Hi Ham
At the start of Chapter 5 of Lila Pirsig says:
"The key was values, he thought. That was the weakest spot in the whole
wall of cultural
immunity to new ideas the anthropologists had built around themselves.
Value was a term they
had to use, but under Boas’ science value does not really exist.
And Phædrus knew something about values. Before he had gone up into the
mountains he
had written a whole book on values. Quality. Quality was value. They
were the same thing. Not
only were values the weakest spot in that wall, he might just be the
strongest person to attack
that spot."
which, I think is what you were referring to.
Notice that he says they are the same thing in, I believe, the same way
that Venus = Morning Star = Evening Star is saying that they are the
same thing - identical - and not just an equivalence.
I also think that this is how Pirsig would see the "Experience = Quality
= Reality = Morality" statement - although that's just my
interpretation. Although, in light of the passage above this would make
sense.
On 12/12/2010 18:30, Ham Priday wrote:
Hi Horse [Tim mentioned] --
'=' in the sense that Quality = Reality is saying that they are the
same thing.
If I refer to Venus, the Morning Star or the Evening Star by saying
Venus = Morning Star = Evening Star, I'm not saying there is an
equivalence, I'm saying that they are exactly identical. The only
difference is the form of the linguistic label. There is no
difference in their value.
Pirsig appears to equate everything that one could call "subjective".
Thus, his multi-equivalency equation (Experience = Quality = Reality =
Morality) postulates a subjectivist worldview. While that effectively
eliminates objects as "real", I do not see how it eliminates the
subjects who are aware of these precepts or aesthetic contingencies.
In my opinion, reducing the subjective self to a pattern (patterns?)
of Quality does not make the subject "less real" than the precepts it
recognizes.
[Horse]
As Platt suggested a while back (to paraphrase - apologies Platt if I'm
misinterpreting) Subjects and Objects are not real, it is Quality that
is real. Although I would say that subjects, objects, words, societies,
dogs and rocks are illusory rather than imagined. As is the 'I'. This
doesn't mean that 'I' doesn't/don't exist and isn't real - just that in
terms of subjects and objects 'I' is an illusion, in a similar way that
a rainbow is an illusion - even though there are some lovely photographs
of rainbows! What may seem objective or real ain't necessarily so!
This gives me an opportunity to confirm a statement I made to Tim. Did
Pirsig not also equate Quality to Value as the equivalency: Value =
Quality? As this is important to me, I'd appreciate learning the
source for this equation. (We believe it may be included in the SODV
paper.)
[Horse]
See above - I couldn't find it in the SODV paper.
In conceding to me that Pirsig had indeed equated Quality to Value,
Tim added ...
and even though he did equate quality and value (he moreso
equated quality and morality), Quality was the source of quality.
In your opinion, is there any difference between Pirsig's 'Quality'
(with the initial cap) and 'quality' (lower case)? If there is, I must
have missed something in my interpretation of the Quality thesis.
I would say that it makes no difference overall if you capitalise or
don't. Or if you use value/Value instead. Or morality or reality -
although the syntactic and/or semantic implications may cause a few
problems in substituting one for the other. But that may be more a
linguistic structure problem. Not sure really. It depends whether you're
using the words as verbs or nouns etc.
Hope that answers your questions.
Cheers
Horse
--
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines
or dates by which bills must be paid."
— Frank Zappa
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