Hi Dan,
Matt said:
Do you think dog dishes disappear, physically, when you physically
leave a room?
Dan said:
No... I can't see any way of verifying that notion. At the same time
though, I cannot see any way of verifying the notion they exist. Like
you, I assume they do... just as I assume the world will continue to
exist long after I'm gone and that it has existed long before I
appeared.
Matt:
You have a much stronger notion of "verification" than I do. I think
we can reconstruct a notion of verification from indirect experience
that supplies a form of verification for things we aren't directly
experiencing, such that we can verify the existence of dog dishes in
other rooms in a way that we cannot do, e.g., unicorns.
Matt said:
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.
Dan said:
Really! I have been trying to be forthright and open on my thinking,
even to the point of risking ridicule.
Matt:
I think you misunderstood me: there was a touch of irony on my
use of "reticence." You have been very forthcoming in opinions and
responses, it is just that I haven't been able to understand how they
are always relevant to the line of questioning and thought I've been
trying to pursue. I haven't been able to grasp the center of gravity
to your thoughts that gives them coherence with Pirsig's. (Such
that, for example, it avoids SOM.)
Dan said:
I would say in the common sense everyday world we all use the
notion of object permanence to great advantage... so much so that
we tend to overlook it and assume objects are real and independent
of our experience. And that's fine when it comes to common sense.
But I also believe the MOQ (philosophy) states that objects are not
independent of experience and there is no way to verify if they
continue to exist or not when we are gone.
Matt:
I think Pirsig would say that "objects are not independent of
experience," but that he would not say the latter part of your claim.
If he did say something recognizably reconstructable as that claim, I
would likely part company with him at that point, as I don't see what
the worth of it is.
Matt said:
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.
Dan said:
Yes... and I have been questioning the common sense notion that
objects exist independent of experience. I've admitted I'm not
well-versed in philosophy but I assumed that's what we're up to with
this discussion.
Matt:
You've not recapitulated successfully the point of the interaction of
my two claims that you are responding "yes" to, which means you're
responding at cross-purposes. By saying that "what dog dish?" is a
method of "questioning the common sense notion that objects exist
independent of experience" you've construed common sense as SOM,
just in the way that my first sentence denies we should do. In fact,
you're formulation of what the common sense about object
permanency consists of, "independent of experience," gives you
license under Pirsigian lights to question it. But why formulate the
common sense that way? Why not as "objects exist when a person
isn't around directly experiencing it?"
Your direction in the conversation has been to assume that SOM
assumptions are at work in common sense and that, therefore, we
should question them in order to extirpate them. My direction has
been the exact opposite: it has been to assume a successful
extirpation of SOM and that, therefore, it is our next step to give
non-SOM construals of how common sense works.
Dan said:
And if we are content with common sense answers, then I agree. But
I get the sense that some people are not content to stop there... the
way I read Robert Pirsig's work it seems to me that his MOQ goes
against common sense in many ways. Don may be fine with believing
his golden dog dish will exist in his kitchen long after he is gone and
that Fido will continue to be fed (since the dish is bottomless). I
guess I get a kick out of asking whether or not our common sense
attitude about the world is correct. I suppose if everyone believes
something it must be so but still it's fun to kick some sand in the
gears every once in a while...
Matt:
I agree that Pirsig's philosophy cuts against common sense in some
specific ways. I would want to claim, however, that one of those
ways is not the way you are pressing. The sand you are kicking into
gears, as far as I can tell, is Cartesian sand, which means that
you're actually bogging us down with problems the MoQ is designed
to help us avoid. Questioning is great, but not all questions were
born equal. The trick in my confidence at thinking that your question
is badly posed is the trick of thinking I understand the moral we
should draw from the dialectical history of philosophy from Descartes
to Kant to Dewey.
Dan said:
I intended to probe what he gave as the historical answer of the
idealists and how it pertains to the MOQ. Of course we are all talking
about the perception of everyday objects but I am suggesting RMP
says we should pull back the veil of presuppositions and examine
further the nature of what we take for granted... object permanence.
Matt:
Indeed, but what you haven't done is reconstruct what those
presuppositions are in MoQ-terms, which is the step Dave was taking
in talking about Pirsig's passages about the baby and perceiving DQ.
It's also the step I was taking in talking about the epistemological
relationship of indirect experience to our common sense
understanding of life.
The trick of discourse is that to say anything with meaning you have
to assume a whole bunch of things you _cannot presently say_. To
say any particular sentence is to assume implicitly a whole raft of
assumptions (about, say, the meanings of words). To "pull back the
veil" is to say: "Hey, don't forget this sentence has assumptions!"
Then you'll want to make them explicit. However, to make an
assumption explicit is to form a sentence, and just like the other
sentence, this one has assumptions. Which means you can, yet
again, pull back the veil: "Hey, don't forget this sentence has
assumptions!" But if the pulling back of the veil _only_ has the
effect of reminding people that assumptions are at work, then the
pulling loses its efficacy after the first two or three times. Then
everybody becomes very self-conscious about working on
assumptions. But what the veil pulling _doesn't_ do is actually give
you new assumptions. So when people start working on new
assumptions and you come along and keep pulling the veil, the
response is likely to be, "Yeah, yeah: got it. We know we're working
on assumptions. But what do you think about our new ones?" And if
your response _then_ is, "Hey, don't forget that your last question
has assumptions!" then you're going to cease to be taken seriously.
