[MD] subject/object: no quality?

[Ham Priday]

 Hi Platt --


> You are like Pirsig in being more of a valuist than a semioticist?
> I presume this means that you agree with Pirsig that experience
> comes prior to language and therefore concepts. However, Pirsig
> equates experience with value which I thought you deny.
> So how does your being a "valuist" agree with Pirsig?

I agree that experience comes before concepts and language.  However, I 
believe that because the core self is "value-sensibility", sensibility 
precedes awareness, which is a departure from Pirsig.  But, insofar as 
experiential reality is concerned, Pirsig and I are in agreement that it is 
reducible to Value.
Note, though, that I do not equate experiential reality with ultimate 
reality (Essence).

[Ham. previously]:
> I don't see the "division of subject/object" in this analysis [of Pinker].

[Platt]:
> Right. The analysis talks about a "cast of basic concepts," among which 
> are
> the ones mentioned.  I didn't take the author to mean the ones mentioned
> were exclusive.

[Ham]:
> I take [the analysis] to mean simply that we are all aware of change
> as a continuum of connected events and exercise some control over them.
> ....We observe reality from an infinitesimal point in space/time and 
> ascribe
> dimensionality to it. This illusory perspective is partly due to the 
> limitations
> of organic sensibility.  But I believe it has more to do with the primary
> division of sensibility from its source, which is at the root of all 
> differentiation.

[Platt]:
> Yes, exactly my point. You would include in the cast of basic concepts the
> primary division of subject from object. In fact, that is the primary
> concept.

My understanding of "basic" here is that of "commonly held" concepts --  
those that everybody perceives from experience.  The primary division that 
forms the self/other dichotomy is an ontological concept which is intuitive 
rather than gleaned from experience.  It involves more than an ability to 
distinguish one's self from objective experience, and I doubt that most 
people acknowledge or even understand this ontology.

[Platt]:
> The only reason I brought up Pinker is that many intellectuals bow
> at his feet. Neither you nor I necessarily agree with 90 percent of what
> he claims. But, I thought his notion of hard-wired basic concepts fit
> with your innate, intuitive awareness/of something division.

Commonly held concepts, such as change, movement, identity, space, and 
matter, are the brain's way of integrating sensory experience.  I don't see 
them as "hard-wired" in the Kantian 'a priori knowledge' sense.

[Platt]:
> My only problem is that logically you have to have a whole
> before you can slice it in half. It makes sense to me that the
> whole is "Quality" as explicated to my satisfaction (mostly) in the MOQ.

That's where we disagree.  What happens to Quality when you take away 
sensible awareness?
If Quality depends upon a piece of the whole to exist, it cannot be the 
whole you refer to.

Essentially yours,
Ham