[MD] Dog Dishes and Direct Experience

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dan,

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 said:
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.

Matt:
Dan, you replied with a nice story about a perpetual motion machine 
hidden in a mountain, and I take it as a means of explaining how the 
"concept of object permanence" is irrelevant when no one is around 
(or, at least as an explanation of why one shouldn't be worried about 
things one isn't around).  Story-Dan is perfectly confident that his 
hidden-forever machine is still running, and I take this paragraph to 
be the crux of your argument

Dan said:
People ask me... how do you know that though? If you're never 
around your machine, how do you know it is even running now? 
Maybe it stopped and you don't know... maybe no one knows. Oh no, 
I say... I know it cannot stop because of the concept of object 
permanence, you see. I know it keeps running because when I left 
my machine there in that deep dark cave secreted way back inside 
of a mountain and locked behind doors no one can open that mother 
humper was running like nobody's business. There ain't no way it 
stopped. It's the wonder of the universe... it's a perpetual motion 
machine.

Matt:
I can't figure out why you take it that the notion I've been calling the 
"concept of object permanence" entails that nothing ever breaks, or 
that nothing ever happens that might impinge on the object in 
question.  (It's not the "concept of mechanical perfection" or "the 
concept of immunity to earthquakes.")  That's the only way I can 
figure this to be a riposte to the concept being a relevant response to 
Don's dog dish.  The concept doesn't underwrite _everything_.  As I 
said much earlier in this discussion (in the other thread) it falls, like 
many other things in life, under the ceteris paribus clause: "all things 
being equal."  (Pirsig importantly uses this clause in Ch. 13 of Lila to 
define DQ's moral relationship to static patterns--so remember, any 
pushing we do on the conceptual abilities of the ceteris paribus 
clause has very important implications for Pirsig's philosophy.)

- So first: the concept doesn't refer to the permanent functioning of 
machines.  (Why would it?)
- But two: it would refer to the perpetual motion machine still being 
in the cave, but only on the condition that nothing happened to it that 
would make that not the case (like an earthquake, or somebody 
finding it, or it sprouting legs and a drillbit and attaching its power 
production to those units).  And this because it is the _right kind of 
object_ (first and foremost: a nonbiological, inorganic pattern).
- So three: this is what makes the concept of object permanence 
relevant to Don.  There is no _commonsensical_ cause of Don's 
sudden anxiety over the food dish.  He didn't hear glass breaking in 
the kitchen (as I once put it earlier), or plastic scraping against the 
floor (denoting, possibly, that Fido is nosing the empty dish around), 
or gun fire (denoting who knows what).  "All other things being 
equal," says Chris to Don, "Fido's dog food dish should still be there 
because objects like dog dishes don't just get up and leave."  The 
word "because" denotes a reason being offered and the phrase 
"objects like dog dishes don't just get up and leave" denotes the 
concept of object permanence.

There are further stages of the thought-experiment that yield 
philosophical accounting (the next being to wonder what happens if 
Don doesn't believe Chris).  However, this is the first one, which we 
haven't been able to see eye to eye on yet.  What I can't tell yet, Dan, 
is precisely how you are objecting to the relevance of the concept of 
object permanence.  Yes, perhaps the formulation of "the concept of 
object permanence" is an obscurantist drag on the conversation, 
causing a lot of confusion (and maybe, too, because I refuse to limit 
myself to just how it is used in developmental psychology as Dave 
thinks we should).  But there's no reason we can't regiment the 
senses of words and concepts in order to understand what we 
precisely think about isolated issues.  What I'm partly confused about 
is whether or not we are even talking about the same issue.

I don't need you to _agree_ that the "concept of object permanence" 
is relevant to Don's dog dish.  But to responsibly say "I understand 
you," I do need to understand the context and purport of disagreeing, 
what makes sense of disagreeing with what is otherwise an obvious 
explanation.  This is the same procedure one makes in figuring out 
the philosophical purport of a Zen koan: what is the point, here, in 
flouting common sense?  How should my understanding be 
expanded?  I'll repeat the frame I put on this question from the last 
time:

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 said:
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?"

Matt