Hi Matt, good to have you back in the mix. Don't have full editing facilities right now, but two points....
Plus c'est la meme chose - seeing things better looking back is indeed a myth. It has looked like that since 4000BC (Horace) And your (Nagel) point - the closer we look (analyze) the less actual freedom (DQ) we have. Agreed. At the risk of winding dmb up, I find it ironic that the more we have academic arguments "about" MOQ the further away we are taken "from" MOQ. Closer to that old church of reason. (Craig, I owe you a response.) Ian ( What's so funny 'bout ..... ) Sent from my iPhone On 21 Jun 2011, at 20:00, Matt Kundert <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey Dan, > > I'm not sure whether you meant it as such or not, but I read > everything in the first two sections of your response as in agreement > with what I was saying. The below picks up after that: > > Dan said: > If all patterns are evolving toward Dynamic freedom, or the absence > of patterns, then aren't intellectual quality patterns also evolving > towards freedom? And isn't that what "mu" is all about? the "not" of > what "is"? Are we not all swimming in karmic delusion? filling > ourselves with the evolutionary garbage of history? > > Matt: > I have trouble equating Dynamic Quality or freedom with the absence > of patterns for the Pirsigian reason of the concomitant distinction > between and ambiguity between DQ and chaos/degeneracy. I have > non-Pirsigian qualms about the ideas of "karmic delusion" and > "evolutionary garbage of history" because they strike me as > primitivistic responses to the present keyed at a metaphysical level. > > Primitivism (a concept best developed by A.O. Lovejoy) is the kind of > response one has when one thinks that there was a Golden Age in > the past that the present has debased in some manner. Usually its > the transformation of the simple into the sophisticated, which makes > primitivism a typical kind of response to modern society ("things were > simpler when I was young..."). Buddhism, in those twin ideas, > seems to put that in-history response at the metaphysical level, which > makes _history itself_, the creation of time, the thing that debases > reality itself. (This, in form, is very similar to the Judeo-Christian > narrative arc of Eden/Fall/Redemption.) > > That doesn't seem to me like a good way to describe the movement > of history. I prefer to think of Dynamic Quality at the higher levels as > more sophisticated kinds of freedom made possible by the lower, > simpler levels, and it's difficult for me to sustain the idea that these > higher freedoms can be described as simple absences, rather than > complex absences created by simple presences. (E.g., the presence > of the social level makes the freedom/absences of the intellectual > level possible.) I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's what > I tend to think. > > Dan said: > What this is pointing to is that there is no "ends of explanation" that > we can know, nor are they sewed together by the MOQ. The MOQ is > a better way of understanding and organizing reality, but it > recognizes its own limitations. > > Matt: > I think you misunderstood how Ron deployed that idea, and how I > played off it. As I understood it, Ron wasn't saying there was _an > end to explanation_ (i.e., a point at which the explanatory process > will shut down), but rather talking about how the MoQ as a > metaphysical system ties together all the smaller systems of > explanation offered by the special disciplines (physics, biology, > sociology, philosophy of mind, of language, etc.). "Sewing together > the ends of explanation" was Ron's gloss on what you just > commended: "a better way of understanding and organizing > reality." The reason why Ron's idiom works well here is that it not > only houses Pirsig's suggestion that the MoQ doesn't necessarily > replace any individual sciences or disciplines, but is rather the > framework that situates all of them--it also suggests the idea that > explanatory sequences are things that have a beginning and an end: > a set of premises, that then inquiry works through, and then finally > emit in a conclusion. It's the whole sequence that is the explanation > (just as scientific explanations are not what they are in just their > conclusion, but also in the entire process of coming to that > conclusion), and the MoQ gathers together the threads at the > conclusions and braids them together. > > Dan said: > It appears to me that one of the narratives that is dysfunctional is the > notion of having the ability to choose what we do and who we are. > We make up stories and then we come to believe those stories are > true. In fact, though, they are constructs, built up out of social and > intellectual quality patterns. > > Matt: > I'm not sure I see your line of inference here. The first sentence > sounds like thing Steve's been pressing, what I also pressed when I > talked about Nagel briefly: the amount of free will we have in our > lives seems to disappear the closer we look at situations. Were the > second two sentences just glosses on how, because our truths are > embedded in stories that are constructed out of the cloth that makes > us up, we can