dmb said to Steve:
I don't think you have any legitimate reason to keep bringing SOM back into the
issue. ...It seems totally unreasonable - if not downright dishonest - to keep
adding an SOM premise to my comments. ...I think you are jumping all over
something I never said, the part of the statement I did NOT state. And that
means you are disagreeing about nothing and talking to nobody. What's the point
in doing that? Why not respond to the statements and claims I'm actually making
rather than argue with your own fictional creations? Again, the only part of my
statement that you disagree with is the part that I did not state, is the part
you added.
Steve replied:
True, and I was up front about that fact. I responded to what was implicit in
your claim by virtue of it being made as a criticism of what I have been saying.
dmb says:
Unbelievable.
Okay, dude. Whatever. If you want to pointlessly waste time arguing with your
own imagined implications, knock yourself out. But don't be surprised if I fail
to answer your complaints. They should be directed to the straw man you've
invented because I don't share his fictional views.
Steve said:
It didn't escape my notice that you didn't respond. You made the claim that
without free will there is no moral responsibility. That seems to be true under
SOM premises as Pirsig says, but applying your claim to the MOQ does not stand
to scrutiny.
dmb says:
Stop right there. Forget about the metaphysical differences for a minute.
First, just think about LOGIC of the claim. Logically speaking, there cannot be
moral responsibility IF we are not free. Our actions cannot be morally
praiseworthy or blameworthy IF our actions are determined. This logic obtains
no matter which metaphysical premise you begin with. It obtains regardless of
your stance as to whether or not we actually are determined or free. If you
don't understand that, then I really don't know what else to say. It's just
simple logic and I HAVE tried to explain this to you several times already.
Secondly, the MOQ reformulates freedom as "one's" capacity to respond to DQ.
Pirsig's notion of freedom does not depend on the concept of the Cartesian
self, where the will supposedly resides, and either is or is not free. Doesn't
that prove that the notion of human freedom can be asserted from an MOQ
perspective? Doesn't that prove that human freedom doesn't necessarily imply
SOM? Yes, of course it does. The MOQ reformulates freedom and morality, it does
not evacuate them. In the MOQ, morality is still tied to freedom and it's a
good thing too - because it would be logically incoherent otherwise.
Steve said to dmb:
You claimed that the concept of free will is essential to morality in the MOQ.
I reposted a quote from Marsha to back up my claim that it is not and rather
the MOQ views morality responsibility as something that is beyond questions
like free will/determinism and literally any such question that is about what
is internal versus external.
dmb quotes Pirsig:
"The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the universe.
Rta is both. This was exactly what the Metaphysics of Quality was claiming It
was not a new idea It was the oldest idea known to man."
"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 duty… Dharma is beyond all questions of what is internal and what is
external. Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of ‘rightness’ which gives
structure and purpose to the evolution of life and to the evolving
understanding of the universe which life has created."
dmb says:
Pirsig says "Dharma is Quality itself" but we can see that he is talking about
Quality as both Dynamic and static. It's the basis of all order, he says, the
stable condition and even the "physical" order of the universe. But it's also
the principle of 'rightness'. This is perfectly in line with Pirsig's
reformulation of freedom and constraint in the section on the dilemma of Free
Will and Determinism. There are static constraints to some extent and there is
also a capacity to respond to DQ. In that section, he describes freedom as the
capacity to move toward undefined "betterness". Rightnesss is static and
betterness is Dynamic and Quality is both. We are both. Freedom and constraint
are not only quite viable within the MOQ, this is absolutely central to
Pirsig's whole picture.
To use these quotes against my stance presumes that I have been saying that
morality IS a matter of what's external and internal, but I haven't said
anything like that. Your straw man says that a lot but I never did and I don't
agree with your straw man. Nobody does. That's what "straw man" means. They're
handy if you feel like you really need to knock something down and you need an
easy target. But if you want to convince an actual person of anything, you're
gonna have to work a lot harder than that.
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