Hullo Platt and Sam,
PLATT: "A question for both Sam and John. You know the famous (Platonic I
believe) formulation of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Do you agree that those
three "absolutes" are now subservient to Quality which, with the coming of
MOQ, is now the metaphysical top dog? Or is it better to simply place
goodness at the top with Truth and Beauty underneath? No big deal--just
curious."
JOHN: I wasn't aware this was Platonic division, but then I'm no student of
philosophy. I have been arguing since before I read Wilber that quality is
not just 'one thing', and to argue that is to reify it, in other words, to
make it something about which nothing (or anything) can be said. So I want
to take quality apart a bit, which was something Pirsig wanted to avoid. I
think he had a point, because there is a fundamental sense in which quality
is not definable, and cannot be described in simpler or more basic terms.But
this is actually an issue within all language, not just with the word
'quality', so what's new?
So I have argued for some time that biological 'quality' is different to
social or intellectual 'quality', in that quality for an organism is not a
matter of choice, but is simply attending to what emerges as having value.
Pirsig himself concedes this in his argument that what does not have quality
cannot even be experienced. This statement fits well with what I called
biological quality.
But at the higher levels there are choices, and it is these Pirsig refers to
when he speaks of selecting a metaphysics in the same way one chooses art
works one likes. They don't have to be absolute - just enjoyable. In my view
truth, goodness and beauty are in this category. They are different
categories; truth referring to the exterior world, which can be observed and
measured, and hence is the domain of science; goodness referring to the
interior world of groups, where justice and fairness are the major issues;
and beauty referring to the interior world of the individual, where
sincerity and artistic values are paramount.
A huge difference between the biological level and these higher levels is
that quality just emerges in the biological level, but quality is discerned
and learned through an educative process in the higher levels. So truth,
beauty and goodness all presuppose a culture and for the most part a
language in which this process of discernment occurs. When Squonk asks us to
go and lie in the grass, he is pointing to the immediacy of biological
quality, I suppose, which is fine as far as it goes. But he ignores those
realms of quality that depend upon a praxis before they become evident.
So I don't think Pirsig has actually made any sort of case for Quality, or
Dynamic Quality, being somehow the metaphysical top dog. What I think he has
done, and this alone is a huge step forward, is show that value infuses all
experience, whether it be the biological experience of the organism, or the
culturally embedded experience of truth, goodness and beauty. This is the
absolutely crucial insight needed to undo the dissociation and alienation of
the modern scientific world view, that finds no place for value. I happen to
think that Pirsig's MOQ is a rather poorly worked out intellectual map of
the resulting terrain, but the original insight is absolutely vital.
But further to this, I also argue that in his concern to overcome the
subject/object divide, Pirsig has failed to see that ideas about the way
things are don't make a praxis, a transformative path. Quality is to be
found in works of art, for example, but show a cow a painting and it
registers no interest whatever. The cultural qualities are not absolute,
they evolve, and the learner starts with what appeals to him, and
progressively refines his taste. This is vastly facilitated if there is
someone to teach him to see the value in the higher levels, or hear it in
music, etc.
Where Wilber gets interesting is that he argues that there are numerous
levels at which we can experience our world, and each level introduces new
data that was simply unavailable at the lower levels. The sense experiences
were there, I suppose, but as there was no ability to interpret these
experiences, their quality was unavailable to the potential observer. So
quality emerges in a patterned and layered way, which Wilber argues does not
vary between individuals and cultures, and this progressive unfolding of
quality can be facilitated by education.
I think it is a mistake to assume that understanding a metaphysics makes any
difference to our ability to progress to deeper levels of quality. Wilber
also argues, and I give him the benefit of the doubt on this, that the
subject/object divide is overcome when one progresses to the level of the
theosphere, which transcends the mental (ideas) world of the noosphere. So a
metaphysics, being a mental construct, cannot in itself transcend the
subject/object divide, though it can of course point to that possibility. I
am mainly interested in working on the cycle called myself, and so am
looking for a transformative practice, rather than a newer and finer set of
ideas. The ideas may be a step on that journey, but they don't transcend the
intellectual level, which is what all the guff about a fifth level seems to
be chasing. But a reified view of Quality doesn't help at all. It's just
words.
I hope this has answered your question.
Regards,
John B
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