Quality

Are "Right" and "Wrong" absolute in any sense? I believe the idea of Quality as introduced in Robert Persig's first book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is indeed a step in the right direction towards a method of defining moral right and wrong. Of course, this is anathema to the tenets of Moral Relativism which say there is no way to decide that anything is good or bad, right or wrong, or of high or low Quality. According to this amoral view of the world, no such determinations are possible and, at best, all that keeps us acting acceptably are conventions chosen for their expediency in allowing society to function which, some say, is directed by some mysteriously endowed evolutionary (mechanically driven) imperative.

Gödel's Theorems are very important to keep in mind as we try to achieve a valid approach in deciding truth, which is, after all, what we are attempting in seeking the ability to tell right from wrong, good from bad. The Gödelian concept of not being able to prove the truth of certain things that we know to be true is central to understanding that even though we can never totally define truth, that truth does indeed exist.

I started thinking about this after reading 'Zen and the Art' back in the 1970s, and now, after all these years, it is clearer than ever that there is no exact way to define Quality . Of course, this very problem is what drove Phaedrus crazy, because the task is impossible! Read "Zen and the Art" and find out who Phaedrus is, and I promise that you will go on a journey you will not forget. In brief, he went crazy trying to figure out what Quality is in a way that he could relate to others. After reading of his journey, and by applying our knowledge of Gödel, we can see why he could not do so. To define, in words, a concept that transcends words themselves is the problem. Words, being a closed system of self referential symbols, are inadequate and can, at best, be used to imply or hint at the meaning of a concept that contains the set of all words.

Quality is an intrinsic property of a thing, an act, a belief, an entity, that allows it to be judged as to right or wrong, good or bad, worthy or worthless. Quality depends on context and circumstances, yet, paradoxically, is also independent of them. Quality is discernable by all who remain open to its existence, in an intuitive way. The Quality of a given event is absolute; event being used here to convey a thing, an act, a belief, etc.

Some standard(s) must exist in order to understand the meaning of events in relation to one another in a universe that obviously has an order to it which makes it work in some way. After all, we are here as thinking beings, aware and conscious of a universe that exists in some ordered fashion. SOMETHING has worked to produce the order. In order for anything to work.. to produce order.. there must be a standard, some means of differentiating what works from what does not, to build the hierarchy of nature. That standard is Quality.

Whether or not an event is of high Quality or low Quality is dependent upon the circumstances, but in a given circumstance, this ineffable a priori standard which is necessary to provide the order upon which the universe is built is absolute. Is it possible to perceive this ordering function in some way? If it were, there might be a basis upon which we could base judgements of right and wrong, or good and evil.

Quality allows us to get one level below right and wrong and instead of having to decide whether an event is right or wrong, or good or bad, on the basis of those dichotomies, we can now judge the single entity of the Quality of the event and then the event's rightness or wrongness is apparent. We have the necessary absolute (or perhaps the word singularity is better) by which we can make decisions with greater certainty.

By using Quality as our absolute, we can also explain the apparent paradoxes that grow out of the fact that different people can hold contradictory opinions on the same event and both be valid in their opinions. Since Quality is dependent upon the sum total of the circumstances and contexts of an event, many 'events', being perceived in different circumstances or contexts due to the mindset and beliefs of the people involved are open to have differing degrees of Quality to different people. Each event must be examined separately for its own Quality in the hierarchy of all events. Each instance of decision between right and wrong must be the result of an examination of the event for its Quality.

This is where words begin to fail. It starts to look as if Quality is a matter of opinion after all. But such is not the case. Quality is NOT arbitrary. The act of judging Quality itself must be done in a high Quality manner! Language always boils down to a self referential quagmire. When we attempt to explain the infinite; the absolute, it spins out in logical eddies of undefined chaos. But, we must try to indicate the way towards understanding through subliminal means using language (symbolic logic), since it is all we have. To judge Quality in a high Quality manner, we must remain aware of the fact that Quality exists, and to recognize that there is an a priori order to the universe that has produced that which followed that order, be it God's will, The Force, Nature, or any other label you wish to apply to that order.

