Suppose we find a society which lacks our understanding of human physiology, and that speaks a language just like English, except for one curious family of idioms. When they are tired they talk of being beset by fatigues, of having mental fatigues, muscular fatigues, fatigues in the eyes and fatigues of the the spirit. Their sports lore contains such maxims as ‘too many fatigues spoils your aim’ and ‘five fatigues in the legs are worth ten in the arms’. When we encounter them and tell them of our science, they want to know what fatigues are. They have been puzzling over such questions as whether numerically the same fatigue can come and go and return, whether fatigues have a definite location in matter and space and time, whether fatigues are identical with some physical states or processes or events in their bodies, or are made of some sort of stuff. We can see that they are off to a bad start with these questions, but what should we tell them? One thing we can tell them is that there simply are no such things as fatigues—they have a confused ontology. We can expect them to retort: ’You don’t think there are fatigues? Run around the block a few times and you’ll know better! There are many things your science might teach us, but the non-existence of fatigues isn’t one of them!
--Dan Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
That’s one of my favorite Dennett passages. A similarly great anthropological metaphor is his tale of the forest god Feenoman and the “Feenomanologists” who study this religion. I have not been able to find it online, but it is in the essay “Two approaches to mental images”, in the same book.
--Dan Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
That’s one of my favorite Dennett passages. A similarly great anthropological metaphor is his tale of the forest god Feenoman and the “Feenomanologists” who study this religion. I have not been able to find it online, but it is in the essay “Two approaches to mental images”, in the same book.