Hi Steve --
Quality as a monism is an intellectual postulate. You can accept it and
see where it takes you, or you can leave it be. This forum is concerned
with seeing where this intellectual postulate takes us. If you are
unwilling to accept it for the sake of argument and at least try to
understand what Pirsig means by it then your posts will be of little
interest to most people here.
In other words, if your arguments took the form "if we accept this
postulate it leads to these problems" then I would be interested in the
discussion. But yours always take the form "I don't want to accept this
postulate because that is just not how I understand the term value." You
are playing a different game than the other members of this forum. There
is just nothing to say to someone who is not interested in Pirsig's
Quality.
My interest in the MoQ is longstanding, largely because my philosophy also
has a valuistic premise. I think I do understand what Pirsig means by
Quality, and have made a sincere attempt to accept it as a metaphysical
"monism". Unfortunately, for reasons that I've cited, the Quality thesis
falls short of this distinction. This is not just because the author has
distorted the meaning of "value", or that the terms "dynamic" and "static"
are contraposed. My criticism is not about semantics. Rather, it concerns
the flawed epistemology that an aesthetic sensibility such as "beauty",
"importance", "quality" or "value" can stand independently as the ultimate
reality.
While this criticism may be outside of your personal ballpark, I believe it
has a legitimate place in a forum dedicated to a "free-ranging discussion"
of the problems and applications of RMP's Metaphysics of Quality. Your
complaint is duly noted, Steve. If I have overstepped my bounds, I shall of
course abide by the house rules.
Regards,
Ham
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