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The turkey metaphor rests on the premise that there is an end goal with the turkey; the farmer wants to eat it. Even before the story is fully told, we already

• trhway 10y ago
  >we don't know if "reaching our head out" is bad or not. as long as we're staying inside the cage, we're slaves to that guessing game. This is why breaking out of whatever cage we're in - and as we don't know what nested, probably infinite, "russian doll" style set of cages we're in - that means the continuous expansion and envelope pushing in all directions is the key for continuing species existence.
• coldtea 10y ago
  >The turkey metaphor rests on the premise that there is an end goal with the turkey; the farmer wants to eat it. No, it really doesn't. The same thing could have happened to the "empiricist dog". The only reason it is a turkey is for the added emphasis and "foreshadowing" the reader would get. But the gist of the parable is not about "this is what happens to turkey", it is "this is the problem with induction", whether there is an end goal or not. The slaughter here is just "whatever lies ahead". Note also that in the case of the real world, we ARE like the turkey in the parable, and are as oblivious to thanksgiving as any turkey is. That is, in the course of the parable is that you shouldn't identify with the reader, but with the turkey.