Arlo said to dmb:
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.
dmb says:
Well, I don't take "negative" as a reference to the amount or quantity. It
doesn't indicate an absence of the good so much as the presence of a negative
charge. In fact, it would make sense to say that some situations have a huge
amount of negative quality, which would be very unlike a neutral or inert
Quality, which we simply wouldn't have any reason to notice. But, as in the
cases you sited, a person jumps off a hot stove and an amoeba will pull away
from acid. This negative value is a concrete experience upon which we act.
"Any person ..who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual
argument whatsoever that he is in a undeniably low-quality situation: that the
value of his predicament is negative." (Lila, 66)
"The negative aesthetic quality of the hot stove in the earlier example was now
given some added meaning by a static-Dynamic division of Quality." (Lila, 116)
"A subject-object metaphysics ...ignores it when possible. But mystic learning
goes in the opposite direction and tries to hold to the ongoing Dynamic edge of
all experience, both positive and negative, even the Dynamic ongoing edge of
thought itself." (Lila, 116)
dmb continues:
That last sentence really gets at the idea, I think. It shows what I mean when
I say Quality is aesthetically CHARGED. Pirsig is saying that the Dynamic edge
of experience can be both positive and negative and the mystic takes this
charge, this qualitative feel, seriously as a concrete guide, as real
"information", if you will. The mystic will get off the stove first because he
tries to be attuned to this charge rather than ignoring it whenever possible.
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