[DMB]
The geometric analogies just don't compute for
me. ... I mean, the kind of Quality Pirsig is
talking about is more like the overall feel, the
aesthetic charge of a the whole situation.
[Arlo]
I agree. I mention "field" as a geometric analogy
I'd be more comfortable with than "line" or
"vector" for precisely what you say here, its
"overall" and an aesthetic behind "the whole situation".
[DMB]
That negative value is an unmistakable and
powerful motive without being articulate.
[Arlo]
You are using the phrase "negative value" and,
as I mention to John, I have a problem with how
this is conceptualized within a MOQ where Quality
= experience. Since an absence of Quality would
imply non-existence, I am not even sure what a
"negative amount of Quality" would be.
I see how its used conventionally, yes, it means
a "bad" experience, but I think a more
appropriate term is simply "low quality". A
person jumps off a hot stove because the
situation has "low value", as Pirsig uses the phrase in LILA.
"The low value that can be derived from sitting
on a hot stove is obviously an experience even
though it is not an object and even though it is not subjective." (LILA)
Or in ZMM, "An amoeba, placed on a plate of water
with a drip of dilute sulfuric acid placed
nearby, will pull away from the acid (I think).
If it could speak the amoeba, without knowing
anything about sulfuric acid, could say, This
environment has poor quality.'" (ZMM)
I know this is mostly nitpicking, but I think it
underscores the way "common" language struggles
when new concepts are introduced.
For what its worth, the phrase "negative quality"
does not appear in LILA, and appears once in ZMM.
Same with "negative value", it does not appear in
LILA and appears once in ZMM. Both ZMM passages are below.
"The overwhelming majority of facts, the sights
and sounds that are around us every second and
the relationships among them and everything in
our memory...these have no Quality, in fact have
a negative quality. If they were all present at
once our consciousness would be so jammed with
meaningless data we couldn't think or act." (ZMM)
But without knowing all that I can't see that it
lives up either to the raves of the Great Books
group or the rages of Phædrus. I certainly don't
see Aristotle's works as a major source of either
positive or negative values." (ZMM)
In the first, I think the term is used to point
out that we would not *want* all these sights and
sounds around us every second to have Quality
because doing so would overload our ability to
respond to the world. This is often the case with
schizophrenics. So "negative quality" is a
hypothetical awareness that where there is an
absence of Quality we would not want there to be Quality.
But this is much different than the notion of
something, like a hot stove, having "negative
quality" in the sense that it is a "bad" experience.
[DMB]
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.
[Arlo]
I think the key here is your last part,
"depending on how you want to describe the
situation". This is an anthropomorphic analogy
for Quality, like two horses leading a chariot.
Of course the only way to talk about Quality is
through analogy, but the tendency to forget these
things are just analogies, and like The Chairman
start to think the horses and the chariot are "real".
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