Hi dmb, > Steve said:... I am saying that the term "free will" has a usage in the > English language, and the MOQ's response to the question of freedom is > incompatible with this everyday usage. ... and my point is that the MOQ's > answer is to accept neither free will or determinism in their usual sense and > I'm not talking about underlying metaphysical assumptions but rather the > common ways that the term "free will" gets deployed in sentences. ...To deny > free will is to deny the uncaused causer (see also Pirsig's dissolution of > the mind-body problem). To deny determinism is to deny the mechanistic > universe. There is nothing incompatible with doing both. > > > dmb says: > Well, as I see it, you are maintaining a very weak position in the face of > overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Steve: That goes without saying. Doesn't it? At least it should. Obviously I also think that _you_ are "maintaining a very weak position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary" or I wouldn't still be holding my view in opposition to yours. Like you, I have frequently been surprised in this conversation when you did not find my arguments compelling. But I don't bother voicing my exasperation, because it is irrelevant to the issue at hand. This is the sort of thing I am talking about with regard to your narcissism. You think these sorts of things are worth saying and add something to the conversation, but all they say is that you seem to be incapable of understanding that your conversational partners experience the same sorts of frustrations in failing to convince _you_ as _you_ experience in failing to convince _them_. dmb: There are many ways to deny free will and just as many ways to deny determinism. There is more than one way to affirm either one. But, against the advice of the Stanford Encyclopedia, you have defined both horns as necessarily connected to SOM. That's too rigid and too narrow. You've given no reason for this arbitrary restriction and yet your whole position seems to hinge on it. Steve: It's a bit like the problem for atheists in defining themselves in opposition to the belief in God. Obviously they don't mean that they deny all _possible_ ways of defining God. If someone says "God is love," then fine, love exists, so God exists (if that is all you mean). But that just isn't what people generally mean when they use the term "God." Likewise, I am an a-determinist as well as an a-free-wilist, but that doesn't mean that I deny these concepts in all _possible_ ways that someone may decide to use them. I deny them in the usual ways that they are used. And I am not just talking about SOM. I am just talking about the way the word "free will" is used in sentences such as "I have the ability to exercise my free will in making deliberate moral choices upon reflection." The MOQ version of "free will" doesn't fiction in language in the usual way, I think it would be better not to call it that. The substantial difference in usage is that in the MOQ we have freedom as you referred back to ZAMM in, "Man, why you always gotta be asking those five dollar questions? Will you kindly just shut up and dig it?" In Pirsig's formulation of freedom as DQ, we are most free not when we consciously deliberate but when we groove. Unlike free will, DQ is not a power of the conscious mind to exert control over our situation. I contend that this is such a different view of freedom from the usual usage of "free will" that it is best to find another term for what Pirsig wants to talk about. In fact, he did coin another term, Dynamic Quality. To call this free will doesn't help explain the concept of DQ, and it is misleading to assure that the MOQ supports free will because you will be taken to mean something quite different from DQ. You have asserted that would need to drop the notions of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness if we drop the term "free will." But consider, where do Poincare's ideas come from? Certainly not his conscious willing of them. It is not _will_ that makes him praiseworthy as a thinker. Likewise it is not "free will" that makes bad behavior reprehensible. We simply do not need this concept to talk about morality. > dmb said: > ...You've equated free will with an uncaused causer and equated determinism > with a mechanistic universe. But, again, we are talking about freedom and > control as it relates to the MOQ's self , as it relates to "one's behavior" > in a universe that is value all the way down. I mean, we are still talking > about the extent to which PEOPLE are free to act as they will and the extent > to which our actions are determined. > > > Steve replied: > Here is where you err. If the MOQ described the extent that "people are free > to act as they will" then we would be talking about a compatible concept that > could reasonably be described with the same terminology. But the MOQ does NOT > associate freedom with the capacity to act as they will. ...The similarity > needed to enable us to deploy the MOQ version of the term "free will" in > sentences in the usual ways we do with the tradition version of free will is > the notion of freedom as the ability to consciously will choices. But that is > NOT what Pirsig can mean in associating freedom with DQ. In other words, in > the MOQ, there is freedom, but there isn't free will. > > > dmb says: > If I follow your reasoning, you're