dmb said to Matt and Dan:
...Personally witnessing the dog dish with your own eyes is cashing out the
belief in that dog dish. Your friend telling you that he has a dog dish would
be a truth purchased on credit. If you can't, at least in theory, go over to
his house and confirm the validity of his claim, then his credit is no good. ..
And James said that the vast majority of our beliefs are held on credit. It
would simply be impractical to limit your scientific beliefs to the data that
comes only from experiments that you personally witnessed. ..actual experience
by actual people is the cold hard cash. That's what supports the whole credit
system, he insisted. I'm not saying the existence of the dog dish becomes
second-hand knowledge as soon as you leave the room, however. That would simply
be a matter of not forgetting that you just cashed out that belief by filling
the dish with food. There's no empirical reason to believe that the dish
disappears when you leave the room. And if it seems to be where
we left it every time we care to check, then I think we have to move to a
very unreasonable level of skepticism to have any serious doubts about it's
existence. It simply isn't a problem. The dog gets fed because there is a
regularity and stability in experience such that we can fruitfully employ
concepts like object permanence. This stability and regularity is what gives
rise to the concept and it's what makes the credit system work. ...
Dan replied:
What the dog dish scenario serves to illustrate is whether or not the world
exists before we personally exist, and whether the world will continue to exist
when we pass back. Call me unreasonably skeptic... but how do we know? ..I'm
uncomfortable with this for several reasons... by shrugging off this line of
inquiry as not being a problem, you seem to fall into the camp that says the
world did exist before we personally do, that it will continue to exist after
we die, and that a tree falling in the forest makes a sound even if no one is
around. Yet there is no way to empirically verfiy any of those notions... and
the MOQ subscribes to empircism. You're buying (either with cash or credit)
into the notion that imaginary ideas are concrete... you're introducing the
concept of object permanence to accord with an imaginary dog dish. I think that
is exactly what Robert Pirsig was getting at by answering the question of
whether a tree falling in the forest with no one around makes
a noise... what tree? It may not be a problem in the practical world, but it
seems a huge problem here since the MOQ states reality begins with experience.
If imaginary dog dishes exist as conceptual objects of permanence, then reality
does not begin with experience and ideas do not come before matter. The MOQ is
a fallacy... it falls apart.
dmb replies:
It seems that you and Matt both breezed right past my main point. I think we
have to be careful to distinguish between "object permanence" as a PRACTICAL
belief and more ambitious and abstract systems of belief like subject-object
metaphysics, the metaphysics of substance or the scientific belief in a
pre-existing objective reality. I think the hypothetical unseen, unheard tree
that falls in a hypothetical forest is very different from the dog dish you
just saw and touched and filled little crunchy bits. I mean, we learn the
practical value of concepts like "hot" and we successfully use it in connection
with concepts like "stove" and "flame". As a practical matter we learn to sort
experience into inner and outer on the basis of practical consequences. To use
James's example, we quickly learn that imaginary water cannot extinguish a real
fire, that imaginary knives may or may not cut imaginary skin but dream blades
can't damage real flesh. The idea here is that the difference
between inner and outer is based on empirical reality, that the distinction
between inner and outer is based on what's known in experience. These practical
concepts operate within the empirical flux of life so that we can act and
respond.
But it is a very different matter to claim that practical distinctions between
inner and outer represent the structure of the universe, to claim that all of
reality is either subjective or objective. Cartesian dualism and scientific
objectivity are much more elaborate, sophisticated and abstract than the
relatively simple, practical beliefs from which they are developed. Think of
the difference between the claim that says "I have nothing in my hand" to the
cyrpto-theological, quasi-philosophical claim that says it's impossible for
something to come from "nothing". The former can be checked and verified very
simply while the latter is just one of those meaningless hypothetical questions
based on an imaginary pure nothingness that is supposedly the opposite of all
that is. It's based on the kind of nothingness that must have "existed" before
creation. This is the kind of nonsense that radical empiricist find so
embarrassing about viciously abstract philosophies. As it's worst,
these philosophies derealize the only reality we CAN know in favor of some
ideal abstraction that could never be known by anyone. That's why Pirsig keeps
hammering on the point that Quality is not a metaphysical abstraction but
rather a primary empirical reality. Like I said, the primary empirical reality
is what the mystic pays attention to (rather than his ideas ABOUT empirical
reality) and that's why he gets off the stove faster.
And I don't exactly agree that the "mystic will say Don's dog dish is
imaginary". Since the dish can be easily observed and used daily as a dish, I
think it's fair to say that one's idea of the dish is in agreement with
empirical reality. The mystic might ask what dog dish you're talking about if
you ask him about a hypothetical dog who burps even though nobody is around to
hear it, but otherwise he chops wood, carries water, repairs his cycle (or his
culture) and he may even feed his pet. I don't think the MOQ is supposed to
lead us to the conclusion that ordinary life is an illusion so much as the
abstract metaphysical assumptions we tend to attach to everything. Some people
take the MOQ's rejection of the Cartesian, subjective self to mean that there
is no self at all. But that is just another way to denigrate and de-realize the
only reality we can ever have or know. Everything does have to begin with your
own experience and if you are capable of doubting your own existenc
e then you must in fact exist. That's the part of Descartes that Pirsig
doesn't disagree with or try to correct. The MOQ paints a very different
picture of the self and it's a process rather than a thing or an entity but I
think it's misleading to say the MOQ's self is an illusion. We'd want to
carefully rethink the self as part of understanding his rejection of SOM but I
think a large part of the complaint is about the denigration of value and
morals as merely subjective, as opposed to objectively real. And a large part
of the solution is to put "man" back in the center of things and re-establish
the validity and importance of those so-called subjective values, of "whatever
you like" and re-assert our own "affective domain" as a central part of nature.
I mean, I think the MOQ is, among other things, a form of humanism, backed up
by a very strong sort of empiricism. It definitely rejects certain conceptions
of the self but the self is still quite central to the whole recons
truction project. He says Lila's battle is everybody's battle and his
biography is practically inseparable from his philosophy. Given all that, it
seems very misleading to be talking about illusory selves or imaginary dog
dishes.
I don't mean to put all that in your lap, Dan. I'm thinking of Marsha's
fondness for that sort of talk and just making some general points about what
is and is not empirically real.
Thanks.
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