I have a couple of questions (per usual)...
1) Quality is equated with "pure", immediate experience many times.
This, among other things it is said to be the essence of.
Do you agree that the formula:
Quality = Experience
is correct? If so, then it follows that Reality is composed of
undefinable yet undeniable Quality experience.
a) Or should that be undeniable experience OF Quality?
I don't think so, not if the equation of Quality with Experience
is direct and literal. This I think is where we go beyond a
primary subject/object distinction, which would hold that an "I" "had"
an experience "of" Quality. Rather, we say per the MOQ that the Quality WAS
the experience. By saying that Q = E, I do not, however think we can
deny the possibility (or preference) of Q equaling other things as
well. Here I see the One being manifest as the Many, or Being
(Quality) and Becoming (Experience), "being", in "reality" the
same thing.
b) Where Q = Quality, E = Experience, D = Dynamic & s = static,
If Q = E, and Q = DQ & sq, then does E = DE & se?
It makes sense to me. Pirsig's example of the good, new song on
the radio is clearly a Dynamic Experience. A -good- Dynamic
experience, for it could also be poor. "static quality is what
you normally expect", we are told. Repetitive, stale experience.
When I think about it, our entire lives are lived in ways that
may be understood as stable patterns of value. These patterns,
while comfortable and necessary for the continuation of life,
grow dull, old, stale. That is, the Experience ( = Quality
Event) has become of lower value. But still it, like all, _is_
Quality.
2) In SODV, Pirsig states very clearly, as done in ZMM, that the
"world is composed of three things - Quality, mind and matter."
Elsewhere, he distinctly makes the point that empiricists have
never solved the problem of values (ethics), because their
metaphysics has been of the subject/object type. "They keep trying
to assign values to subjects or objects. It can't be done.
VALUES ARE A SEPARATE CATEGORY ALL THEIR OWN."
In Lila, he just as succintly tells us that subjects and objects
are best understood as PATTERNS OF I,B,S&I VALUE."
So we have this:
a: M(atter) is not equal to V(alue)
M(ind) is not equal to V(alue)
Quality is not equal to Mind or Matter
b: M(atter) is equal to I & B (PO) V's
M(ind) is equal to S & I (PO) V's
Quality is equal to Mind and Matter (with evolved split)
I ask, how do we reconcile "a" to "b"?
One suggestion is this: what if Quality is not equal to Value?
How does all this reconcile with experience? Value (social and
intellectual patterns - Mind/Subject) becomes aware of Value
(inorganic and biological patterns - Matter/Object) at the
Quality Event. Could we say that any "Value" (i.e. - pattern),
"experiences" Quality through interaction with one or more
different Values?
3) Does Quality = Dynamic Quality ("really") and leave static
patterns of value as something, even though springing from,
_different_, _metaphysically distinct/discrete_ from Quality
itself?
If so, doesn't this then split Quality itself? Isn't this bad?
In response to those offering up spov's as "Illusion", "Maya",
"Samsara", etc... how do you reconcile this with the example of
Phaedrus leaving India when his teacher explained _again_ that
the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima fall under this
category?
Gotta Fly.
Rich
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