[MD] MOQ and Completeness Theories (Sorry, Godel.)

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to John:
...I can't speak for DMB, but I don't think Quality is a "line", maybe if you want a geometric analogy is more like a "field".  [AND]... Pirsig has gone to great lengths to articulate the distinctions between his use of the term "Quality" and the "common use" of that term. Indeed, he finds the common use indicative of a very deep problem, and his act of redefining is central to his rooting out this malady.

dmb says:
The geometric analogies just don't compute for me. Not that you guys are debating it this way but I think it would help to think about Quality as something OTHER than the "properties" that can be detected by sense organs and scientific instruments. I mean, the kind of Quality Pirsig is talking about is more like the overall feel, the aesthetic charge of a the whole situation. It's the negative value of the situation that gets you off the hot stove, for example, not detectable, specifiable properties like heat. We act on the negative value even before such specifics can be conceptualized or named. That negative value is an unmistakable and powerful motive without being articulate.


Also, I think it doesn't matter much whether we describe this motive as moving toward the good or away from the bad because the movement is toward betterness either way. In that sense, Quality does have a direction. It can push or pull, depending on how you want to describe the situation. The overall qualitative feel can have a negative of positive charge, as in "his vision had a murky quality" or "the last act of the play had a stale, canned quality" or "it had a certain syrup but it didn't pour". You know, the quality art critics talk about, not the qualities physicists talk about. Good dogs and good sausages and good books are identified as such by feelings, for lack of a better word, not dogometers or sausageometers or bookometers. You can't just take a glance or observe disinterestedly to see the Quality. You gotta get down in there. You gotta be engaged, love it, live it, pet it, eat it, or read it carefully - as the case may be. Then you really know something concrete and real. The primary empirical reality is that charge, that feel, that overall tone of the living present. That's my sense of it, anyway.