dmb said to Steve:
.., if you can't see how causality precludes moral responsibility then there
are many, many explanations available for your edification and amusement.
Nobody has to take my word for it.
Steve:
No, I don't take your word for it, but you've given me nothing more than that.
dmb says:
Determinism is the philosophic doctrine that man, like all other objects in the
universe, follows fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception. Free
Will is the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the
atoms of his body. This battle has been a very long and very loud one because
an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the
belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned
under SOM. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of substance, then man
cannot really choose between right and wrong. On the other hand, if the
determinists let go of their position it would seem to deny the truth of
science. If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance,
the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary. If 'everything' is
included in the class of 'substance and its properties,' and if 'substance and
properties' is included in the class of 'things that always follow law
s,' and if 'people' are included int class 'everything', then it is an
air-tight logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of substance.
...All the social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bedrock
metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human behavior
exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an
artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the
world. ...In the MOQ this dilemma doesn't come up. ...The MOQ says that if
moral judgements are essentially assertions of value and if value is the
fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements are the
fundamental ground-stuff of the world. It says that even at the most
fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of value and moral
judgements are identical. The "Laws of Nature' are moral laws. Of course it
sounds peculiar at first... But it is no less peculiar and awkward and
unnecessary than to say chemistry
professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect
forces of the cosmos force them to do it. In the past the logic has been that
if chemistry professor are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow
only the law of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the
laws of cause and effect too. But this logic can be applied in a reverse
direction. ..If chemistry professors exercise choice, and chemistry professors
are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that atoms must exercise
choice too. The difference between these two points of view is philosophic, not
scientific. The question of whether and electron does a certain thing because
it has to or because it wants to is completely irrelevant to the data of what
the electron does. So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but
everything is an ethical activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns
of reality create life the MOQ postulates that they've done s
o because it's 'better' and that this definition of 'betterness' - this
beginning response to Dynamic Quality - is an elementary unit of ethics upon
which all right and wrong can be based. (Lila 155-7)
Steve said to dmb:
If causality is understood in MOQ terms as a stable pattern of preference, then
obviously causality is no threat to moral responsibility.
dmb says:
As you can see from Pirsig's explanation, cause and effect relations are
law-like and that's what precludes moral responsibility. The laws of cause and
effect preclude any freedom or choice. So we can't righty understand causality
AS a pattern of preferences no matter how stable. That's just not what the word
"cause" means. As Pirsig put it in the quote above, "If man follows the
cause-and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right
and wrong." Preferences have to replace causality, rather than figure in to it,
simply because one logically precludes the other. And you can see that this
quote backs up my contention that "causality and preference are rival ways to
think about the same empirical facts". The question of whether atoms HAVE TO
(are caused) or WANT TO (is preferred) is a philosophical difference, not a
scientific one. The data is the same either way, he says. But these are the
rival views.
Steve said:
And again, I don't accept your say so. I don't see Pirsig anywhere saying that
we ought to throw away the word "cause" in describing our experience. All I see
him doing is saying what "cause" may mean in MOQ terms. If you have textual
evidence, please provide it.
dmb says:
In the passage above you see that preferences go all the way down to the
inorganic level and even the "laws of nature" are moral laws. The elementary
unit of ethics goes all the way up. There is no need for causality anywhere
here because its all covered by preferences instead. I'm not so sure we have
any good cause to throw the word away, but the MOQ can describe any static
pattern without it. Not just life, he says, but everything is an ethical
activity, everything from chemistry professors to atoms.
Steve:
To my knowledge Pirsig never talks about responsibility, but he does talk about
freedom. In fact in his preface to ZAMM he describes freedom as merely a
negative and therefore a lousy goal, and he describes ZAMM itself as offering
a positive alternative to freedom that can serve as a positive goal, namely
Quality.
dmb says:
In the passage above Pirsig says that abandoning free will is to abandon
morality. Determinism, which is predicated on causality, says that man is not
free to choose and therefore cannot be held responsible. I have quoted the
dictionary, Charlene the James scholar and now Pirsig on this point. (We simply
cannot have an intelligent conversation on the topic unless and until the you
use the central terms properly.) I mean, the issue of determinism and freedom
hinges on whether or not we must inevitable follow the laws of nature. This has
absolutely nothing to do with the political and social aspirations of the
hippies. That is a different topic entirely. (The difference between positive
and negative freedom is not at all unique to Pirsig either.)
Steve said:
You see? The freedom you think I am undermining is something that Pirsig thinks
is a negative rather than THEE foundation for moral responsibility, and he even
hangs his hat on having offered us a positive alternative for freedom.
dmb says:
The freedom I think you're denying is the freedom to act or not, the freedom to
make choices. It's much more basic and fundamental than the hippy's desire to
remove social and political restraints. It's about whether or not we are
determined by causes beyond our control. What sense does it make to talk about
positive goals if we are not free to act at all? What sense can it make to
press positive freedom over negative freedom when freedom is just an illusion?
This position is not logically coherent.
As I understand it, freedom and restraint are both as real as it gets. We know
this from all our experiences, every freaking day. To deny it seems kinda
crazy. And it's a nihilistic moral nightmare.
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