[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Dan,

Dan said:
How does reality exist apart from experience?

Matt said:
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).

Dan said then:
How does Don know if his dog's food dish exists when he's apart 
from experiencing it?

Matt:
You asked a series of rhetorical questions, but I wanted to isolate 
this one because, like your earlier use of "truth" in a way I called 
Platonistic, this seems to me like a use of "know" that is 
Cartesian--the only answer you will accept is "he doesn't."  (Your 
use of "empirical evidence" after this is similarly SOMistic.)  This is 
because you've accepted the Cartesian stance of the 
first-person-subject _alone_ facing the object-world.  When 
Descartes doubted so hard that he considered seriously the idea that 
every experience he has might be a dream, he was hoping for a 
foundation to put the object-world back together again from only the 
conceptual materials provided by a solitary first-person-subject 
(which is why the problem of solipsism looms in post-Cartesian 
epistemology).  You, however, don't have this hope, and so use the 
question to say that it's all imaginary and dreamlike.  Here is what 
you went on to say

Dan said:
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:
This runs exactly parallel to your use of truth in "no one history of 
rocks is any more true than another," where it assumes that truth is 
determined by its accuracy to a reality against which the histories 
can be checked, _but_ rather than staging that Platonic project, you 
only want to use it to say that that truth is unavailable, and so "no 
one history of rocks is any more true than another."  You are here 
saying that our knowledge of this "out there" reality is unavailable, 
and so it is imaginary.  But "imaginary," as in _all_ cases of the use 
of the word, only makes sense by contrast to "real"--but what 
"reality" does it contrast to?  The worst case scenario is the 
Cartesian sense of "reality," but we were supposed to be rejecting 
that S/O contrast by accepting the MoQ, so that sense should be 
unavailable to you.

You might say "our direct experiences of rocks are real, so 
rocks-apart-from-us achieve their imaginary status in contrast to 
that."  But what, I might ask mirroring your question, does that 
exactly mean?  Is their no check on our imagining of what the world 
is like apart from our direct experience of it?

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.

If we use the sense of "know" you are using, Dan, then Don will still 
be in the same position, fretting over Fido's survival because he is 
not directly experiencing the food dish.  However, wouldn't we want 
to say that his imaginary sense of the existence of Fido's food dish is 
_enhanced_ in some way by his direct experience of Chris's words?

I think we do.  This enhancement can be articulated in many different 
ways at this point, but to deny an effect on what you called the 
imagination in this context is to deny common sense assumptions.  
And for what use?  (I'll get back to that in a moment.)

I think the best way to stage the enhancement is to first deny that the 
primary context of "to know" is the solitary first-person-subject.  I 
think that is the Cartesian context.  To suggest "knowing" something 
is to be in an _inter_personal context, to be in a web of other 
people's imaginings, if you will.  This allows the following response to 
your penultimate statement: "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."  1) "Empirical 
evidence" should be construed interpersonally, so that nobody would 
suggest that a dog dish does exist apart from the empirical evidence 
of its existence, though of course some evidence is indirect reporting 
from other first-person-subjects.  2) The "conviction" is one found in 
every community that has dealt with dog dishes in other rooms.  This 
conviction is _not_, though, the Cartesian sense of a "real world out 
there."

Dan said:
"Normal" people have learned to assume with conviction that they 
did feed Fido, that they did turn off the tea kettle, that they did lock 
the door, and they go on their way without a second thought. These 
people are the hardest to convince that a concrete reality doesn't 
exist apart from the experience of it. Of course it does. What they 
fail to discern is that the reality that exists is imaginary.

Matt:
What I'm wondering is why it matters so much that everyone think 
that "a concrete reality doesn't exist apart from the experience of it."  
Why is it so important to not fail in discerning that "the reality that 
exists is imaginary"?  One way of thinking about the importance set 
up by your train of thought is that people who don't understand that 
reality is imaginary won't second-guess themselves--they won't 
_reflect_, they will pass on Socratic self-examination and live as 
Achillean "men of action."  But did Socrates think that reality was 
imaginary in the sense that you do above?  I think only in an 
attenuated sense, and I'm not sure why one needs complicated 
metaphysical views (or paradoxical ones) to be able to get oneself 
to pause once in a while and reflect, "_Did_ I turn off the kettle?"

Matt