(And you should be thinking now of your later response to my
explanation of how a thought-experiment works: "ah...but are you
not presupposing that I can do that?" Indeed, I am. The question
still remains: can you put yourself in Don's shoes?)
Dan said previously:
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 said:
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:
Don has no worries unless he is suffering from some sort of mental
impairment and in that case no explanation will suffice to alleviate
his concern. That is what common sense tells me.
Matt:
I'm not sure I follow how this is a response to the back-and-forth
that precedes it. This is the line of response:
1) Don is worried that when he leaves the room the dog dish will
disappear and Fido will go hungry.
2) Pirsig would say, "What dog dish?"
3) Matt wonders how Pirsig's question eliminates Don's worry.
4) Dan says that Don has no worries unless he is suffering from
some sort of mental impairment.
(4) seems like a non sequitor. It certainly isn't a direct response to
my wonderment (which is partly where I get my sense of your
"reticence"). But further, say "worry" is a sort of mental impairment,
which is the significance of (4). That's actually pretty close to
Wittgenstein's view of philosophical problems: they are neuroses
that one's need therapy for. But, why wouldn't explanations help
then?
However, maybe you misspoke, and meant that Don wouldn't have
_that specific_ worry of "if I leave the room, maybe the dog dish will
disappear!" unless he was mentally impaired, and that's what
common sense tells you. You'd probably be right then, but you'd
have also short-circuited the thought-experiment before it told you
anything interesting. The interesting part only appears when you
recognize Don's similarity to Descartes.
Dan said:
I (on the other hand) am worried that the world will disappear when
I die and all my loved ones with it. Can you explain to me how the
concept of object permanency will help me get over my worries? In
other words, are my worries unfounded? Am I suffering from some
sort of mental impairment?
Matt:
Are your worries unfounded? Probably, but this particular worry, a
kind of existential angst, is not that rare. The explanation, based on
a notion of object permanency, would go like this: "why would your
death be any different than all of the other people who have died
during your lifetime? Why should the world only rest on _your_ life?"
Will this lessen your worry? Maybe not, but then again, angst about
death, like sex, is special.
Dan said:
But is there any particular reason to think the dog dish still exists
when we leave the room? I understand we are preconditioned to
believe in the concept of object permanency but is that sufficient
reason to believe the dish will be there if and when we come back?
What if circumstances conspire to keep me from ever entering the
room again. Can I reasonably assume the dish is still there.
Matt:
Why wouldn't the "concept of object permanency," all other things
being equal, be a sufficient reason? What if the dog dish was that
little robot boy in Spielberg's movie, AI? He didn't move, and all
humanity died, for like a thousand years until the aliens found him.
The notion of object permanency is to remind you that it isn't about
what circumstances conspire to do to _you_, it's about what
circumstances conspire to do to the _dog dish_.
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 said:
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? [Dan said: "How could
it exist 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? [Dan said: "I would say
that within the framework of the MOQ we are the objects we
perceive. Their locus of experience is ours."] Isn't this what it means
to be a inorganic static pattern? [Dan said: "We are a collection of
inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual patterns of Quality
capable of responding to Dynamic Quality."] Do only linguistic
humans experience? [Dan said: "No... the whole of reality is
experience."]
Matt:
In the above, I've interpolated your broken up responses to my
individual questions, because I think by breaking them up, you got
lost in the trees and didn't see the forest of my line of reasoning.
The only answer that strikes me as Pirsigian is the last. The others
only obscure the issue I was after with my questions. They, all four,
are perfectly coherent with each other, but they say nothing against
the view I have been elaborating because not one of them specifies
the thing I predicated the questions on you needing to specify: what
does it mean to "exist independently of experience"? Your "how
could it?" avoids with a Pirsigian platitude the need to actually define
what you mean by using the phrase, such that I might also mean the
same thing by the phrase. For example, I have introduced the
distinction between direct and indirect experience to specifically
begin to deal with the problems in this area of discourse. You have
consistently abandoned the distinction in your responses. The
trouble for rapprochement between our views that I have no idea
why you've done so. I suspect it's unconscious, and you haven't
meant anything particular by it, but how can I correctly grasp what
you mean if I don't know? This is what I mean by imprecision. You
aren't saying things from a center of gravity that I can then grasp
the essential movements of in order to understand your statements.
The whole of reality is experience. Yes, Quality. "We are the
objects we perceive." Okay, a sort of panpsychistic monism, and
once "we" is also "objects," it makes a sort of sense to deny that an
inorganic pattern could be a locus of experience, for there is only
_one_ locus of experience: "we" or "reality" or "Quality" or
"experience."
I'm not sure if you were self-conscious about adding "we" to the list
of Pirsig's synonymous terms reality=experience=Quality. It strikes
me as wonderfully Hegelian (forgive me Dave for my obscurantism).
However, in this web, in this formula, why on _earth_ should we
ever ask: what dog dish?
If you _didn't_ mean to add "we" to Pirsig's list of synonyms, then
you'll have to explain to me again whether or not you think rocks are
a locus of experience. Because if they _are_ a locus of experience,
why isn't the existence of other trees in the forest enough to permit
that falling tree to make a noise? Why is it only _your_ experience,
Dan, that gives things life? Why is everything dependent on your
experience? Why can't it be dependent on mine, too?
Matt
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