[MD] ego vs self

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 26 Sep 2009 at 2:49, Ham Priday wrote:

>> As to your question, "What is 'it' -- this elemental reality?", Pirsig's 
> 'Quality' is, indeed, a novel answer nicely supported by a moral principle. 
> I cannot accept it because the epistemology is wrong.  Quality is not an 
> 'essent'; it exists only for the subject (value-sensibility) in relation to 
> its object (otherness).  Eliminate that dichotomy and value perception 
> disappears, along with the "Quality" which John Carl suggests "is the 
> Appreciation of Value".

There's a passage in in a letter Pirsig wrote to Bo that bears on the 
question, "Does value perception precede the subject/object 
dichotomy?" 

" I talked to a neurologist who argued that it was physiological. She said 
that recent experiments are showing that the right side of the brain, the 
"artistic" side, filters all experience before it reaches the left "rational" 
side of the brain. this would concur with the MOQ assertion that value 
precedes concepts in human understanding. I have read elsewhere that 
the left rational side of the brain can never perceive the right brain as an 
object, but only receive messages from it. This would explain why 
everyone knows that something is better than other things but no one 
can define what this betterness is. All they get are the quality messages 
but they don't know where the quality messages are coming from. This 
is not to say that the right brain creates the quality, only that it filters it 
before passing it along to the left brain for conceptualizing." 

I don't know if neurology and espistemology are authentically related. I 
suspect they are but I haven't the background in either discipline to 
confidently connect the two. Suffice it to say I found Pirsig's observation 
interesting.

Thank you for your response to my post, Ham. As always it was clear, 
concise and considerate. I for one appreciate your challenges to MOQ 
dogma. They help keep me on my philosophical toes, as feeble as those 
toes may be.   

Warm regards,
Platt