[MD] Dog Dishes and Direct Experience

[Matt Kundert]

Okay, Ron, now I find it funny...

Dan said:
I get the impression like Matt that we're after bigger fish by asking 
the kind of questions being asked. I'm not so much concerned about 
practical matters or scientific objectivity or subject/object 
metaphysics... I believe we are all pretty familiar with that.

Matt:
I don't know about "bigger fish," because I agree with Dave that 
going back to the baby learning how to respond to "objects" (which 
are specifically physical objects _at first_).  Apparently Dave and I 
disagree somewhere along the path leading out from there, but I'm 
not entirely sure where because a lot of positions in regards to 
understanding how the MoQ explains things are tied into it.  I haven't 
wanted to exactly tie myself down to any particular interpretation 
(partly because I haven't the facility with Pirsig's texts anymore), but 
I have wanted to talk about them.  (Dave's manner, of course, gets 
in the way of that because he "crushes" as opposed to "discusses.")

However, when you say "I'm not so much concerned about practical 
matters or scientific objectivity or subject/object metaphysics," I 
grow concerned because the only way to properly discuss the 
questions _I have in mind_ are to understand how we need to keep 
_all of those things_ in the air.  You say "all pretty familiar," but I 
can't believe your tenure at the Discussion Group doesn't make you 
at least a little wary of the idea that all members of this forum 
understand the same thing about those things and about how to 
understand Pirsig's understanding of those things.  For example, 
that's why I keep talking about Descartes.  You want to talk 
philosophically about the dog dish: well, I think we need to know 
how to avoid Cartesian SOM when talking philosophically.  You, after 
all, had the same suspicion of Dave and I: you thought we were 
implying a pre-existing reality that is foreclosed on by Pirsig's 
philosophy.  The only way for us to avoid the other's suspicions is to 
talk about how we think we avoid SOM.

DMB said:
You're [Matt] using "object permanence" to mean things that it 
doesn't mean. Period.

Matt:
Sure, yeah, except meaning follows use, not a dictionary.  I'm more 
flexible with the usage of words for philosophical purposes than you, 
Dave, it is true.  That has been well-established by our encounters 
over the years.

DMB said:
Are we NOT talking about the status of "objects" within in the MOQ, 
as opposed to their status within SOM?

Matt:
That's part of it, sure.  But it sounds like you are only using "object" 
to mean "physical objects" when you keep going back to babies and 
birds.  I'm not sure about how far you think your discussion extends 
in explanatory scope, but I am after that extension.  That's why I 
brought up "object" as a semantic term.

DMB said:
By contrast with notion of "object permanence" as a cognitive ability 
so very very basic that even birds can do it, you sort of mixed this in 
with "the concept of 'stuff in nature being around before and after 
we personally are', which you said you had, "implicitly defined as 
"object permanence" in the first post in this thread".

Matt:
The idea of "object permanence," if I remember correctly, got 
brought up out of a discussion of history with Dan (as I retailed 
partially in this thread).  I thought your contribution about Pirsig and 
babies was useful as a means to getting back to the larger frame of 
discussion, which includes more issues than just babies and physical 
objects (though, again, I can't be sure whether you see yourself as 
just talking about physical objects, but you do seem reticent about 
my attempts to talk about more than them).

DMB said:
I'm saying that the concept is much more limited than you claim AND 
that your claim as it's ambiguity and flexibility is undermining my 
effort to get down to the most basic and empirically grounded 
concepts about "objects". That's why I brought up the concept of 
object permanence in the first place. Your comments on the topic are 
making a big hairy mess right where I was trying to be clean and 
simple.

Matt:
Sure, _your_ "concept of object permanence" as you used it is more 
limited than the one I want to employ for broader purposes.  I'm glad 
you interjected as you did, but I also did not think I was being obscure 
or confusing in taking what you had done, agreeing with it, and 
applying it to other issues I wanted to talk about.  Your reticence 
denotes something, but I'm not sure what it is.  You either 1) are 
stuck on a single issue because you think that issue evacuates the 
area that needs to be discussed or 2) are stuck because you think the 
other discussants haven't grasped it adequately yet.  In Dan's 
case...maybe, can't tell.  In my case, I haven't been able to locate in 
your interjections what in my discussion has been squibbing your 
point or getting a later piece of the conceptual puzzle wrong.  I so 
broadly agree with you in treating "'objects' as a practical belief," as 
you put it earlier, that I don't know where you think I'm belying that 
methodological platform.

I apologize if you think your objections to me are clear and that my 
confusion about them is absurd or perverse.  But I refuse to play 
games with you--I only want to talk philosophy.

