[MD] Bitterness over Betterness

[Ham Priday]

Dear Mark --


> I am not sure that there cannot be objects without a subject
> to experience them.  Could you explain that to me?

Since the questions you're asking indicate that I'm talking over your head, 
let's back up a bit,.
Although Pirsig equates value sensibility with "pre-intellectual" 
experience, it is primary to both experience and objects.  Working downward 
from Essence, which is ultimate reality, here is the ontogeny as I see it.

Essence negates (e.g., excludes, annexes, disowns) "part of its" sensibility 
to create an autonomous "other" which I call the 'negate'.  This cosmic 
"split" or division creates Difference which is not indigenous to absolute 
Essence.  The dichotomy thus formed splits individuated sensibility 
(selfness) from insensible otherness (beingness).  In terms of magnitude, 
the division represents nothingness pitted against the absolute source --  
the supreme difference   These two contingencies are bound together by the 
value of the Source (Essence Value).  The negate derives its conscious being 
and experiential power from otherness.

By "experientiaI power" I mean to infer that experience is an "effective" 
actualizing function, rather than merely a passive or "affective" response 
to otherness.  What it actualizes are the forms and qualities that represent 
the value-sensibility of the self in relation to its other.  These physical 
attributes become the objects and events experienced in the individual's 
space/time world.  In this way we each create our own reality, subject to 
the universal laws embedded in Essence Value.  (I hope this clarifies my 
epistemology sufficiently to make my assertions comprehensible, even if you 
disagree with them.)

> If something has quality, does that not provide an emotive response.
> If we group all the different qualities of everything together and
> call that Quality, is that not extremely emotive?  How is the word
> Value (the noun) any more emotive than Quality?

Combining all attributive qualities together gives you an agglomeration, 
which I doubt Pirsig had in mind as his undefined Quality.  What kind of 
emotion would this mishmash elicit?  We'd be as much "turned off" by it as 
fascinated ...plus Goodness would be lost in the chaos.  Even as a "noun", 
Quality to me is a dead label with no generative power of its own.  I've 
posited Value in the "verbal" sense -- as the affinity of the cognitive self 
for its Source, not a nominative entity that gets better over time.  We 
desire what we value; the things we actualize are desiderata that 
provisionally satisfy our yearning for the estranged Source.

> What is it that we value?  Is it not the quality of such a thing?
> Isn't a feeling of a positive or negative value an experience?  Are
> you saying that an experience evokes and experience?  I am not sure
> how your are dividing this up.  Could you please explain how a
> feeling is different from an experience?

Metaphysically, we value Essence.  As existents, we turn sensible value 
(feelings) into phenomena differentiated by space and time, or what we call 
experience.  (Experience always infers being, which we get from the 
otherness of our existential dichotomy.)

> Yes, some claim that objects contain quality, which they clearly can
> not.  Quality creates objects, wouldn't you agree?  This appears to be
> what you are saying if I read you correctly.  Personage is a quality,
> no?

Value (Quality if you must) actualizes objects, as I stated above and have 
been stressing all along, Mark.  Personage can embrace a number of 
"qualities"; but the beloved does represent value to the lover.  And this 
value is realized psycho-emotionally (if I may), as well as intellectually. 
As I said previously, all experience is value-based.

> Our experience of intellectual-ness is Dynamic Quality in action, I do
> not see how it can be anything other than that.  If it is not dynamic
> quality, then we need to label it?  It is not hidden from us.  As I
> read in another good post, does water get thirsty?  Are our eyes
> hidden from us?  If we are dynamic quality, what is there to hide?
> Can a finger point at itself?  Can we point at Dynamic Quality. I see
> a lot of incongruity in what some others post.  How can we find
> something when we are it?

These assertions are so tied to the MoQ that I have difficulty interpreting 
them.  "Our experience of intellectual-ness" is meaningless to me, so I 
don't know what it's supposed to define.  Perhaps you could provide an 
example.  "Dynamic Quality in action" is another metaphor I don't 
understand.  The "actor" in my ontology is the value agent, not Quality or 
Value itself.  And the only "hidden" element in my ontology is the Essential 
Source.  (Incidentally, I'm running the entire 'Hiddenness' essay on next 
week's Values Page, and it may help you understand why we must be "innocent" 
of absolute knowledge in order to exercise free choice.)

