Hey Dan, I don't understand what we're talking about, and we're moving about in circles, and I don't know why that either. Below are just a few more confessions about why it is probably better to let this conversation drop.
Matt said: What it seems like you are suggesting is that by not taking "what dog dish/tree/X?" seriously, we are thereby eliminating our ability to question specific things about dog dishes, trees, any particular X. That, by saying "what dog dish?" is usually a bad question, we are saying, "Shut your mouth and don't question reality!" Dan said: Not at all! In fact, this discussion we're engaged in is all about questioning reality. If I believed we should shut our respective mouths, I wouldn't be struggling here attempting to answer your posts. I'd just go away. I might first make some derogatory statements about how silly this is, however. Matt: Yeah, okay, but I'm saying that the question you keep pressing, "what dog dish?" _doesn't_ question reality in an interesting way for someone who already agrees with the point of the question, which is to call attention to the presuppositional nature of objects that you call the idealism of the MoQ. Further, by pressing this claim, the only thing you are doing is either calling into question the person's commitment to that idealism or suggesting an additional claim, that until a person commits themselves to idealism, they will not question specific components of their reality. In the above passage, I was trying to suss out your commitment to this latter, additional claim, a claim I find implausible. If you are not committed to this additional claim, then I wonder what I can do to assure you that I am a committed Pirsigian idealist. Matt said: I think thinking of "what dog dish?" as an emblem for the Socratic spirit is a bad idea. And partly because of how this conversation has rollicked forward. Neither Dave nor I has ever wanted to stop questioning specific presuppositions, but your question applies to _all_ presuppositions, and so is about the process of presuppositioning. Dan said: Yes. I am questioning our perception of reality. It is a common-sense notion that conceptual objects have permanency... that they're there whether we can empirically verify them or not. You and Dave seem to be defending this notion though of course I might be reading you both wrongly. Matt: I can't tell whether I would defend that notion or not--I can't tell what you hang on it as a consequence. Do you think dog dishes disappear, physically, when you physically leave a room? Maybe you do. I have, through my Dog Dish Thought-Experiment, been trying to get you to supply some of your intuitions about how the world works, but you have remained surprisingly reticent and closed-fisted. If you _do not_ think that dog dishes physically disappear when you physically disappear, then we all three agree to the same level of permanency, the only kind of common sense that I believe we have. To make common sense have a stronger sense of permanency is to attribute to it SOM-level philosophical potency. Common sense is just common sense--it is not philosophy. DMB said: I don't follow your reasoning and I wonder where you got the impression that that I'm sweeping away questions or taking answers for granted. Dan said: I got that impression on account of your insistence on that common sense reality tells us objects have a permanence and that should be the end of the inquiry. My question to Matt was: What did Robert Pirsig mean when he said the historical defense of philosophical idealism is, what tree? in You seem to be saying trees are hypothetical but dog dishes are not... that we all share a common sense notion of object permanence instilled in us since infancy and that is enough. End of inquiry. Matt: Dave was saying that common sense tells us that physical objects don't disappear when we leave rooms _because we left the room_. That is the extent of the claim I think we've both been defending. The _reason_ specified, which follows the "because," is terribly important for it specifies just when inquiry should be ended: if you hear break glass from the kitchen, and the dog starts barking, you should feel free to begin to doubt that the dog dish is still in the kitchen. (I neglected to mention that Don's dog dish is made of pure gold, and so is likely target of theft.) Inquiry should fire up again. Dave is not saying, at all, that trees and dog dishes have different statuses when it comes to their hypotheticalness. He's saying that the common sense notion of physical object permanence instilled in us since infancy is enough for Don to think he can leave the dog dish in the kitchen and the dog will still get fed, for New York to still be there even after we've left work for Connecticut, or that trees do makes noises when they fall in forests even when mammals are not present. Dan said: I don't see any difference between forming presuppositions about hypothetical trees falling in forests when no one is around and hypothetical dog dishes that exist when no one is around. The claim that Don is a friend of Matt's and that Don has a dog dish is hearsay evidence. It wouldn't hold up in a court of law. And it is certainly hypothetical that the dog dish exists when no one is around. Matt: You're creating confusion again by imprecision. I am not talking about "hypothetical dog dishes," unless by "hypothetical" you mean simply to point out that Pirsig's idealism means that all physical objects can have "hypothetical" precede their occurrence in discourse to point out their presuppositional nature. I am talking about what happens to physical objects in a person's actual life, and whether they actually physically disappear when a person physically leaves a room. The claim has _never_ been