> From: [email protected]
> Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:18:56 -0400
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Quality of Free Will
>
>
> On Jul 16, 2011, at 12:45 AM, 118 wrote:
>
> > Yes, Marsha,
> > This is the conundrum that you put yourself into imho.
>
> Marsha:
> The only conundrum that I experience is that language is based
> on differentiated experience: subject, predicate & object. Of freewill,
> determinism and causation, I neither accept them nor reject them.
> They are static patterns of value, sometimes useful illusions and
> sometimes not. As static patterns of value, they are not Ultimately Real.
>
>
> > The relegation of free-will to one of a pattern is a common mistake.
>
> Marsha:
> Within the MoQ, there is only Dynamic Quality and static quality
> as static patterns of value. Free-will is an intellectual pattern.
> That which best represent what is free, on the other hand, is
> explained in Chapter 12 of LILA:
>
Pirsig said:
"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."
dmb says:
It seems that a lot of the debate centers around the interpretation of these
two sentences. Steve, for example, keeps saying that it makes no sense to say
we are free to choose our values because we ARE those values. He also seems to
think that rejecting SOM means all issues of freedom and control are rendered
meaningless. Likewise, Marsha says Free-will is an intellectual pattern, a
useful illusion.
But in the quote Pirsig is saying that one's behavior is free to the extent
that one follows DQ. In the MOQ, then, freedom is neither static nor patterned.
To deny one's freedom is to deny that we are capable of responding to DQ. To
say that free-will is an illusion predicated on the assumptions of SOM is to
say that Pirsig's second sentence is re-asserting SOM. Like I said, this is
just some kind of value determinism where we are controlled by static patterns
and that's it. There is no freedom and there is DQ in this mixed up reading.
The passage on this issue ends where Pirsig is telling us that this
construction "was, for him, a great Dynamic breakthrough, but if he wanted to
hang on to it he had better do some static latching as quickly and thoroughly
as possible." He says that even inorganic patterns created life, "the MOQ
postulates that they've done so 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."
The capacity to follow DQ, Pirsig says, extends from inorganic patterns to his
own philosophical creativity. The only question is, to what extent is the atom
and the philosopher free to follow DQ. And to the extent that static patterns
provide stability and preserve the freedoms gained in the past, the prevent
moral degeneration. Not just life, he says, but EVERYTHING is an ethical
activity. And without freedom there is no such thing as an ethical or unethical
activity. If your activity is controlled, then you can't rightly be praised or
blamed for what you do because you're not responsible for those acts.
"Dharma, like rta, means 'what holds together.' It is the basis of all order.
It equals righteousness. It is the ethical code. It is the stable condition
which gives man perfect satisfaction. ...Dharma is Quality itself, the
principle of 'rightness' which gives structure and purpose to the evolution of
all life and to the evolving understanding of the universe which life has
created." (LILA, Chapter 30)
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