Marsha, Ron, Dan, and All --
"So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but everything,
is an ethical activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns of
reality
create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've done so
because it is 'better' and that this definition of 'betterness'- this
beginning
response to Dynamic Quality- is an elementary unit of ethics upon which
all right and wrong can be based." [LILA, p 161]
[Marsha to Ron]:
I see the world being composed of conventional meaning,
AND unknowable, undefinable & undividable Goodness.
[Ron to Marsha]:
Here's the difference Marsha,
I see the world as being composed of nothing but meaning
while you see it as having no meaning at all.
and that is a huge difference in our world outlooks
so we are going to disagree about stuff like that.
[Ron to Dan]:
Dynamic Quality is best understood as "betterness"
[Dan]:
Ron? You are saying that DQ is "an elementary unit of ethics
upon which all right and wrong can be based"?
I got from the quote that betterness is not DQ but an initial
response to DQ. Isn't that different?
It is obvious to anyone reviewing the recent posts (re: the story of "me"
and Free Will) that Goodness, Quality, and Betterness have led to confusion
and rancor in interpreting the MoQ. The author himself was contradictory
when he introduced Quality in ZMM. "You know what it is, yet you don't know
what it is," he said.
His logic went downhill from there:
"Some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But
when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it,
it all goes poof! There's nothing to talk about. But if you can't say what
Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even
exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it
really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people
pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile?"
But what is missing in this analysis, as I think Dan recognizes, is the
observing subject without which there would be no Goodness to experience, no
Quality to grade, and no Betterness to aspire to. For none of these
aesthetic attributes exists outside the realm of conscious sensibility. All
goodness is subjective, that is, relative to the cognizant self who measures
it. To say that the universe is good and going on better means that things
are going well for YOU, not that the universe is "made of" Quality.
Of course, reducing the individual to "interrelated quality patterns", as
Pirsig does, makes it difficult to understand how we have the capability to
realize goodness in our relational world. Nor does it help matters to
insist that we are "composed of value", which isn't true either. We are
sensible of, drawn to, the value of otherness.
But the beauty of a melody cannot be realized by a tone-deaf person, nor can
the quality of a painting be appreciated by a blind man.
Unfortunately, by doing away with subjects and objects, Pirsig had no choice
but to posit Quality as an undefined entity unto itself. This not only runs
counter to epistemology, it renders the MoQ incomprehensible to anyone with
a logical mind.
With sincere apologies to all Pirsig loyalists,
--Ham
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