Hi dmb. On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 3:03 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Steve said: > He [Pirsig] 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. > > dmb says: > Free will can't be what Pirsig says it is because philosophers disagree about > animals having free will? > But Pirsig is disagreeing with those philosophers on purpose. Why should his > reformulation have to answer to their definition of free will (as something > that is uniquely human) when that is the very thing he's disagreeing about?
Steve: I'm not saying that he can't explain free will in a different way. My issue is with whether he is actually dealing with the same question asked in the "ancient controversy" and to suss out the differences between what Pirsig means and what philosophers have traditionally meant by the term "free will." We agree that one key difference between traditional conceptions and Pirsig's conceptions is that Pirsig denies free will as the function of a metaphysical entity. There seem to be other differences that don't have anything to do with such a metaphysical entity. For example, the question was never, do we have intentions? Of course we do. That is just an empirical fact about human experience that anyone can verify at any time. The question traditionally asked as free will vs. determinism usually concerns distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary action. We know that some action is involuntary. Most people would count hopping off a hot stove as an involuntary reflex rather than an exercise of will. The question asked with regard to free will vs. determinism is whether _all_ of our action is INvoluntary in some sense. If Pirsig defines free will as the capacity to respond to dynamic quality (as he seems to do), and if you agree that the hot stove example tells us what it means to follow dynamic quality, then clearly Pirsig is not using the term free will to distinguish between volitional versus convolutional acts let alone to determine whether the feeling of intention in a volitional act is or is not an illusion in some sense. I also then question whether he is making a poor choice in calling following dynamic quality free will. He doesn't do this explicitly in Lila, but it seems to be implied and he seems to confirm this conclusion in LC. How could it makes sense to call what he is talking about free will when it doesn't even refer to will since will only applies to voluntary acts? The free intent dictionary defines will as "The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action." Clearly hopping off a hot stove is not a deliberate choice for a course of action, so it isn't willed. Therefore, ionic again, I think "free will" is a bad choice of terminology for what he is getting at with his new conception of freedom as Dynamic Quality. dmb: > In the paragraphs immediately following his reformulation, Pirsig says: > > "...even at the most fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of > values and moral judgements are identical. The 'