Arlo said to John:
...I can't speak for DMB, but I don't think Quality is a "line", maybe if you
want a geometric analogy is more like a "field". [AND]... Pirsig has gone to
great lengths to articulate the distinctions between his use of the term
"Quality" and the "common use" of that term. Indeed, he finds the common use
indicative of a very deep problem, and his act of redefining is central to his
rooting out this malady.
dmb says:
The geometric analogies just don't compute for me. Not that you guys are
debating it this way but I think it would help to think about Quality as
something OTHER than the "properties" that can be detected by sense organs and
scientific instruments. I mean, the kind of Quality Pirsig is talking about is
more like the overall feel, the aesthetic charge of a the whole situation. It's
the negative value of the situation that gets you off the hot stove, for
example, not detectable, specifiable properties like heat. We act on the
negative value even before such specifics can be conceptualized or named. That
negative value is an unmistakable and powerful motive without being articulate.
Also, I think it doesn't matter much whether we describe this motive as moving
toward the good or away from the bad because the movement is toward betterness
either way. In that sense, Quality does have a direction. It can push or pull,
depending on how you want to describe the situation. The overall qualitative
feel can have a negative of positive charge, as in "his vision had a murky
quality" or "the last act of the play had a stale, canned quality" or "it had a
certain syrup but it didn't pour". You know, the quality art critics talk
about, not the qualities physicists talk about. Good dogs and good sausages and
good books are identified as such by feelings, for lack of a better word, not
dogometers or sausageometers or bookometers. You can't just take a glance or
observe disinterestedly to see the Quality. You gotta get down in there. You
gotta be engaged, love it, live it, pet it, eat it, or read it carefully - as
the case may be. Then you really know something concrete
and real. The primary empirical reality is that charge, that feel, that
overall tone of the living present. That's my sense of it, anyway.
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