[lit-ideas] Re: Mop Rumpchuck
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:20:58 -0800
On Feb 27, 2008, at 12:15 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
I remember several discussions that might resemble the one you're
interested in, but none of them, as far as I can recall were in
response to the question 'Is that real?' 'Is that real?' doesn't
strike me as an interesting philosophical question, any more than
'Is that a cat?' does. 'Is that real?'seems to be sensibly askable
only in some setting in which the 'reality' of some particular
thing is not immediately apparent, e.g., when being shown something
that resembles a thousand dollar bill, the person being shown it
might ask, 'Is that real?' where being real is contrasted with its
being counterfeit or fake.
Separating what happened here on this list from other wisps of memory
is difficult. I think that when I was preparing a talk titled, "Is
that a real Scottish Sword" we had a discussion along the lines you
suggest here.
Philosophical sceptics often dare other philosophers to demonstrate
that there is a sure-fire way of distinguishing appearance from
reality, so that it might appear that there was global, non-
specific question about how we know that what we experience is
reality itself and not just a bunch of conveniently coagulated
sense-data. (Kant thought that we did the best we could with what
we have.)
In the Sophist, and Theatetus, some of Plato's characters worry
about being and non-being, and end up wondering how it is possible
to speak of that-which-is-not. Russell and Meinong had the same
worry: Whitehead was right about the footnotes.
Here's a clumsy version of the thoughts which caused my plea. For
the introduction to my talk about shell-shock, I am thinking through
how, as a director I might try to stage Lady Macbeth's most famous
speech. (I know the connection between shell-shock and Lady Macbeth
is not obvious; that's exactly why I think it might be interesting to
begin there.)
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes.
The funniest production of this I've ever come across was at the
Edinburgh Festival. Lady M. stood on one side of the stage, a
plastic dagger suspended by fishing line swung on the other side of
the stage. Lady M. moved across the stage. The dagger was dragged
to where she had been. And so on. Simple humor, but well staged.
What we laughed at were two errors: the stage hands' ineptitude and
the director's literal take on the problem of what Lady M. sees.
Short conclusion: it's better if the audience doesn't share Lady M.'s
fantastic vision.
When Science asks whether a phenomenon is real, the question may be
Lady M.'s, roughly translated, "Am I imagining the phenomenon before
me?" or it might be a more technical kind of question, "Do the
statistics demonstrate what you claim, or might the pattern better be
attributed to chance or background noise?" When Medicine asks, "Is
the disease real," both possibilities obtain: "is the patient
imagining that his or her perceptions add up to something we call a
disease or ailment" and "does the cluster of symptoms fall within our
definition of a real ailment"?
I guess I was checking whether I can say that, "while philosophers
might find little reason to dwell on such matters, we might profit
from spending a few minutes with them, to see what they can tell us
about shell-shock and its relationship to PTSD."
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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