All of this grows out of the "Existential Dilemma." It is a widespread belief in these existential times that right and wrong are relative values and that no one opinion or value judgement is better than any other one. Yet, it nags at even the most ardent supporters of the non existence of absolutes that right and wrong do seem to exist, at least when considering certain extreme cases. There is also the need on their part to accommodate the inconvenient contradiction built into their argument; that is, that they must base their own presumed correctness on something absolute. When asked to explain how anything can be RIGHT, including them, if there are no absolutes on which to base a judgement, they wind up tripping off into logical la la land in their attempt to explain how this is so. But, fortunately, existentialism does not require that we go down the road paved by Friedrich Nietzsche and deny absolutes. It does require it to be understood that it is impossible to objectively prove that an absolute exists, for doing so requires translating the proof to others, that is, transferring the proof between minds, using some form of symbolic logic, which, by its very essence, is self referential and Gödelian in nature!

The first existentialist, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, denied that there was a provable, external objective standard; an absolute. Up until his time, formal philosophy essentially accepted that absolute moral and physical standards did exist. But also, and very importantly, he did not accept the nihilistic notions that modern Nietzschen existentialism has reached.... that God is dead, that each human is completely free to choose his own standards and must also take complete responsibility for those choices, that we are alone in a sea of fluid meaninglessness. This angst is responsible for much of what we see as so wrong, so out of balance in the modern world. Kierkegaard essentially said that each individual must find his or her own truth... "a truth that is true for me ... the idea for which I can live or die." Without going into detail on Kierkegaard's thinking, the bottom line is that he, the father of existentialism, thought that the best way out of the "Existential Dilemma" is a 'leap of faith' to a Christian belief system which, if religiously followed and lived by would provide the way out of the despair of a life without standards. Kierkegaard was actually talking about Quality from his cultural perspective. Quality comes from, or perhaps even is, God. Those who pray for grace, or, in other words, attempt to proceed in the highest Quality way through believing that such a way exists, will be better situated to achieve high Quality. Believing that a high Quality approach exists, and asking to achieve it, is the philosophical equivalent of praying for grace, and requires faith. We do not do something just because we can, if we strive to achieve a state of high Quality.

What drove Phaedrus crazy was trying to rationalize Quality; rationalize here meaning to use words and logic to produce a fixed and communicable concept of Quality. The trouble is that Quality is not rational. It is a matter of philosophical faith.

Quality is context driven, but it is not the same as situational ethics. Quality is an absolute. Situational ethics are relativistic. This is only possible because Quality is not rational or rationalizable. It is a paradox in the verbal realm.

The wonder filled new science of Chaos, during just the last thirty years, has given us great insights on the true mechanisms of the universe. They are not linear, predictable, or computable. Natural processes, as opposed to computed processes that we produce based on computable mathematical models (scientific theories), are chaotic, feedback oriented iterative processes. Determining Quality is a chaotic process, a non linear dynamical iterative process, which arrives at its answer by coalescing on a strange attractor. It occurs in both natural processes and in the human brain in moral processes. In fact, these are actually one and the same. Morality is a natural process, and visa versa. Belief that Quality exists and application of that belief to a particular situation forms the iterative process. Again... words cannot describe the process. It is not rational. It is not linear. It is not computable. This is the source of our free will and we can choose right from wrong based on Quality.

It is understandable that this sounds very confusing, but, the crisis of values that started in the 20th century is quite real, and there are many people attempting to explain and understand what is happening and what the moral dynamics of modern society are in an ever more complicated high tech information age. Only by having an absolute upon which we can rely to decide right from wrong in so many ethical issues can we hope to preserve order in a natural way and find truth. Not to do so will ultimately lead to chaos in our society and in the world.

Where order and truth are abandoned, chaos and lies flourish and we dissolve into total anarchy. Quality is not merely an intellectual expedient towards order. It is important to understand this! It is a REAL entity. There IS an absolute... and that absolute is Quality. It exists with or without us. We need not be there to hear the tree of Quality fall in the forest of good and evil... it sings its song of order and meaning quite independent of us.

- WHS