change this dysfunctional narrative? > > What is curious, and suggests to me the complexity of the issue over > freedom, will, control, and responsibility, is how the fact of us being > constructed out of our social/intellectual patterns conditions the idea > that we can change the story we tell about ourselves that we have the > ability to choose how we make up what we do and who we are. > Where did the social/intellectual patterns come from, other than an > "us," Pirsig's social We? In other words, "who we are" is a function of > the the cloth that makes us up, but it is also us that makes it up. And > if it's a dysfunction to think that we have the ability to choose our > stories, how is it that we are going to change the story we are living > in/through? > > I think we can hold all those thoughts together, but I think we'd have > to modulate away from thinking that the story of having choice is > dysfunctional, or refine just what it is that is dysfunctional about our > current story. > > Dan said: > I am not sure I follow you here, Matt. Nor am I sure that moral > responsibility and free will are intertwined the way you seem to be > suggesting (or is it Ron who's suggesting that?). It appears (to me) > that you are making this a lot more complex than it need be. But I > prefer the simple explanation to the complex one, so that may be a > bias on my part. > > Matt: > On moral responsibility and free will, if you have the time, perhaps > take a look at an old paper I wrote in college on my website > (http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2008/03/free-will-and-determinism-contours-of.html). > > It runs through a series of thought experiments to try and pull out > certain features that we appear to attribute to the attribution of > moral responsibility. I _would_ rather talk about "freedom" than > "free will," and the thought runs that: are you morally responsible > for shooting your mother's leg if you have a gun against your head > and the intruder is threatening to kill you if you don't? There might > be refined senses in which you are yet still morally responsible for > that act (because as the paper makes pedantically clear, moral > responsibility begins with causal responsibility), but most of us would > also say that the act of _coercion_ makes your actions _less your own_, > less _freely chosen_. > > It's those practical kinds of freedom that Steve and I, and it seems > you from your final comments abut Steve (and Ron, too?), think make > an impact on moral reasoning, but not epistemological/metaphysical > kinds of freedom, which is the kind Aristotle kicked off thinking about > in his discussions of fatalism and are codified in the "free will vs. > determinism debate." To itemize "free will" in a practical kind of way > would perhaps start with calling "will" the source of an action that > creates a specifically moral-causal responsibility; and "free" a qualifier > that allows you to distinguish between moral and causal responsibility, > so that one might be causally responsible (I did will the shooting of > my mother's leg) but not morally responsible. > > Elegance and simplicity in explanation is a general explanatory value, > but so is completeness and command of evidence. It's the interplay > between them helps us evolve simple explanations into, not > circumlocutory complexity, but _sophisticated_ explanations. > > Dan said: > For instance, I am unsure what you mean by sex being constrained > but now it shouldn't be. I see no indication of that in real life. People > still marry and for the most part are monogamous. Those who have > unconstrained sexual urges seem to find themselves in trouble... > witness a long list of celebrities who've been caught at or admitted > to various scandals. > > Matt: > I just watched the South Park episode on Tiger Woods (from Season > 14, now on InstaFlix). It's all about that glitch in our social mores > about sex and celebrities, at least in terms of expectation. > > What I meant about sex being constrained and now it shouldn't be is > that I do think if you looked at the course of human culture (and I > would limit myself to Greco-European cultural history) you would see > an evolution in our proprieties about sexual relations, a movement > that would show that the strictures and constraints have lessened. > One good indication of that slackening is not _actual_ slackening, but > the idea that they should be slackened. That was _not_ always the > case. The intellectual level has shifted, but that doesn't mean the > social level has yet. Social practices such as marriage and > monogamy aren't by themselves indications of constraint, it's rather > the societal norms of approbation and disapprobation that attach to > whether one _participates_ in those practices that I think is a better > indication. And I do think it is a fact of the matter today that people > are less concerned about whether other people get married at all, > and in that sense lifetime-monogamous. > > Do we still have Puritanical mores in our culture, America especially? > Absolutely. But that shouldn't stop us from trying to chart our > differences from the past. > > Matt > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
