Hey Dan, Matt said: You've been taking "Don's dog dish" as an made-up, fictional account--is that right? And _that's_ why "what dish" makes sense?
Dan said: Isn't that what imaginary points to? That is what a hypothesis contrary to fact means... there isn't sufficient evidence to back up the claim that Don's dog dish exists or doesn't exist when Don walks out of the room. Matt: I'm afraid that doesn't clear up my hypothesis about why I'm still unclear what your position is, such that you are _not_ both acting like a Cartesian (by asking their questions) and denying that you are Cartesian. It had suddenly occurred to me, because of the lilt of some of your comments to me and to Dave, that you were basing the usage of "imaginary" on the fact that I "made up" the example, as in: I have no friends by these names, so it is an imaginary example. This sense of "imaginary" is over and against the case of me reporting to you an actual conversation that has happened to real people. Your response, however, doesn't lead me in any particular direction on whether or not my hypothesis is true. I still don't know whether you think it is important or not that some cases are anecdotal and some made up whole cloth; some are reportings of experience, some are thought-experiments. That's what I was trying to suss out last time. Because, when you assert that "there isn't sufficient evidence to back up the claim that Don's dog dish exists or doesn't exist when Don walks out of the room," that strikes me as an absurdly high bar for sufficiency in evidence. My route through is to suppose that the evidence for New York and the evidence for dog dishes come from the same general area (first-person sincere reporting), and the fact that only two people have ever experienced Don's dog dish versus the billions that have experienced New York should not persuade Don or Chris that they should doubt the dog dish's existence more than New York. That seems almost like the reverse of the sentiment implanted in Pirsig's texts, which emphasizes direct experience over indirect testimony, meaning that even though Don's never been to New York, he has directly experienced his dog's dish, so isn't that something he shouldn't discount even though he's only one of two? Think of what you said on the analogy of how many people directly experience mystical enlightenment. Pirsig's saying we _should_ include in our account of reality experiences that only a low volume of people have experienced--and you should particularly do so if you're one of the few. Dan said: And no... you telling me that this was an actual conversation doesn't make imaginary dog dishes any more like New York City. It only tells me that you and Don and Chris have presupposed a fallacy and then discussed the viability of it... it would be like me and John and Marsha presupposing elephants can dance and then discussing whether or not they do the tango. These are low quality intellectual patterns that point to the confusion that arises when we take for granted imaginary things like trees falling in forests when no one is around. Matt: I find this bizarre. For, unlike the presupposition in dancing elephants, dog dishes _do_, in the world I comfortably and successfully negotiate, exist after I leave the room. Where's the fallacy in thinking that most spatiotemporal objects that aren't loci of motor functions will remain where you left them? Matt said: If this hasn't been the block, then I have no idea why you have more reason to think that New York is a higher quality idea than Don's dog dish. Dan said: I hope I've answered that... there is more evidence... and in a value-centered reality ideas supported by evidence are of higher quality than are presuppositions lacking evidence. Matt: I hope I've articulated why I still have no idea why you think there's more evidence for New York than dog dishes. Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