[Ham, previously]:
> My answer is that, although value always "points to" some greater essence,
> Essence is not our nature. Instead, we have a "sense of Value" that is not
> experienced, but that drives experience to represent it objectively. Value
> sensibility, like Pirsig says about Quality, is "pre-intellectual", 
> whereas
> experience can be, and is, intellectualized. So what passes for the 
> essence
> of Value as things and events ("quality patterns") is our intellectualized
> synthesis of value-sensibility.

[Mark]:
> If we cannot experience it, as you say, then why point at it?  I
> cannot experience being inside of an elephant either.  This does not
> make such a phenomenon special.  If you are speaking of motivation
> and hope, then there are much less hidden ways to explain these things.

I'm not pointing to Essence, Value does by drawing us to it.  It is not so 
much an expression of "hope" as it is the desire for spiritual fulfillment.

> The objectification of experience is simply part of communication, a
> tool of the Societal Level.  If we had nobody to talk to, we would not
> need to objectivize, since words would not be necessary.  Experience
> would be direct (as it is for most of our day).  Objectification is an
> impingement of the Societal Level.  Does this not make sense?  If not,
> then why not?

How did society get in here?  I don't see objectivization as impinging on 
society at all.  What we experience is not "words" but tangible objects that 
we manipulate, consume, or utilize in some way, whether for societal or 
personal reasons.

> It would seem to me that the intellectual can have Value, can it not?
> If it has value then it is associated with Quality.  I do not see how
> we can draw a strict line between what is real and what is an image.
> Intellectual synthesis is dynamic quality in action.  It has to be,
> there is no way to tease it away from everything else.  Isn't the
> fragrance of a flower part of the flower?  Isn't our intellectualization
> part of our pre-intellectual?

Now you're using "intellectual" as a noun.  What is "the intellectual" that 
you say has value?   If you mean the intellect or intellectual 
understanding, yes, this has value insofar as it helps us comprehend our 
existence.  It's what we're utilizing now, in fact.  Intellection, however, 
cannot by definition be "pre-intellectual".  That is, we can't 
intellectualize something before we experience it, and experience is the 
actualization of value.  So, unless you're talking about "conceptualization" 
which involves deductive or analytical logic (as in metaphysical concepts), 
intellection is the tail end of the comprehension process.

[Ham]:
> But because to know that the objective reality we create for
> ourselves is an illusion would disorient us, rendering us ineffective
> existents in this world, such knowledge imust be hidden from us.
> This principle ...also affords us the freedom to "test" or measure
> a wide spectrum of finite values experientially, which in effect
> makes us the existential "agents of value".

[Mark]:
> It would appear that you are tending heavily into solipsism here.
> That is not what MoQ is about.  It is not a subjective phenomenon.
> We "actualize", as you say, from something that is already there.
> We cannot create such things, there is no place to create them.
> An illusion is an image of something that really exists.  Otherwise
> we would call it a delusion.  If it is an illusion, what is it an illusion
> of?  I am not sure what you are pointing to here.  Why would
> we be ineffective if we saw the world that is hidden?  ...

I've been accused of solipsism before, Mark; but Essentialism isn't 
solipsistic, because everything in existence is derived from an ultimate 
source which we are looking at from the outside, so to speak. What is 
"there" is Essence.  What we sense is its Value.  What we actualize is our 
differentiation of this value.  I dislike applying "illusion" to existential 
reality which is, after all, the reality we live in.  Yet, one must make a 
distinction between this provisional existence and Absolute Essence, and 
from the metaphysical perspective existence is illusional.

> As always, I am trying to understand you and have many questions.
> I hope you don't mind.

Not at all, Mark.  I realize that my ontology has you bewildered, and that 
language can sometimes compound the confusion.  Hopefully my responses to 
your questions will clear up some of the problems and make Essentialism more 
meaningful to you.

Have a pleasant weekend,
Ham