[MD] Betternes - 4 levels of!

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 1:48 PM, Andre Broersen <andrebroersen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Dan:

After re-reading 2.2 and 2.3 of Anthony's PhD thesis (it is a really
great source of information for anyone serious about the MOQ, just
fantastic! Anyone not familiar with it should order it today.
Definitely worth the price. It is available on Ant's website
www.robertpirsig.org) it seems to me that Ant isn't forming a
distinction between Quality and value so much as he is saying that
some values cannot be quantified in the way others can be. It appears
Robert Pirsig agrees when he says:

Quality was adopted dynamically. The term itself had high Quality. I just
felt ‘Quality’ had quality the way the students just ‘felt’ some student papers
were better than others. I used to give the students the advice, ‘First you just
“see” what has quality, then you figure out why. Don’t reverse the process, or
you will get all confused.’ It is important to restate this now to avoid the
perennial literary critics’ trap of thinking that the pivotal term
quality is the
result of some rational, analyzable process. (Pirsig, 1995b)

Dan comments:

I think this is what RMP means when he said that to teach writing,
first teach pure quality. Let the student discover for themselves
where quality is and then figure out why. If we try to figure out why
first, confusion arises.


>Andre:
> 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.

Dan:

>From what I understand, the reason RMP capitalizes Quality is to
distinguish the Dynamic from the static, not value from quality. He
takes great pains in LILA to show how both quality and value are
synonymous. He even states that the Metaphysics of Quality could just
as well be called the Metaphysics of Value.

Thank you,

Dan