[MD] Taking Words Seriously

[Ham Priday]

Ron, Steve, DMB [Joe mentioned]-- 

Ron said:
> It's what the majority of the arguement has been about, the idea
> of DQ being a place holder for the indefinable AND an
> explanation of the Good and the beautiful.

RMP:
> "Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove
> will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in
> an undeniably low-quality situation: that the _value_ of his predicament
> is negative."

Steve said:
> I think calling DQ the Good is problematic given the hot stove
> scenario for explaining it as negative value in that case.

RMP said:
> "Yes, my statement that Dynamic Quality is always affirmative
> was not a wise statement."

Ron said:
> When the negative face of Quality, emerges as conflicting types of
> Good it most certainly is a wise statement.

I'm confused, Ron.  Is the "negative face of Quality" what Pirsigians call 
"low quality"?   Or is it what most of us call "bad"?  If the latter, then 
you are in effect saying that Badness (or evil) is a "negative" type of 
Goodness, which is a logical absurdity.

Aren't we complicating moral values unnecessarily simply to conform to one 
author's idealistic concept of an "all-good" reality?   There is no 
empirical or metaphysical justification for an "absolutely moral" universe. 
Even Pirsig concedes that DQ is not always "affirmative".  As Joe Maurer 
recently pointed out, "Any discussion of creation emphasizes that the 
creator finds the creation good."  In Genesis is the phrase "And God saw 
that it was good."  If Pirsig's "Good-to-Better" reality isn't based on that 
religious sentiment, where else could it have come from?

I think Dave may have just provided the key to resolving the confusion. . . 
.

[DMB]:
> Betterness is a relational term, right?  It implies a comparison of at 
> least
> two choices.  In that sense, I think the meaning is completely unaltered
> by the terms we use. It doesn't matter if we say "movement toward the 
> good"
> or "movement away from the bad". Either way is fine. They're both aimed
> at betterness in relation to something else.

Not only is "betterness" a relational term, so are "good" and "bad".  We 
live in a relational world which is intrinsically "amoral".  It is human 
sensibility that brings value into the world and turns its relational 
constituents into a moral hierarchy.  Human existence is all about 
relations.  Everything we do, every thought we have, every emotion we feel, 
is based on the value of otherness relative to ourselves.  In order to 
maximize the value realized in existence, man is the measure of all things. 
The more discriminating he is in this measurement, the greater his efficacy 
in distinguishing what is of value from the mundane, undesirable, or 
deleterious in his life experience.  Pragmatism, Morality, and Aesthetics 
have all evolved from the "relational valuism" which is unique to our 
species.

We don't have to look beyond ourselves for the source of this value, or 
hypothesize some complex mechanism whereby Quality breaks down into negative 
and positive, low or high, subsets.  As the sensible agents of experiential 
reality, we realize its value relationally, and this realization is primary 
to our experience.  If we know nothing else, we know what is good and what 
is bad.

Valuistically speaking,
Ham