[MD] Dog Dishes and Direct Experience

[Matt Kundert]

Best that I can tell, Dan and I have been discussing at cross-purposes, 
for the last month and a half, the relative merits of saying that New 
York City, dog dishes, and unicorns exist apart from our experience of 
them.  One good reason why the dial of the compass can swing so 
quickly from Yes to No in formulating piecemeal answers is because 
the ambiguity we necessarily encounter in the word "experience"--did 
I mean apart from _experience_, sans phrase? or apart from one's 
first-personal direct experience?  On the former, the answer seems 
from a Pirsigian standpoint clearly a No, since Experience is 
Everything: nothing exists apart from experience.

However, what this exactly means for the Pirsigian might need more 
careful explication, as the latter, second question seems more 
complicated than one might initially think.  If "Quality is experience" 
and "Quality is the primary empirical reality" and "Quality is direct 
experience," then there's an opening for one to say: nothing exists 
apart from _my_ direct experience of it.  For those three slogans 
serve to blur the distinction between experience-as-reality and 
experience-as-my-reality.  Experience-as-reality conceives of 
experience as a field or manifold in which every individual thing 
exists.  Experience, in this sense, is like the Community Swimming 
Pool where humans, dogs, and rocks all swim around (as various 
kinds of static patterns).  When you assimilate "Quality is direct 
experience" to "Quality is experience," however, it can change your 
perception of the pool: now it's more like _your_ pool, and all the 
things in the pool have secondary existence in it, relative to you.  Is 
this what Pirsig meant by his direct/indirect distinction?

One thing is for sure, though, and that is that a Pirsigian needs to be 
able to describe, using the vocabulary of the MoQ, all of the 
phenomena in existence, much of which often comes in differently 
packaged forms.  For example, the junk called "common sense."  
Dan and my original discussion popped off from a tangle we had 
about how to describe history.  Initially, it appeared that we agreed 
quite handily about what has since, in our conversation, come under 
the label "object permanence."

Matt said (from Oct. 26):
I think Pirsig in the end would argue that while it is silly to think that 
gravity existed before Newton made it up--because intellectual 
patterns are incumbent upon people making them up--on the other 
hand it is internal to the correct functioning of that intellectual 
pattern that it be true for all previous time, in the past.  Not all 
intellectual patterns have this flavor, but a lot of the one's out of the 
natural sciences do.  (Principally, I think, because a lot of the stuff in 
"nature" was around before we personally were.)

Dan said (from Oct. 27):
Now, I see that [i.e., the parenthetical] as a problematic statement.  
While I think it is a high value idea that lots of stuff in nature was 
around before we personally showed up how do we know that with 
any certainty? Isn't this idea a culmination of social and intellectual 
patterns informing us as to the nature of the world we inhabit?

Matt:
I then said, "Yes, the idea is a 'culmination of social and intellectual 
patterns.'"  The stumble was that Dan didn't read enough scare into 
the scare-quotes I had around "nature," or that I perhaps should've 
had the scare-quotes around the entirety of "stuff in nature" to be 
clearer.

The point, though, is that there is agreement: it is a high intellectual 
pattern that lots of stuff in nature was around before we personally 
showed up.  This, I think, is what we might call "object 
permanence."  For the flipside of it is that lots of stuff in nature will 
be around after we personally leave.  But while Dan seems to 
endorse the idea here, he suggests a line of thought about history 
that eventually leads to dog dishes.

Matt said (from Oct. 26):
So we should make a distinction between _my_ personal history 
(born in Wisconsin, 1980, etc., etc.) and the histories of _groups_ of 
persons that extend beyond the range of a single person's lifespan 
(like the US, born in Pennsylvania, 1776, etc., etc.).

Dan said (from Oct. 27):
I think that the MOQ views those histories as the same. What we as 
living beings have inherited is the culture in which we are born and 
which informs us as to the nature of the world.

Matt:
At the time I said that I couldn't tell the difference between what I 
had said and what Dan said.  But I'm coming to think that Dan might 
be pressing his finger on the ambiguity I pointed out as preface to 
this rehearsal from the archives.  For if the first-personal point of 
view is the primary empirical reality, then it makes sense to push 
back against attempts to differentiate them.

For in the midst of my attempt to convince Dan that I was not hiding 
a Realist-SOMist notion of "reality" into my notion of "history of 
groups" (or as I also called it "longitudinal evolutionary history"), I 
said "I think that we believe, as a high-valued intellectual pattern, 
that 'there exists a world apart from us' is true." (Nov. 3)  One will 
notice "as a high-valued intellectual pattern" modifying the claim, 
which simply repeats common sense, that "there exists a world 
apart from us."  This was my attempt to use the MoQ-vocabulary to 
translate other phenomena.  Dan took issue with it, with this 
rhetorical question: "How does reality exist apart from experience?"  
Notice its modulation from what I said.  In Pirsigian terms, the 
answer should be "it doesn't."  But what if you were out with friends, 
non-philosophers who don't care to talk philosophy, and one of them, 
drunk, says, "does the toilet exist apart from my pissing in it?"  This 
would be a version of the abstract question Dan asked.  One could 
lead into an abstract philosophical conversation, much like James did 
with the squirrels.  However, one could _also not_.  This would be, 
then, trying to provide a construal of the question such that the 
philosophical problem does not appear.  It would mean simply giving 
back common sense: "Of course it does.  How else would everyone 
behind you be able to piss in it once you're gone?"  _Also however_: 
a Pirsigian, even passing on the moment for philosophical reflection, 
must be able to construe the common sense in Pirsigian terms.

