[MD] The Hero's journey

[Matt Kundert]

Dan quoted a thing about James:
"James made no concerted attempt to show or prove that the 
principle of pragmatism was correct. In his lectures, he put it into 
practice, solving problems about squirrels, telling us the meaning of 
truth, explaining how we can understand propositions about human 
freedom or about religious matters. But in the end, inspired by these 
applications, we are encouraged to adopt the maxim and see how 
well things work out when we do so." 
(SEP http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/)

Dan said:
This is what I see you [Dave, but probably Matt, too] doing by 
sweeping away such questions as: is there a sound when a forest 
with no one around and does Don's dog dish exist when he walks out 
of the room. You're in effect telling us (like James) that high quality 
intellectual patterns work well in the real world so we should forget 
about questioning them. We should just take them for granted. I don't 
like that, though. That doesn't seem like philosophy to me... it seems 
more like giving in...

Matt:
I thought you might be making this move.  Whatever about Jame, I 
believe that you are here conflating a globally-applicable question 
with specifically-applicable questions.  (And this is the difference 
between a global, Cartesian doubt and specific doubts about specific 
context-dependent things.  Of the former, Peirce, a good 
anti-Cartesian, called "fake doubt.")

The thought-experiments having to do with trees and dog dishes are 
there to pump our intuitive responses to a situation that has nothing 
to do with trees or dog dishes _specifically_.  What it seems like you 
are suggesting is that by not taking "what dog dish/tree/X?" seriously, 
we are thereby eliminating our ability to question specific things about 
dog dishes, trees, any particular X.  That, by saying "what dog dish?" 
is usually a bad question, we are saying, "Shut your mouth and don't 
question reality!"  The latter, indeed, isn't philosophy.  However, I 
think thinking of "what dog dish?" as an emblem for the Socratic 
spirit is a bad idea.  And partly because of how this conversation has 
rollicked forward.  Neither Dave nor I has ever wanted to stop 
questioning specific presuppositions, but your question applies to 
_all_ presuppositions, and so is about the process of 
presuppositioning.  And I don't think the three of us disagree 
importantly on Pirsig's position on ghosts/presuppositions.  The only 
thing I disagree with is seeing a question that applies to everything as 
having, therefore, a special kind of connection to all questions about 
specific things (what I called "emblematic" earlier).  I see questions 
that apply to everything as _as_ specific as the other questions, and 
therefore a specific kind of question that can be in and out of point 
depending on circumstance (it is specifically about "everything").

Matt