Hi All, I wanted to clean the slate by starting a new thread to discuss the relationship of the association of free will with dynamic quality based on a few quotes from Lila.
First of all, in response to "the ancient free will vs. determinism controversy." Pirsig continues: "This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under a subject-object metaphysics. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong. On the other hand, if the determinists let go of their position it would seem to deny the truth of science. If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary. If "everything" is included in the class of "substance and its properties," and if "substance and its properties" is included in the class of "things that always follow laws," and if "people" are included in the class "everything," then it is an air-tight logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of substance. To be sure, it doesn't seem as though people blindly follow the laws of substance in everything they do, but within a Deterministic explanation that is just another one of those illusions that science is forever exposing. All the social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bed-rock metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human behavior exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the world. A "moral" person acts conventionally, "watches out for the cops," "keeps his nose clean," and nothing more. In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma doesn't come up. 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. The Metaphysics of Quality has much much more to say about ethics, however, than simple resolution of the Free Will vs Determinism controversy. The Metaphysics of Quality says that if moral judgments are essentially assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgments are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world." Steve: Since Pirsig describes human freedom as "the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality" and does so in the context of the free will vs. determinism controversy, it seems that he must be equating the capacity to respond to Dynamic Quality with free will. Pirsig defines determinism as "the philosophic doctrine that man, like all other objects in the universe, follows fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception." This horn ought to be rejected based on Pirsig's discussion of Newton's Laws of Gravitation in ZAMM. The idea that scientific laws come before the particles that are supposed to follow these laws is just an idea which from an evolutionary perspective comes _after_ particles. He then defines free will as "the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body." I contend that "free will" can't merely be the capacity to make choices and have preferences. Otherwise philosophers would have regarded animals as having free will since they exhibit preferences and make choices. There isn't necessarily any willing involved. Will is not mere agency as the capacity to take action. It is the capacity to take volitional action. It has always been matter of distinguishing voluntary from involuntary action. If an action is involuntary, it is not a willed act. Will is a matter of intentional behavior, and the question of freedom with regard to will is then usually a question of whether we are free to have intentions other than what we have. Where do our intentions come from? Do we choose them in some sense? Do they come from us? What do we mean by "us" in this context? These are difficult questions, but Pirsig avoids the pitfall of trying to make sense of the self as a metaphysical entity and instead takes freedom to be about dynamic quality. As Pirsig put it, "When they call it freedom, that's not right. "Freedom" doesn't mean anything. Freedom's just an escape from something negative. The real reason it's so hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean Dynamic Quality." So we can dispense with the question of whether will is or is not free or rather understand it to be a matter of dynamic-static tension rather than an all or nothing. But there remains a problem with equating free will with the capacity to follow dynamic quality. It isn't that following dynamic quality isn't free. It is by definition. The problem is that following DQ is at least not always intentional. It is not necessarily a matter of will (a voluntary act accompanied by a felt intention) at all. Consider Pirsig's "hot stove" illustration of what it means to follow Dynamic Quality as a means for understanding what the equation of following DQ and free will could mean: "When the person who sits on the stove first discovers his low-Quality situation, the front edge of his experience is Dynamic. He does not think, "This stove is hot," and then make a rational decision to get off. A "dim perception of he knows not what" gets him off Dynamically. Later he generates static patterns of thought to explain the situation." If getting off the stove is following DQ and if there was no conscious decision to get off the stove, then it was not a voluntary act. It was not a willing. So it would seem to be a serious error to call it free will when it doesn't involve will. On the other hand, if we can find examples of taking voluntary action to successfully follow DQ, then such examples would be examples of exercising free will based on Pirsig's formulation and the volition implied in the word "will." Can you think of any examples? One problem with finding such examples may be that DQ is pre-intellectual. Does that inhibit the possibility of making a conscious decision to follow it that could be correctly regarded as willing an intention? Again, since there seemed to be so much miscommunication, I started this new thread to hopefully reboot the conversation to make sure it is about Pirsig's philosophy instead of the personalities of the participants. 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
