[MD] subject / object logic

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [Platt]
> As pointed out several times, the "mystic viewpoint" of self is not 
> mentioned in Lila.
> 
> [Arlo]
> "The language we've inherited confuses this. We say "my" body and 
> "your" body and "his" body and "her" body, but it isn't that way. 
> That's like a FORTRAN program saying, "this is my computer." "1 his 
> body on the left," and "This body on the right." That's the way to 
> say it. This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who 
> sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass 
> judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. 
> This self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible 
> fiction that collapses the moment one examines it. This Cartesian 
> "Me" is a software reality, not a hardware reality. This body on the 
> left and this body on the right are running variations of the same 
> program, the same "Me," which doesn't belong to either of them. The 
> "Me's" are simply a program format." (LILA)

Note: "This Caresian "Me" is a software REALITY . . ." Not an "illusion" as
some have claimed.  

> "The value is between the stove and the oaths.  Between the subject 
> and the object lies the value. This value is more immediate, more 
> directly sensed than any "self" or any "object" to which it might be 
> later assigned. Whether the stove is the cause of the low quality or 
> whether possibly something else is the cause is not yet absolutely 
> certain. But that the quality is low is absolutely certain. It is the 
> primary empirical reality from which such things as stoves and heat 
> and oaths and self are later intellectually constructed." (LILA)

Note: This does not deny the reality of "self." It simply says value comes first.
Thoughts are real, or what Pirsig has written here is an illusion. 

> "Everyone seemed to be guided by an "objective," "scientific" view of 
> life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved 
> material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the 
> other way around." (LILA)

And components of brains are as real as brains themselves. Else Pirisg in writing
a metaphysics is hallucinating.



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