Dear Marsha --
Very early on Tuesday morning you responded as follows to a note from Andre:
Hey Andre,
Here's what I've been considering lately. What do you think?
RMP seems to have split Quality into Dynamic & static as a rhetorical
device. I understand the relationship between Dynamic Quality and static
quality to be like two aspects of the same process (Quality). Just like the
process of living is simultaneously occurring with the process of dying, so,
too, DQ and sq are occurring simultaneously. Or the same glass of water
being half empty and half full.
Anyone?
I have a few thoughts on the subject of Quality which, as you know, I prefer
to call Value. This preference can be explained by the water glass metaphor
you refer to.
The meaning of this trope is not that there is "less or more" water in the
glass but, rather, how much you "thirst for" (i.e., value) its contents.
Thus, if you happen to be sitting at a dining table on which sits a pitcher
of water and glasses for your guests, you are likely to perceive a
partially-filled glass as "half empty." But if you are dying of thirst in a
desert, there's a good chance you'll spot that same glass as "half full".
I understand experience as a 'process', but not quaiity. I believe it is
human nature to interpret all experience in valuistic terms. When we value
something, we're not passing judgment on some intrinsic 'quality' of that
thing; we’re sensing its value relative to our self. An object or event
which arouses our desire has more value than something that we don't want or
that is of little interest to us.
This is what Protagoras meant by the maxim "Man is the measure of all
things." And I believe "static quality" was Pirsig's metaphor for
experiential (relative)
value as opposed to cosmic or absolute value which is beyond human
experience.
At least, that epistemology makes more sense to me than definitions of
"static" and "dynamic" quality as related to process.
Good to chat with you again, Marsha.
Essentially speaking,
Ham
Marsha
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