saying that DQ is pre-intellectual, > therefore the MOQ's version of human freedom is an unconscious freedom that > couldn't possibly involve anything like a conscious, deliberate choice. Is > that about right? Steve: Something like that. When people talk about free will, they mean that people are autonomous moral agents responsible for their actions because they have the capacity to deliberate. They can play out possibilities in their minds and predict the consequences of different possibilities so that they can take control by freely choose among them. Animals, rocks, plants, and children are not generally held responsible because they cannot do this (or at least not do it well in the case of children). The MOQ notion of freedom and morality is VERY different. Conscious deliberate choosing is not at all what is meant by dynamic quality which Pirsig associates with freedom. The capacity to follow DQ is the capacity to respond to undefined betterness rather than a capacity for unhindered deliberation to make moral choices. It is not a per of control. In the traditional view, making decisions without thinking such as killing your cheating spouse and her lover in a fit of rage is considered mitigating even sometimes exculpatory with regard to moral responsibility. When people are "grooving," our justice system sees them as _less_ responsible for their actions than when they have spent time puzzling it all out (and rightly so, I think). What we have in these two concepts if both taken as free will is an almost complete _reversal_ of where this freedom lies and where the control over one's actions resides. dmb: > Well, like I tried to explain already, I think you are compartmentalizing DQ > and sq so that never the twain shall meet. There's just freedom on the DQ > side, but it's a special, mystical freedom over which we have no control, and > then we are controlled on the static side entirely because it is the static. > This mischaracterizes the relation between DQ and sq in a very big way, I > think, and it leaves us with a totally meaningless version of freedom. Steve: But Pirsig said there are two distinct aspects of the freedom situation. We agree that to the extent that we follow DQ there is freedom, to the extent we follow sq there is constraint. But this is a different sort of freedom as what is hoped for by free will proponents. The _free_ part of experience is not the thinking part. It is _not_ the part that exerts control over its environment. It is an organism _response_ to its environment. It is the pre-intellectual part rather than something we get through conscious deliberation, playing out scenarios in our minds, and conscious consideration of consequences. Again, this is almost a complete reversal from the usual way that the term "free will" is used. What people are seeking in their hope that science and philosophy can support the concept of free will is not freedom in the DQ sense at all but rather control. They want to be able to say that it is "I" who is in charge. (For example, consider Ron's post about having made important changes in his life.) This "I" refers to the conscious self, which again, is not the part of the self that is associated with DQ which is pre-conceptual awareness. It is the good that comes before being conscious of the locus of goodness to the extent that we can make conscious choices about it. dmb: > Think of the two sustained, concrete examples in ZAMM; the motorcycle > mechanic and the freshman writer of essays. To be artful about his work, the > mechanic cannot operate on DQ alone. He's got to know a lot about the machine > and he's got to know how to use the tools. He is using inductive reasoning, > deductive reasoning and testing hypotheses as he goes. At that point, he is a > motorcycle scientist, Pirsig says. Then, on TOP of all the mastery of the > static patterns involved, he also has a feel for the work. He is open to DQ. > He's so engaged in the task that a sort of unity between himself and the > machine is achieved, a kind of flow experience or Zen experience in which you > forget yourself. Steve: Again, this sort of "forget yourself" experience is not what is sought in the usual hope that science or philosophy can find some room for "free will." What is sought is a way for the self to be in control rather than a chaining of oneself to a free master. This "forget yourself" grooving is indeed a sort of freedom, but it is not what anyone means by free will because the self-conscious willing is completely missing from the picture. dmb: > DQ is not some alien thing beyond our consciousness or our ordinary, daily > activities. It's at the very heart of things. The amoeba "knows" it's better > to move away from the sulfuric acid despite the fact that it cannot > articulate or consciously deliberate. Steve: A freedom that is not a function of conscious thought is just not what is sought when people talk about free will. Just ask Ron. It isn't what anybody I ever talked to means by free will. You can apply the term in this "when I say 'cat' what I mean is 'dog'" sort of way, but in doing so, you are bound to be misunderstood and therefore sneaking free will as the freedom of a conscious chooser in the back door. This is no better than the common attempt to sneak God into the MOQ as a word for Quality which annoys you so much (and annoys me too). 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
