[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dan,

You had a couple statements about what you took me to be saying in 
your post to Andre that I wanted to take the opportunity to comment 
upon.

Dan said:
When Matt claims there is no reason to be skeptical of Don's dog 
dish existing when Don walks out of the room, we are discussing an 
imaginary dog dish. Matt is presupposing it. It couldn't vanish as it 
doesn't exist. What dog dish?

Matt:
I don't think I was saying there's "no reason to be skeptical," just a 
reason or two not to be skeptical in a particular fashion--the 
Cartesian fashion, which is always applicable to any situation one is 
currently not directly experiencing.  We can be skeptical for all kinds 
of local, contextual reasons about the dog dish, just--I don't think--in 
the global way that cuts against what we commonsensically believe 
about spatiotemporal objects in normal situations of spatiotemporal 
existence.  What I don't see is how me _not_ being skeptical about 
the dog dish catches me up in SOM problems, which I think is what 
you'd have to argue if there is to be any philosophical force to your 
suggestion that we _should_, rather, be so skeptical.

Dan said:
Matt brought up a distinction between personal evolution and world 
evolution... he seemed to be saying that they were different in that 
the world exists before we personally do.  That (in my opinion) goes 
against the grain of the MOQ in that it means matter comes before 
ideas.
...
Well, I wasn't speculating on different kinds of experience so much 
as contesting the notion that experience begins with a pre-existing 
world.

Matt:
Just to clarify: do you _still_ think that I'm saying something that cuts 
against the grain of the MoQ?

To clarify myself, I think I would, too, contest "the notion that 
experience begins with a pre-existing world" at the abstract 
philosophical level of metaphysics.  It's better to say that a 
pre-existing world begins with experience, such that one's experience 
of the world is what generates the idea that it was there before you 
were born.

Is this still the pernicious idea that "the world exists before we 
personally do"?  If it is, I'm at a loss about how to articulate a 
metaphysics that doesn't drop into SOMism every time it wants to 
state something that helps negotiate one's personal world.  Do we 
not, as metaphysicians, have a responsibility to restate common 
sense into the terms of our metaphysics?  And if so, where's your 
reticence to do so coming from?

Matt