HI dmb,
> Steve said to dmb: > 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 says: > This is another point that you are pressing against overwhelming evidence. > Pirsig makes the linkage between free will and moral responsibility, Steve: You are distorting what Pirsig said. Pirsig said that this "SEEMS to be true UNDER SOM." He does not say that this is necessarily true under all possible definitions of free will or that some assertion of some form of free will is necessary for moral responsibility. Free will is certainly is not necessary for morals in the MOQ since in the MOQ reality is a moral order. dmb: the Stanford encyclopedia makes this linkage, the dictionary makes this linkage and this linkage is logically necessary, as I've tried to explain several times. > > The Stanford encyclopedia on Free Will:"It would be misleading to specify a > strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to > this notion there is probably no single concept of it. For the most part, > what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for, maybe not > exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of agency that is NECESSARY FOR > PERSONS TO BE MORALLY RESPONSIBLE for their conduct." Steve: And I accept the Stanford Encyclopedia's definition, as I said before. You seem to have missed where it said "for the most part" and "maybe not exclusively." I can easily grant that many thinkers of the past have tried to ground moral responsibility in free will. In fact, one of my critiques AGAINST the idea of following DQ as "free will" is that following DQ cannot serve as such a ground as is what is typically sought as "free will." DQ is not about conscious deliberation and asserting control, so it doesn't offer the autonomous agency desired as "free will." I reject the idea that Pirsig's statement about freedom from static patterns equates to a concept of free will which is compatible with everyday usage because it doesn't fit this Stanford definition and every other definition which asserts free will as a matter of controlling our behavior. Control is an sq matter in the MOQ rather than DQ, and sq is not associated with freedom. I also happen to think that we don't need any concept of free will to ground moral responsibility, or rather moral responsibility is the wrong question. The relevant question is, "how do we make things better in the future?" rather than "how do we determine the extent to which the offender had a free choice in the matter?" It really doesn't matter whether, say, all serial killers turn out to have been abused as children in deciding what to do with serial killers. Either we have the ability to safely restore them to society or we need to lock them up. The only thing that hypothetical fact about child abuse counts for is the possibility of preventing more serial killers perhaps by preventing child abuse What matters is how we might hope to modify behavior rather than determining where to put the blame. dmb: > My computer's dictionary says, determinism is "the doctrine that all events, > including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the > will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human > beings have no free will and CANNOT BE HELD MORALLY RESPONSIBLE for their > actions." Steve: And as above, pay attention to the qualifier "SOME philosophers." What that means is that your own dictionary says that moral responsibility is not always tied up with the whole free will determinism debate. It actually contradicts what you cited it to support. And note that you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You are complaining that I have a too narrow a notion of free will in mind while simultaneously insisting that any reasonable definition of free will includes the narrow idea that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. (The meta-argument: So much for your overwhelming evidence which I just utterly demolished point by point. That isn't to say that I don't think that it is still overwhelming to you, but evidence is only overwhelming if it convinces, and I happen to think your argument here is really lousy. So again, why not leave out the parts where you express your exasperation and congratulate yourself for arguing so well? Your complaining doesn't add anything positive. It heats things up without adding any light, and that's what I've been complaining about. It doesn't say anything more than I did in adding to my answers to your arguments, "See? I just trounced all your points." Sorry, our conversational partners gets to be the judge of that. Did it add anything when Bo used to tell you how convinced you ought to be? Of course not. And it is no better when you do it. Oh, but when you do it it is justified because you are right. Right? Wrong. Whether you are right or wrong, it doesn't add anything but heat to tell your opponent how sure you are that you are right and how frustrated you are in being able to convince him. It just sounds like you are playing to the crowd with such garbage because you couldn't possibly be so foolish as to believe that I will be swayed by you sighing and saying how exasperated you are. Or are you?) > dmb said to Steve: > 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? ...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. > > > dmb says: > You are answering criticism that says you are compartmentalizing DQ and sq > and your reply is to say they are distinct aspects? saying they are distinct > is just another way to say they are in separate compartments. You've not > replied to the criticism, Steve. All you did was re-assert the objectionable > assertion using a slightly different term. Sorry, but that does not count as > a argument even by the loosest standards. Steve: What I was saying is that I don't see that as a valid criticism that I need to defend against. Of course I'm distinguishing DQ and sq. Why wouldn't I? This debate is about a line from Lila where Pirsig does just that as well. > Steve said: > 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. 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 says: > Pre-conceptual does not mean unconscious. Pre-intellectual does not mean that > either. Where did you get that idea that the capacity to respond to DQ is > unconscious? Do you have ANY evidence for that view and how could that > possibly work? The students who learned to see Quality in writing weren't > unconscious. The motorcycle mechanic who follows DQ has not lost his mind. > The MOQ does not deny the existence of conscious self. It denies the > Cartesian self, the subject as a metaphysical substance or entity. To deny > the existence of ANY KIND of conscious self would be ridiculous because > denying it entails employment of the very thing you're denying. In other > words, it's logically incoherent. > > > Steve said: > 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 says: > Again, you are only saying that the MOQ differs from the usual stance. Yes, > of course it does. We all understand that. Yes, human agency is conceived > differently in the MOQ. Nobody says otherwise so your often repeated point is > beside the point. We're talking about free will according to Pirsig. Period. > What's that? You want to make that point again anyway? Okay, but I don't see > how it helps anything. Steve: I am not just saying it differs from the usual stance. I am saying that what Pirsig calls freedom (the capacity to respond to DQ) is so different from the concept of free will that it is as ridiculous to use that term for DQ as it is to say, when I say 'dog" I sometimes mean 'cat.' I could quote all the crap you've given Marsha over doing this sort of thing but I'm too lazy. Anyway, I'm sure you recall your insistence that Marsha use usual dictionary definitions for terms otherwise we can't hope to be understood. Plus, we already have the phrase "the capacity to respond to DQ." Conflating this notion with free will isn't at all helpful and only misleads. > Steve said: > ... 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). > > > dmb says: > Yes, it's more than just annoying when people try to sneak theism into the > MOQ. But it's also true that Quality and "God" are equal terms if those terms > are taken a certain way. Steve: Sure, you can use a word to mean whatever you say you mean. You can do the "when I say 'cat' what I mean is 'dog'" thing if you really want to, but why would you want to? dmb: Only a true mystic can make this equation, Pirsig says. In the same way, it would be more than annoying to sneak the Cartesian self back into the MOQ but nobody is doing that. Steve: Sure. Not necessarily. But you ARE sneaking in the conscious deliberate chooser notion of freedom--the moral agent which is responsible because she is in control. DQ is not about exerting control! dmb: Why does it matter what non-MOQers think, especially since they are not here and you are not debating them. What relevance could they have to my criticisms of your take on the MOQ? Steve: Your argument is not with my take on the MOQ. The difference here is whether common definitions such as those offered by Stanford encyclopedia for free will are compatible with the notion the capacity to follow DQ. We agree that that is a sort of freedom, but I deny that that is a freedom of _will_. 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