that "Don is a friend of Matt's," because that confuses the borders of where the thought-experiment ends and my life begins. It doesn't matter _at all_ whether Don is a real person in my life or not: his only utility is to get _the reader_, you or any other thinking person reading the thought-experiment, to think about what they would think if they were in Don's position. Dan said: And we're not talking about perception of everyday objects here... this is a metaphysical inquiry into how presuppositions inform our perception of everyday reality... we are (or at least I am) attempting to look behind the curtain, so to speak, to reveal a metaphysical impossibility that is taken for granted in the "real world." Matt: What you seem to be neglecting, by your commitment to only asking "what dog dish?", is that a metaphysics that works properly should be able to state within its confines and with its vocabulary how everyday reality works. That is what my attention to direct experience, in the form of Chris yelling out from the other room, was designed to elicit thought about. So, Dave and I are talking about perception of everyday objects here, and we thought you should also do so. I've been suggesting that we, all three of us, have got the metaphysical inquiry part down, pretty much (in accepting Pirsig's idealism), so lets go from there and connect it back with how we perceive reality. Dan said: What evidence do you [Dave] have to support your hypothesis that the dog dish was actually known by an actual person? The only evidence I've seen is that Matt says so. Matt: This says explicitly that you have not understood by "thought-experiment" the same thing as I understand by "thought-experiment." Because if you did, this would be a very complete misunderstanding of what the parameters of Don and Chris's existence is. Dan said: Matt introduced Don and his dog dish. Don is worried that when he leaves the room the dog dish will disappear and Fido will go hungry. I responded along the same lines as RMP by saying: what dog dish? What did Robert Pirsig mean by giving the answer "what trees" and how does it correspond to "what dog dish"? Matt: In this reconstruction of my thought-experiment, I wonder how Pirsig's question eliminates Don's worry. The only way I see is if you _get off the question_, and explain--as Dave has--how common sense physical object permanency works. Otherwise, how have you responded to Don's worry in a fashion that doesn't only exacerbate his worry (or confuse him)? Dan said: Matt insists the dog dish is really there...that he has it on Don's authority. Matt: No, I insist that there is no particular reason to think that the dog dish physically disappears when we physically leave the room. Don only exists in the parameters of my thought-experiment. At best, I have it on Chris's authority that the dog dish _didn't_ disappear (because, in a later stage of the thought-experiment, Chris is in the kitchen looking at it). Chris in the kitchen does _two things_, however: it both gives Don evidence for thinking that his dog dish is actually in the kitchen _and_ it reinforces the common sense notion physical object permanency because Don's original worry was based on _nothing more_ than a general, diffuse doubt in the notion of physical object permanency. (I'm repeating all of these snipits of the conversation that has moved on without me only to clarify what I actually think is going on in the conversation.) Dan said: Even if Don's dog dish is taken as a real object, such objects don't exist independently of experience, at least not in the framework of the MOQ. Matt: You haven't specified yet what you mean by this. Why, after all, can I not count Chris's experience of the dog dish to confirm that it is not, actually, existing independently of experience? Further, and a more interesting question for you to answer, do physical objects not have, in the MoQ, their own locus of experiencing? Isn't this what it means to be a inorganic static pattern? Do only linguistic humans experience? Dan said: What throws me a bit is Matt's query concerning the difference between knowing New York City exists without experiencing it and knowing Don's dog dish exists without experiencing it. At first I took the existence of Don's dog dish as hearsay evidence and therefore not admissible in a court of law. But I'm not sure that's correct. Still, the overwhelming weight of evidence seems in favor of the existence of New York City as a higher quality idea than does the evidence for the existence of Don's dog dish... unless I am Don. Matt: Exactly, unless you are Don. The notion of a thought-experiment is that its characters are placeholders for you, the thinker. To think through my thought-experiment properly, you need to put yourself in Don's shoes. Dan said: You have misunderstood the discussion, Ron. I didn't say that trees don't make sounds and dog dishes disappear. I asked what did Robert Pirsig mean by: what trees? I asked how to empirically verify the existence of trees or dog dishes when we don't experience them... when they are imaginary. Matt: Don't blame Ron, for apparently I have misunderstood what we are talking about, too. Also, I find another imprecision here. For I can't tell whether you believe "indirect experience" is a kind of evidence in your sense of Pirsig's epistemology. My sense is that Dave and I both think that the only way for common sense to function is that it is. (And then we must reconstruct how that works.) Because as you have it above, if I'm not experiencing my dog's dish, which is in the kitchen, I must treat it as imaginary. But the imprecision lies exactly in what is meant by "experiencing"--direct, or does it include indirect, too? 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
