Ham said to Mark:
Where is the Quality when you're not pointing? Nowhere.
What happens to Quality when there is nothing to point to,
or when there is no one to point? It disappears. Quality
exists only as a comparative evaluation by a sensible agent.
In short, it's a "comparative" interpretation of relational
experience.
dmb says:
Excuse me for butting in.
The notion that quality is subjective, the evaluative judgement
of a sensible subject, is not consistent with the MOQ. Instead,
every part of reality behaves and acts on the basis of Quality.
In that sense, atoms, stars, fishes and dogs are agents pointing
to Quality. As James says, "everything gets known by some knower".
We're talking about a reality that is entirely noetic, but it is
not a single unified consciousness like Hegel's God but rather
it is pluralistic, layered, "irreducibly many", "strung along and
overlapped". Everything gets known by some knower. It's Quality all
the way down.
If you're interested.
Ron Adds:
Ham's entire arguement rests soley on the notion that "nothingness"
exists.
An empricist might argue that "nothingness" may not be experienced
therefore empirically it is an abstraction, an idea with no
corresponding experience. Nothing, then exists only as a tool in the
enterprise of conveying meaning in general terms.
the question;
"what happens to Quality when there is nothing to point to?"
Indeed, Quality is empirical. Quality is experience.
what it means to "be".
So when Ham says:
"Quality
exists only as a comparative evaluation by a sensible agent.
In short, it's a "comparative" interpretation of relational
experience."
He is correct. Because, being empiricists, we have no way of knowing
and therefore asserting that quality exists when experience ends.
If we do, it begins to contradict empirical meaning.
Now it may be reasonably believed it does exist the same way it is reasonable
to believe that the world still exists after we die, but thats about
all the arguement we can make. But this arguement, this explanation
is rooted in experience while Ham may not make this claim. In fact
he seems to ignore the fact that his "sensible agent" is composed of
values, a collection of prejudices aquired over time.
Ham to Andre:
If a thing doesn't exist because we have never observed it, then it is
our observation (i.e., experience) that "creates" the thing.
Ron comments:
In a manner of understanding, yes. The next question being "then what
creates the observer?"
A mature reasoned response might be that we don't know, it's a dynamic.
An empirical arguement might be that it seems to consistantly follow
patterns of "betterness", forms of "the good".Quality.
Ham:
This illustrates how Pirsig misconstrues epistemology to support his Quality
thesis.
For if the cosmos or 'Quality universe' predetermines what is important or
valuable,
then man has no choice in the matter and is in effect a slave of Quality.
Ron:
Right you are Ham, we are a slave to Quality. I think it was in one of the
Socratic
dialogs that the idea that all of us are moved by the passions, we are agents of
"the good" was explored getting one to think about how everyone endeavors to
do whats best,they do what feels good and right, dialogs follow on the idea of
virtue as
health and well being. This illustrates how you misconstrue philosophy and
metaphysics
and the idea of "free agency".
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