This unusually long (for me) post contains:
1. A REJECTION of STRUAN'S "X"
2. MORALITY OF THE UNIVERSE VS. HUMAN ETHICS
3. BOTTOM-UP & THE SOURCE OF Q-JUDGEMENT
Hi Jon, Struan, Roger, Walter, Mark, Platt, Horse, Ken etc.
Struan, I'm glad to see that you are still with us.
JON:
> And finally there's Struan's assessment that saying Quality is the
primary
> empirical reality of the world can easily be replaced with "X" is the
primary
> empirical reality of the world. How many would agree with this? Is the
logic
> sound? Can we easily replaced Quality with X...?
>
ROGER:
> Of course you can, if it is a better definition..... if it is more
true to
> experience .... if it is simpler and more concise .... if it is less
> confusing and inconclusive ... if it is more elegant and connected to
other
> beliefs and experiences....IN OTHER WORDS, "X" IS BETTER THAN
"QUALITY" ONLY
> IF IT IS OF BETTER QUALITY.
>
> I think I will stick with "Quality."
>
STRUAN:
> Pure sophism.
> X is of 'better' quality because it doesn't bring
>with it the unwanted baggage of 'quality.'
[snip].
> X is perfectly sufficient, more concise, less confusing
> and very elegant. ...
I'm not sure if Struan himself means that we might as well call morality
"X", or if he says that Pirsig's failure to define his Quality means
that we should call it "X". In either case, I disagree. I don't consider
the extra "baggage" of the Q-word as unwanted, but welcome it. "X" is
not good;-)
First, let's consider Pirsig's "Q" = "X":
Anyone who read ZAMM cannot honestly claim that they have no idea what
Pirsig's Quality is. Maybe other names are possible (e.g. "value",
"meaning")
but Pirsig drove home the point that people largely AGREE on what Q is -
it's not like X which implies that any definition is good. Quality is
much more than an empty placeholder. Furthermore, X is meaningless until
AFTER it has been defined, while Pirsig presented Q as a metaphysical
entity that precedes definition.
I personally find it useful to use the word MEANING instead - in one of
my first posts to the Lila Squad in 1998, I rephrased Rigel's question
as "Does Lila have meaning?". The answer is obvious - she *means*
something to both Phaedrus and Rigel. Things which don't have meaning go
unnoticed. (BTW, it was that *M* word sent Fintan off on his
"Metaphysics of Meaning" trip).
The point is, Struan, you can't define things without meaning - the mere
act of defining them is recognition of their meaning/quality.
Next let's consider morality="X".
This is an inevitable outcome of Pirsig's treatment of the Q idea in his
second novel. He broke his own rule by putting Q subservient to
Aristotelian definition. The whole 4 layer MoQ presented in Lila is just
that. The only way one can accept any of Lila is by not taking it too
literally. A literal reading of Lila just opens up endless
contradictions - as Struan will surely agree.
HORSE:
>I agree that Good is co-existent with the morality of the universe
because the morality of the
>universe is the existence of the universe or reality itself....
This theme of a "moral" universe (one of Ken's favourites too) that
Pirsig presents could be rephrased "everything that happens is God's
will". There's not much one can say about it, and it certainly doesn't
provide any basis for ethical human behaviour. One can easily dismiss
Pirsig's Inorganic and Biological levels as God's will (or nature), but
HUMAN ethics is a question of human behaviour and human will. The
free-will argument is a red herring because humans clearly DO make
decisions and can be held responsibile for the outcomes. For humans to
act morally involves both individual decisions and collective decisions
(society). The individual decisions are conscious and seem to accord
with individual responsibility - no real ethical problems here. However,
social decisions are patterns arrived at with no no real individual
consciousness.
If several thousand individuals decide to sell their shares on the same
day, causing a market collapse, one can't easily find a conscious entity
RESPONSIBLE for that collapse. Games theorists have great fun with this
sort of stuff. What Pirsig offers in Lila is the idea that the behaviour
of individuals and the behaviour of societies is a complex interplay
with significant moral implications. Unfortunately, Pirsig didn't do
very much to develop this.
Lastly, I'd like to get back to Walter's question:
>You call this implicit agreement the
>'quality judgement - coming *before* subjectivity vs. objectivity'. My
question is
>now what you think the source of this Quality Judgement is?
I think my answer becomes apparent from looking at the "bottom-up" idea.
MARK WRITES
<<<"We think that if we start with quality parts then they must add
to a quality whole. Pirsig realized that it is only the whole that
determines
which parts are necessary.">>>
PLATT
>What Mark is proposing is a top-down morality....
WALTER SAYS
<<<To have a Quality whole, you have to have Quality parts first. If
you're
in control of the Quality parts, like when you're arranging your
living-room with
design elements, the proces of ordering the parts taking into account
the
relationships, is a Quality proces. It is bottom-up. It would be
top-down if
someone told you how your room should be like.>>>
Walter, what bothers me is that the initial perception of reality and
the breaking it down into separate parts is already an edited version of
reality contructed by the human mind. Ancient man may have thought about
those parts as rocks and logs. Modern man breaks it down further into
molecules and atoms or even subatomic particles. Bottom-up can only work
if you can find the bottom, but you start by digging down towards the
bottom. The starting point is always man's perception - MAN in the
broadest context, including his language, society and mythos.
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