Hi dmb,
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 2:55 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Steve said to dmb: > I have always held that Pirsig denies the determinism horn of the old > supposed dilemma. ...Note you also quoted him saying, "In the MOQ this > dilemma doesn't come up." The whole free will/determinism issue is a > non-issue for the MOQ., since, "The "Laws of Nature' are moral laws." > > dmb says: > Right, Pirsig says the dilemma doesn't come up. And in the very next lines he > says, "To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of > quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic > Quality, which is undefinable, one's behavior is free." Steve: And note how Pirsig has just shifted the discussion away from the notion of free will or even will in favor of talking about freedom which he then associates with DQ. dmb: The dilemma WAS between two mutually exclusive horns, both of which would have devastating consequences. Determinism would exclude freedom and Free Will would undermine science and, as a matter of logical necessity, only one of them can stand. The MOQ avoids this dilemma by saying that our behavior is both free and controlled. The MOQ does not avoid this dilemma by REJECTING both horns but rather by saying they are not mutually exclusive options. The MOQ says freedom and restraint are both empirically known and they're both real to various extents. Steve: Of course the traditional concept of free will was never conceived of as being without restraint. No one who claims to possess free will thinks they can will themselves to fly. The above interpretation makes it sound like the MOQ is just some wishy-washy middle ground between the S and the O in SOM (it's a little of each!!!) rather than a rejection of the fundamental premise of SOM which underlies the tradition free will/determinism debate. Is the quality in the subject or the object? Is the locus of control for human actions internal to the subject or externally imposed by objects? Its pretty much the same false choice that the MOQ was invented to dissolve rather than mediate. > dmb had said: > 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. > > Steve replied: > And yet I do it anyway as Pirsig says we can... Steve quotes Pirsig: In the > Metaphysics of Quality "causation" is a metaphysical term that can be > REPLACED by "value". To say that "A causes B" or to say that "B values > precondition A" is to say the same thing. > > dmb now says: > Right, in the MOQ causation is REPLACED by value. I think it's pretty clear > that the MOQ has "replaced" causation, meaning that something else has been > put in its place. Steve: And yet Pirsig goes on to use the word "cause" all the time in the innocuous non-metaphysical way we do when we put the cause in beCAUSE in every justification we ever produce as well as reinterpreted in his "B values precondition A" when he wants to get metaphysical about it. dmb: ....Causality rules out freedom and morality while value does not. Steve: This is overblown at the minimum. In the MOQ perspective, it is impossible to mean anything but a sort of value pattern when talking about causality (as Pirsig does all the time and everyone does every time they use the word "because.") > Steve said: > Unless you have any evidence to the contrary, he does NOT say that free will > is needed for morality in the MOQ. > > > dmb says: > Isn't it simply a matter of logical necessity? If we are controlled by > determining forces, if we have no freedom, it makes no sense to hold anyone > morally responsible. Steve: They do have freedom, but free will is a meaningless term in the MOQ. If you insist on talking about free will, Pirsig says we might just as well apply the term to atoms who we do not think of as responsible as well as to people who we do hold responsible, so possession of free will is not what makes one morally responsible in the MOQ. In addition, Pirsig doesn't even talk about moral responsibility anywhere. He is not interested in the praise and blame game and deciding who to punish and who to reward since that is a social pattern. > Steve replied: > I've denied that the MOQ supports determinism all along. You keep thinking > that it's either free will or determinism while the MOQ says, "mu." > > > dmb says: > But you have denied free will all along and suggested that we can be more > compassionate now that we know moral responsibility is an illusion. Steve: I haven't said that at all. What I've said is that in the MOQ the notion of moral responsibility is in no way predicated on free will. dmb: That doesn't sound like a denial of determinism. Quite the opposite. We don't have any choice about our values, you keep saying, because we are our values. How is that NOT determinism? Steve: Are you disagreeing here? Are you saying we are NOT our values? We DO choose some of our values in a way, but we only choose what to value on the basis of other values, no? What other basis could there be if the world is nothing but value? dmb: This is not "mu" nor is it "both" or "either". To use the analogy you borrowed from Sam Harris, you've been saying we are as morally culpable as a tornado. How is that NOT determinism? Steve: I don't say that at all. I said that free will has nothing to do with whether or not we need to incarcerate those who commit crimes. dmb: >... Like I said, the freedom I think you're denying is the freedom to act or >not, the freedom to make choices. And how did you respond? > > Steve replied: > ...it is meaningless to add the word "free" in claiming "free will." We make > choices. Sure, but what does it mean to say that your choices are free? They > aren't free, they are manifestations of your preferences, and we don't freely > choose our preferences. In the MOQ we ARE our preferences, so the MOQ clearly > denies both horns of the supposed dilemma. > > > dmb says: > That's the move that free will altogether and thereby converts the MOQ back > into a kind of determinism. Steve: If my so-called determinism means that we make choices based on our values, then that is just not the usual mechanistic view of determinism where everything follows a fixed predetermined set of physical laws. dmb: See, it's not that I think it has to be one or the other. I just think you are defending determinism. You say we don't freely choose our preferences but that's not what Pirsig is saying. He says "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." Steve: And just where do you see me disagreeing with that quote? dmb: What sense does it make to say we have no choice about "asserting values and making judgements"? Surely it takes a will to assert anything and what is judgement but a deliberate choice? Steve: So now you've discovered a new metaphysical entity in the MOQ called the will? Of course not. We assert our values all the time. And what is deliberation but an intellectual pattern of value? Our values our made manifest in the choices we make (deliberated or not). The difference in our views here is that I don't think that there is anything to the MOQ way of describing the situation (associating freedom with DQ) that is at all like what is traditionally meant by the term "free will." Just ask Ham. 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