To Dan's rhetorical question, "How does reality exist apart from 
experience?" I originally responded

Matt said (from Nov. 6):
Same way that this is true: "The way I read it, since the MOQ states 
reality begins with Dynamic Quality experience, it is the idea that 
reality exists that comes before the existence of reality."

You said that in the earlier part of your post to explain how "reality 
existed before we personally did" within the frame of the MoQ.  So if 
one is moved to say a variation of the statement "well, Don, you 
know reality does exist apart from our direct experience of it," the 
explanation of this statement is not a metaphysical variant of SOM, 
but rather that Don, for some reason, was suggesting that his dog's 
food dish didn't exist when he wasn't in the room with it (and then 
all the attendant worries about whether his dog was starving to 
death).

How does reality exist apart from experience?  Well, not in any 
metaphysical way, but only in the high-value assumption way we use 
to deal with retail items like dog dishes, baby cribs, and downtown 
supermarkets.  Our dogs are getting fed when we leave the room, 
our babies are still resting albeit fitfully when we aren't there, and 
it's generally safe to plan your visit downtown around the assumption 
that the Safeway is still there.

Matt:
So that's where Don and his dog's food dish came from.  My "not in 
any metaphysical way" was meant to say, "No, I'm not denying the 
Pirsigian platitude that 'Quality is experience.'"  I also modulated to 
"our direction experience of it" to emphasize just how I was 
construing "how reality exists apart from experience."  Here is how 
Dan responded to Don and his dog

Dan said (Nov. 6):
How does Don know if his dog's food dish exists when he's apart 
from experiencing it? It seems a bit like the zen koan that asks of a 
tree falls in the forest with no one around does it make a sound? I 
think RMP answers that along the lines of: what food dish? But what 
exactly does that mean?

It seems to indicate that imaginary trees and dog dishes exist only in 
the mind. We learn to assume the dog dish exists even when there is 
no empirical evidence of its existence. In the same way we assume 
there is a history to the world that existed before we personally 
appeared and will continue to exist after we pass away even though 
there is no way to empirically verify this notion.

Whether or not Don's dog dish exists apart from the empirical 
evidence of its existence is a question rooted in the conviction that 
there is a real world out there. Take away that conviction and all 
that is left is the imagination.

Matt:
What I want to suggest is that, currently, there is no difference 
between Dan's response to Don and mine.  Rather than responding 
to Don directly, Dan took the opportunity to gloss philosophical about 
just what kind of existence the dog dish has.  The differences 
between Dan and I only appear when one looks more closely at what 
counts as "empirical evidence of its existence" and how one grades 
highness and lowness of assurance of these Quality-patterned things 
existing outside one's current first-personal direct contact with them.  
The grading is what the full thought-experiment is for

Matt said (Nov. 7):
Say Don's in the living room fretting about his dog not getting enough 
food because he isn't hovering around the food dish in the kitchen.  
Without that direct experience of the food dish, Don worries the dish 
won't be there for Fido.  Don's buddy Chris gets tired of the moaning 
over Fido's fate and goes into the kitchen.  Chris then yells out from 
the kitchen, "Fido's dish is still here!"  Should Don be less fretful?  
Why?  He, after all, is _not_ directly experiencing the food dish: Chris 
is.  Don is only directly experiencing the noise coming out of the 
kitchen that comes in the form of a sentence expressing information.

Matt:
In facing down the thought-experiment, one's answer to why Don 
should be less fretful should take the aspect of translating common 
sense into the MoQ's vocabulary of static patterns.  For what the 
thought-experiment makes the Pirsigian confront is just how one 
should grade empirical evidence of reality _given_ an interpretation 
of the direct/indirect experience.  For in addition to the ambiguities 
created in the three slogans I began with, it adds the ambiguity of 
what is meant by "empirical," of what counts and what not.

I think the thought-experiment is well-suited to this task because of 
the route mine and Dan's conversation.  How does one translate the 
existence of New York City, unobserved dog dishes, and unicorns?  
These are aren't silly questions, but necessary for proving the power 
of the MoQ in its boasts to be able to explain reality.  Additionally, 
how does one confer relative assurance to the status of existence of 
these objects given MoQ conceptual resources?  Dan's surprising 
answer that there is more assurance of New York City existing than 
the fork in his own kitchen suggests that a Pirsigian should answer 
that question, too.

Matt