On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 2:29 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Steve said: > Causality is of course a form of preference or a species of value as is > _everything in the MOQ_. I get that. I really really do. This doesn't mean we > need to throw out the word and are making use of the word in a radically > different way when that others won't understand when, say, you use the word > beCAUSE above. > > dmb says: > NO, Steve. You're still missing the point. Causality is NOT a form of > preference or a species of value. I'm saying that such a statement is > logically impossible. Given the meaning of the terms "causality" and > "preference", that statement is nonsense. It literally makes no sense. Let me > make this point in an excessive pedantic way, okay, and then I'll get to your > second point about throwing out the word. (Which I never suggested and > explicitly denied at least once already.)...
Steve: "Logically impossible"? Yet Pirsig says, "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." Your issue here is with Pirsig, not with me. Pirsig says that "value" and "cause" say "the same thing." A cause amounts to a stable pattern of preference. They are interchangeable. That's why Pirsig goes on to use the word "cause," "caused," "because," and "causes" all through Lila without bothering to replace them with the word "value" and without fear of being misunderstood. No one generally takes the word "cause" to mean "each event unfolds mechanically and in a law-like way." When they want to talk about such a phenomenon they qualify the word "cause" by referring to mechanistic cause-and-effect relationships or some such. But what does your whole rant about "cause" have to do with this debate? Neither one of us subscribes to the notion that human beings or anything else for that matter follows prescriptive rules mechanistically. Again, for the umpteenth time, we both deny determinism. The issue is whether it makes sense to talk about dynamic-static tension using the SOM term "free will." I think that is a big stretch, and if you claim to the uninformed that the MOQ supports "free will" you will be taken to mean something that the MOQ does not support, but knock yourself out. 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
