[MD] FW: Realism and anti-realism

[david buchanan]

From: dmbuchanan at hotmail.com
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: RE: [MD] Realism and anti-realism
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 12:45:03 -0700









dmb said to Dan:
..I was trying to explain the DIFFERENCE between common sense objects and metaphysical objectivity - and that difference centers around the fact that the hypothetical tree is part of nobody's experience while Matt's friend was dealing with his own concrete and particular experience. The question about the hypothetical tree presupposes metaphysical objectivity while the question about that dude's dog dish only supposes that his dog-feeding experience wasn't a dream or hallucination.


Dan replied:
In order to come to this conclusion you are presupposing Don's experience tells him the dog dish exists even when he isn't around the same way we presuppose trees falling in forest exist when no one is around. What is the difference?   That's been the whole thrust of our discussion, so far as I can tell. Calling one hypothetical and the other concrete and particular only serves to confuse the issue and bypasses the question under consideration.



dmb says:
Maybe I've lost track of the issue and the question. If I understand your position, you're saying that the dog dish is just as hypothetical as the tree that falls in the forest when nobody is around to hear it. It seems to me that what we want to be talking about is the status of objects in the MOQ. It also seems that one could posit a hypothetical dog dish or one could be asking about a dog dish that is not hypothetical.

Or are you saying that ALL objects are equally hypothetical? Are you saying that there is no such thing as an object derived from concrete and particular experience? Are you saying there is no difference between an imaginary tree in no particular forest that is part of nobody's experience and, for example, the coffee mug you were drinking from 10 seconds but is no longer in view? 

See, I'm talking about concrete particulars AS OPPOSED to abstract hypotheticals. The difference is that one is connected to empirical reality and the other one is not. Since the MOQ is a vert strong form of empiricism and its central term refers to the primary empirical reality, I think this is one of the more important points to make in a discussion about the status of objects. 

Remember how I was trying to distinguish between the practical idea of "object permanence" and the metaphysical idea of objectivity? I was thinking of that passage from chapter 9 of Lila, just past the first use of the hot stove example:

“If the baby ignores this force of Dynamic Quality it can be speculated that he will become mentally retarded, but if he is normally attentive to Dynamic Quality he will soon begin to notice differences and then correlations between the differences and then repetitive patterns of the correlations. But it is not until the baby is several months old that he will begin to really understand enough about that enormously complex correlation of sensations and boundaries and desires called an object to be able to reach for one. This object will not be a primary experience. It will be a complex pattern of static values derived from primary experience. Once the baby has made a complex pattern of values called an object and found this pattern to work well he quickly develops a skill and speed at jumping through the chain of deductions that produced it, as though it were a single jump…in a very short time it becomes so swift one doesn’t even think about it….only when an “object” turns out to be an illusion is one forced to become aware of the deductive process” …In this way static patterns of value become the universe of distinguishable things. Elementary static distinctions between such entities as “before” and “after” and between “like” and “unlike” grow into enormously complex patterns of knowledge that are transmitted from generation to generation as the mythos, the culture in which we live.” Lila p.119

dmb resumes:
Here we see good description of the relation between objects and the primary empirical reality from which they are derived. The objects reached for are not primary realities but they are derived from and agree with that complex bundle of "sensations and boundaries and desires". They are derived from the "force of Dynamic Quality", from "primary experience". That's what makes the difference between a concrete particular tree and an abstract hypothetical tree. Since the two main categories in the MOQ are concepts and reality, I think this is a fairly important point. 
I think it's important for Matt and Steve to look at this very carefully too - because this is what it means for an idea to "agree with reality". This is NOT to be confused with truth as subject-object correspondence but is it a crucial aspect of the MOQ's empiricism. In fact, to help avoid the notion that our ideas are supposed to represent reality or picture reality, James talked about the agreement between concepts and reality as a marriage or as a marrying function. Truth is supposed to work in a close partnership with experience, he thought, and at the same time he went on the war path against "vicious abstractionism". Ideas that remain aloft among other abstractions are highly suspect, if not downright misleading. Ideas are not final resting places, he said, but must be brought back down to the earth of things and put to work in the stream of experience. Abstractions become "vicious", he said, when they are used to denigrate or de-realize the empirical reality from which they were derived in the first place. This is what Pirsig says about Plato; that his dialectic was vicious and low and mean, that he took Quality from the Sophists - which was reality itself - and turned it into a fixed and eternal idea. And so it's no accident that the pragmatic truth is plural and provisional rather than eternal. As an intellectual species of the Good, pragmatic truth is subservient to Quality, to the primary empirical reality.

“The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with scientific realism that these inorganic patterns are completely real, ...but it says that this reality is ultimately a deduction made in the first months of an infant's life and supported by the culture in which the infant grows up.” SODV 


Gravity. Somebody asked Pirsig about his ghost stories. Did apples obey the law of gravity before Newton's time? If memory serves, Pirsig said, "No. They just fell." I suppose that's another good way to think about the difference between abstractions and concrete particulars. The idea that apples fall is based on simple observation and there has never been a shortage of witnesses to testify but "gravity" is not like that. We only ever experience the effects of this invisible cause, effects like falling apples.

Dear old mom used to spend all afternoon baking gravity pies for us. Mmmm. It was excellent with a little scoop of chilled essence.