Hi Ron,
> Ron; > I suggest to Steve that the arguement is a good one..and to take the time to > accurately articulate it. Steve: Ok, let me try again. Pirsig denies both horns of the ancient free will/determinism dilemma. He denies determinism of the mechanistic sort since his view is of a reality composed entirely of value rather than impersonal forces. He also denies free will as traditionally understood--as an extra-added ingredient that humans possess that sets them apart from the animals. He would rather talk about freedom than free will, and he would rather talk about dynamic quality ( appositive goal) than freedom (a merely negative notion). Nowhere does he describe moral responsibility as dependent on the existence of free will. Instead he describes even rocks, trees, and atoms as moral beings--things that we in no way regard as responsible, and he says that if you want to talk about free will, then "the MOQ can argue that free will exists at all levels with increasing freedom to make choices as one ascends the levels" (LC annotation 68). Now if free will is nothing more than acting on preferences like rocks, trees, and atoms as Pirsig reformulates it, then first of all, this is nothing like what is traditionally understood as free will, so I take it to be a denial of the free will horns wool as the determinism horn of the traditional free will/determinism debate. Secondly, equating will with preference just says that everything (including rocks, trees, and atoms) have will, but it doesn't explain what it could mean to say that on top of having WILL they also have FREE will. Certainly we have will, but we don't will what we will. We can't will ourself to have preferences that are other than what they are since we ARE our preferences. But that's where DQ comes in. When Pirsig talks about freedom in the context of will, he isn't talking about a capability of control that can override deterministic forces as free will is traditionally understood. When he talks about freedom in this context, he says that we have the capability of responding to DQ (as do rocks, trees, and atoms according to Pirsig). Our preferences change in response to DQ. That capability of static patterns to change is a sort of freedom I suppose in the sense of versatility, but just how is it a freedom of the WILL? Even if you want to use the term "free will" to describe the possibility of static patterns changing in response to DQ (an unusual usage indeed), then please note that this is nothing at all like the traditional notion of free will that all the free will/determinism fuss was all about to begin with. Note also that the whole free will/determinism debate is founded on a fundamental premise denied by the MOQ. If you want to ask whether our actions are internally motivated (a free function of the subject) or externally caused (mechanistic functions of objects), then you are already deep into SOM. That's why Pirsig says that in the MOQ, this ancient free will/determinism debate is simply a nonissue. It only comes up (or should only come up) if one is already buying into premises denied buy the MOQ. Recall that Pirsig said, "If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary...In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma doesn't come up." Likewise, he says, "The problems of free will versus determinism...etc... are all monster platypi created by the subject-object metaphysics...These creatures that seem like such a permanent part of the philosophical landscape magically disappear when a good Metaphysics of Quality is applied." So, you see, we aren't even suppose to wonder about free will/determinism from an MOQ perspective. These questions aren't supposed to even arise for us. dmb and I certainly agree that there is no metaphysical entity deep inside each human called the soul which possess free will and separates us from the animals. But that is what is usually meant by free will. (Just ask Ham. That's the only sort of free will he thinks is worth having.) Instead, in the MOQ what separates us from the animals is social and intellectual patterns. We have greater freedom in the sense that we can respond to Quality in ways that animals cannot (socially and intellectually), but it would be a strange usage and quite a stretch of the term to call that ability "free will" as dmb wants to do. Is that more clear? Best, Steve 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
