Shaggy

frequently, more than she trusts her beau, who has never been known to malfunction?
(Let us remember that Shaggy is not called Mr. Lover-Lover without reason.)
Shaggy's argument proceeds with increasing nuance. Showing the discursive
virtues characteristic of any great philosopher, he concedes straightaway the strongest
points of his opponent. He admits that since Honey was standing there the entire time,
and saw with her very eyes '[w]hy should she believe me [SF speaking] when I told her it
wasn't me?' Shaggy sagaciously responds, 'Make sure she knows it's not you.' Shaggy
thus recognizes that if Honey is to have the courage to stand up to her perceptual
faculties, which speak with a seemingly irrefragable voice, she is going to need reasons
strong enough to confer knowledge in nothing less than the true Cartesian sense.
But what could confer such indubitable certitude that can trump even the
deliverances of one's perceptual faculties? It is only fitting to let Shaggy speak for
himself at this pivotal moment: ‘[W]henever you should see her / [you should] make da
gigolo flex.’ Ah, the gigolo flex. By showcasing a playa’s robust muscles and flavorful
masculinity, the gigolo flex — long forgotten by modern philosophers, with their gnostic
dualism and disdain for the physical — is a clarion call to epistmic sobriety.
Shaggy realizes that some might greet his trail-blazing hypothesis with
incredulity, and preempts such half-baked criticism: 'As funny as it be by you, it not that
complex.' Here, Shaggy taunts the highbrow philosopher, with her obsessive need for
analysis. Instead of invoking gratuitously complicated theories, with their ponderous
distinctions and exotic thought experiments, Shaggy distills warranted belief to
something surprisingly, indeed, deliciously, simple: the gigolo flex. Shaggy knows when
to stop digging because a foundation has been reached.
One might be tempted to fault Shaggy for his apparent inconsistency in faulting
the Honey for her reliance on perception, yet expecting her to accept the evidential value
of the gigolo flex, which presumably she can only access via perception. But one would
be wrong. The gigolo flex is not something one sees or perceives, but rather it is
something one experiences via a faculty distinct from and even more basic than
perception: the gigolo-flex-recognizing-faculty (‘GFRF’). Indeed, because the
deliverances of the GFRF, like the Cogito, are self-authenticating, they stand ready to
correct the other senses (which, as we all know, are fallible). As Shaggy explains,
although 'Seein is believin,' upon experiencing the gigolo flex Honey 'better change her
specs'.
The critical question to the honey thus becomes: 'Sure, your perceptual faculties
tell you that I was fornicating with the girl next door — but what does your GFRF tell
you?' Or put another way, ‘When I undertake to flex in the gigolo way, what happens to
your ‘perceptions’? Do they not fade away, stripped of their illusory authority, like a
mirage to which you have drawn near?’
Of course, while ascribing infallibility to the gigolo flex as a ground of
knowledge, Shaggy humbly declines to ascribe dialectical irresistibility to it. He realizes
that Honey may, owing to obdurateness or obtuseness, refuse to heed the deliverances of