Steve said:
That no one thinks of a bird's defiance of gravity (a biological pattern
trumping an inorganic pattern) as an example of free will is exactly my point.
It is the analogy I am drawing to call into question why we would think of a
social pattern trumping a biological pattern (say, resisting the urge to
urinate in public) as an exercise of free will.
dmb says:
That's exactly what I don't get about the analogy. It doesn't make sense to
talk about the will until we get to social level morality. That's when the
expression of preferences begins to meet with resistance, particularly the
biological impulses and instincts. As far as I know, animals cannot defy their
own urges and instincts. I don't even think it would be fair to say that
house-broken dogs have any free will. We train them to poop outside by using
their own instincts against them. We can get them to prefer the yard by making
in-door pooping very unpleasant for them.
Steve said:
[the question of free will has to be framed around an "independent" agent] ...
Because independence is another name for freedom. If the so-called agent is
dependent or causally related to other things, then it is not a free agent.
dmb says:
Well, there you have reasserted the will as a separate metaphysical entity and
opposed it to determinism, which follows from causal relations. As my
dictionary puts it, determinism is "the doctrine that all events, including
human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will."
But to say the agent is "dependent" doesn't necessarily mean he is subject to
causal relations, that she must act according to the laws of causality. It just
means the agent is not isolated from or separate from all other things. I mean,
to say we exist in relation to everything else is not the same thing as saying
everything causes us to will or act or choose or whatever.
Steve said:
...The idea of freedom that Pirsig talked about (DQ) is a resolution of the
dilemma that is in no way an affirmation of either horn of the free will versus
fatalism Platypus. It is a denial of both by denying the underlying assumptions
of the question. He says not merely that free will is bunk but that the self
that is supposed to be the locus of this "free will" is a fiction. Lila doesn't
have values. Values have Lila.
dmb says:
Okay, now we're talking about the same thing.
But I don't think free will is bunk so much as the metaphysical entity behind
it. Same with the notion that reality itself is a series of causes and effects.
That's very metaphysical too. These are the two basic metaphysical substances
in subject-object metaphysics, of course. But, as you almost point out, the MOQ
does not dispute the idea that freedom and constraint are real. The MOQ says DQ
is the quality of freedom and sq is the quality of order. Without DQ nothing
could grow or change and without sq nothing can last. Without static quality,
DQ degenerates into chaos. With DQ, static quality would fossilize or die of
old age. And it takes a living being to negotiate that balance. In that sense,
freedom takes a lot of discipline. Static patterns don't determine what we will
do but they limit what we can do.
Steve said:
[Einstein believing in Spinoza's God] ...doesn't have anything to do with his
argument about free will, either.
dmb says:
It shows that he subscribed to a metaphysics of substance. This is what led him
to say "God does not play dice". In the MOQ, there is no God and he does
nothing but play dice. ;-)
Steve said:
Einstein is noting that the feeling of willing a given action is something that
everyone experiences, but in what sense does it mean anything to say this
willing is free? ...Is claiming to have free will saying that our acts are
frequently accompanied by the feeling of having willed the act? If so, no one
should disagree, but what more could someone possibly mean is unclear to
Einstein who was quoting Schopenhauer (who had the same difficulties with the
notion as Harris and I) since we don't have the feeling of willing our will.
dmb says:
The feeling of willing our will? I just can't make any sense of that notion.
Why does this second will keep popping up? I don't understand why anyone would
look for some other will in addition to or behind the will as it's experienced
by ordinary people every day. If we make choices all the time, on what basis do
we say that free will is bunk? In what sense is that experience not real? Like
I said, this is an empirical question with an empirical answer.
And it's not just a feeling of freedom that we experience. It's also a
practical matter, where we live with the consequences of those choices, have
feelings of regret or satisfaction as they play out.
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