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

[Arlo Bensinger]

[DMB]
The geometric analogies just don't compute for 
me. ... I mean, the kind of Quality Pirsig is 
talking about is more like the overall feel, the 
aesthetic charge of a the whole situation.

[Arlo]
I agree. I mention "field" as a geometric analogy 
I'd be more comfortable with than "line" or 
"vector" for precisely what you say here, its 
"overall" and an aesthetic behind "the whole situation".

[DMB]
That negative value is an unmistakable and 
powerful motive without being articulate.

[Arlo]
You are using the phrase "negative value"  and, 
as I mention to John, I have a problem with how 
this is conceptualized within a MOQ where Quality 
= experience. Since an absence of Quality would 
imply non-existence, I am not even sure what a 
"negative amount of Quality" would be.

I see how its used conventionally, yes, it means 
a "bad" experience, but I think a more 
appropriate term is simply "low quality". A 
person jumps off a hot stove because the 
situation has "low value", as Pirsig uses the phrase in LILA.

"The low value that can be derived from sitting 
on a hot stove is obviously an experience even 
though it is not an object and even though it is not subjective." (LILA)

Or in ZMM, "An amoeba, placed on a plate of water 
with a drip of dilute sulfuric acid placed 
nearby, will pull away from the acid (I think). 
If it could speak the amoeba, without knowing 
anything about sulfuric acid, could say, ‘This 
environment has poor quality.'" (ZMM)

I know this is mostly nitpicking, but I think it 
underscores the way "common" language struggles 
when new concepts are introduced.

For what its worth, the phrase "negative quality" 
does not appear in LILA, and appears once in ZMM. 
Same with "negative value", it does not appear in 
LILA and appears once in ZMM. Both ZMM passages are below.

"The overwhelming majority of facts, the sights 
and sounds that are around us every second and 
the relationships among them and everything in 
our memory...these have no Quality, in fact have 
a negative quality. If they were all present at 
once our consciousness would be so jammed with 
meaningless data we couldn't think or act." (ZMM)

But without knowing all that I can't see that it 
lives up either to the raves of the Great Books 
group or the rages of Phædrus. I certainly don't 
see Aristotle's works as a major source of either 
positive or negative values." (ZMM)

In the first, I think the term is used to point 
out that we would not *want* all these sights and 
sounds around us every second to have Quality 
because doing so would overload our ability to 
respond to the world. This is often the case with 
schizophrenics. So "negative quality" is a 
hypothetical awareness that where there is an 
absence of Quality we would not want there to be Quality.

But this is much different than the notion of 
something, like a hot stove, having "negative 
quality" in the sense that it is a "bad" experience.

[DMB]
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.

[Arlo]
I think the key here is your last part, 
"depending on how you want to describe the 
situation". This is an anthropomorphic analogy 
for Quality, like two horses leading a chariot. 
Of course the only way to talk about Quality is 
through analogy, but the tendency to forget these 
things are just analogies, and like The Chairman 
start to think the horses and the chariot are "real".