Hi Steve, To answer you question specifically, in Chapter 14 Lila states that she is not anybody. If this is a rejection of the self, a self that is created though repeatedly identifying with static patterns of value, my guess would be that Lila, the character, does not have "free will."
More generally, from my MoQ point-of-view, whatever that means, my answer stands as I neither accept "free will" nor reject "free will" so MU. Marsha On Jul 8, 2011, at 8:22 PM, Steven Peterson wrote: > Hi all, (dmb), > > Please consider this Lila quote: > "It isn't Lila that has quality; it's Quality that has Lila. Nothing > can have Quality. To have something is to possess it, and to possess > something is to dominate it. Nothing dominates Quality. If there's > domination and possession involved, it's Quality that dominates and > possesses Lila. She's created by it. She's a cohesion of changing static > patterns of this Quality. There isn't any more to her than that. The > words Lila uses, the thoughts she thinks, the values she holds, are the end > product of three and a half billion years of the history of the entire > world. She's a kind of jungle of evolutionary patterns of value. She > doesn't know how they all got there any more than any jungle knows how it > came to be." > > Now do you see anything in that picture that fits the usual > understanding of the term "free will"? There isn't anything more to > you, me, or Lila than values. It makes no sense to say that we choose > our values when we ARE nothing but our values. Likewise, it makes no > sense to say that we are determined by our values when we ARE our > values. Therefore, the whole free will/determinism debate as it is > traditionally understood must be rejected out of hand as not coming up > in the MOQ. Pirsig literally says, "In the Metaphysics of Quality this > dilemma doesn't come up." I don't know how it could be more plain than > that. The only person who could see free will versus determinism as a > puzzle that needs a solution is a person who accepts the > subject-object picture as given and finds it cogent to ask "Does Lila > have Quality?" and "Is this Quality in the subject or the object?" How > is it any different to ask, "to what extent is man's behavior willed > internally (a property of the subject) or imposed externally (reducing > all subjects to objects)? The answer here is not "a little of each." > This question gets rejected along with the SOM premise upon which it > rests. Instead, the question of freedom is reformulated as an issue of > static versus dynamic quality as, "to what extent is human behavior > best characterized as static quality and to what extent is it dynamic > quality?" > > 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
