dmb's 'If Ant makes a distinction between Quality and value, I strongly suspect the interesting part would be the "why" and the "what for"),leads me to the suggestion that the distinction is made on the basis of the 'valuating process' out of which arise static patterns of value. This process is based on Quality (...decisions...not rational by any means but they can be) i.e. based on betterness but (dare I suggest it) is not Quality itself...in the sense that the grains of sand taken from 'the endless landscape of awareness' are static representations which we call 'the world' and cannot be said to be 'the endless landscape', the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum...', 'the flux...'.

They are but static representations, hints, fingers pointing... .

'Once we have the handfull of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife'. (ZMM,p 75)

I may be misreading this but it is valuable (!) in the sense that it leaves Quality undefined without making it  mysterious. 'Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live'.(ibid,p245)

This is why, for the sake of clarity I prefer the use of static patterns of value instead of static patterns of quality (not capitalized!)

I am interested to get some response to this. I know I need a break and am wondering if I shouldn't have taken it much sooner. I sense my concentration is flagging. Perhaps what I am saying is that Quality is the noun that generates the verb...which generates the noun.............ohh time to go.