Greetings, Craig --
...and thanks for coming to my rescue.
Call me “Green Eggs”, but I’m with Ham on this one
(apologies to Dr. Suess). The MoQ needs to reconcile the
notion of DQ as the “undifferentiated continuum” & as
what there can be more or less of (or more or less promoted.)
In particular, do we experience DQ & from that conclude
what is good? Or do we identify what is good & conclude
that is DQ?
I would say that we "sense" DQ (Value) and we "experience" what is good.
But what Pirsig says in his polemics of Dynamic Quality is somewhat
equivocal. For example:
"From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism.
...But what the socialists left out and what has killed their whole
understanding is an absence of a concept of indefinite[?] Dynamic Quality.
You go to any socialist city and it's always a dull place because there's
little Dynamic Quality.
"On the other hand the conservatives who keep trumpeting about the virtues
of free enterprise are normally just supporting their own self-interest.
"The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a
Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other words
what people VALUE, can never be contained by any intellectual formula. What
makes the markeplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is always changing
and the direction of that change can never be predetermined." -- [LILA:
Chpt. 17]
Now this DQ which Phaedrus had first euphemized as a "faceless Giant, ready
to devour and digest him," but which he now realized "HE was as much a part
of as anyone else," is actually Value. And Value is not contained in cities
and structures but in one's own sensibility. This, I suspect, is what
Pirsig was reaching for, except that it didn't quite fit his hierarchical
scheme and he objectivized ("reified") Value instead.
What about his statement that conservatives (i.e., capitalists) "are just
supporting their self-interests'? Isn't what's "important", "desirable", or
"interesting" precisely what is meant by realizing Value? If so, nothing
describes it better than "self-interest". In other words, Capitalism works
BECAUSE it supports self-interest. It fails to work when government imposes
its tentacles of regulation and control on the free enterprise system, which
is the collectivist policy of statism or Socialism. This reduces the
incentive of innovators and producers, and upsets the dynamics of a free
market economy which is based on individual values.
I am an advocate of "rational, self-directed value" as a moral principle.
You may substitute "intellectual" for "rational", if it's more in keeping
with the MoQ. But you can't abstract Value from the individual who realizes
it because value-sensibility is his very nature. And therein lies your key
to reconciling "the notion of DQ as the 'undifferentiated continuum'
[Essence] & as what there can be more or less of (or more or less promoted)
[values]."
Are we on the same page philosophically, Craig?
Best regards,
Ham
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