DMB said:
"Taking physical-object permanence to be a social pattern I think is 
right," you said to Dan, "as is treating New York City and dog dishes 
as being partly composed of social and/or intellectual patterns". 

No. New York City is way too complex to rightly be discussed as an 
"object". It doesn't take a scientific worldview or a metaphysics of 
substance to believe in that city on the Hudson but it's still way 
beyond what we mean by "objects" as they're understood by infants, 
dogs, cats, etc. Why is it so hard to impress upon you how simple 
and basic and old this idea is? 

Matt:
The above is what I would take to be evidence that you think of 
"object" as only a "physical object."  Because otherwise, I'm not sure 
why New York City cannot be the object in sentences like "New York 
state has a city called New York City."  New York City is terribly 
complex, I agree, but you can still get it wrong as the object of 
beliefs.  And since I think all beliefs are practical orientations, I'm 
not sure what I've violated in your view of things.  It _is_ "way 
beyond" objects as understood by babies and birds, but I'm not sure 
why, once we grasp that beginning point, we can't go on to how, 
e.g., if toddlers don't eventually grasp how to use the locution "New 
York City" to say true things about New York City (notice how "New 
York City" appears after the "about"--that means it is an object in 
the world to be negotiated), then they can be said to be 
developmentally deficient in the same way as the baby in Pirsig's 
example.  To wander around New York City successfully, one has to 
practically understand the object called "New York City."  For 
example, Crocodile Dundee's trifle with the thieves ("_this_ is a 
knoife") or with the tranny are funny versions of the common 
fish-out-of-water trope associated with country folks in cities.  
People from the country, goes the trope, do not understand how to 
practically negotiate the city.  (I use this last part after my 
toddler/sentence example to show how I am not limiting myself, in 
this sense of understanding objects, to just being able to employ the 
right sentences to say true things.  Saying sentences is a species of 
the genus of practical understanding.)

DMB said:
Soooooooooooo, this notion of object permanence is totally relevant 
to the question about the status of Don's dog dish WHEN DON 
LEAVES THE ROOM, right?

Dan said:
No! The notion of object permanence is irrelevant when no one is 
around Don's dog dish.

Matt:
I see your "No!" Dan, and raise you an "Oh, fer Christ's sake!"

This is what neither Dave nor I can wrap our heads around.  The 
"notion of object permanence" _is_ the social/intellectual pattern that 
babies learn, and the _lack_ of which would make them grow up to 
be Don, who apparently forgets common sense, and so wonders if 
his dog dish is still there when he leaves the room.  The notion 
_repeats_ common sense, and so _is exactly_ relevant as the 
philosophical account of what presupposition is in place that makes 
us _not worry_ about Don's dog dish when it is unobserved.  After 
all, why would it be relevant if one _was_ around the dish?  One 
would presumably be sensing it, and so not need in place the 
common-sense-pattern that reminds one to not worry when one 
isn't sensing it.

Dan said:
It is presupposed that Don's dog dish continues to exist... just like 
trees falling in forests with no one around are presupposed. Does 
Don's dog dish vanish when no one is around? No! Does Don's dog 
dish exist when no one is around? No! All a person can say is: what 
dog dish?

Matt:
I still don't understand this move on your part, Dan.  It _is_, we all 
agree, presupposed--as part of the social/intellectual pattern that 
babies learn--that the dog dish is still in the kitchen.  So when Don 
worries about it, what is the answer "what dog dish?" supposed to 
accomplish?  

It doesn't sound like you're simply reminding him of the 
presuppositional status of our beliefs about reality.  It sounds like 
your saying something metaphysical that neither I nor Dave can find 
a use for, and I would want to add Pirsig, too.  It sounds like you're 
saying that the proper response, at all times, when a person 
wonders about something that is beyond their first-personal 
observation, the correct answer should be, "mu--that's a bad 
question."  When one isn't observing an object, the object--like the 
computer analogy in ZMM--cannot be said to exist or not-exist.  But 
the world wouldn't be able to function if that was the case.  That 
means your question is _philosophical_ as opposed to 
_commonsensical_.  However, what is this philosophical purpose?  I 
read it earlier as the purpose of reminding us about the 
presuppositional status of our beliefs about reality.  But, at that time, 
it seemed like you pushed back against reading you as only doing 
that.  What else are you doing?  Are you saying that, philosophically, 
nothing can be said to exist or not exist outside our immediate 
observation?  "What reality?"

Dan said:
The MOQ states that reality is value-centered, and value begins with 
experience.

Matt:
Yes: this, right here, displays the ambiguity about whether you mean 
Quality-experience or first-person-experience.  You need to say more 
about this in relationship to my first post in this thread.

Matt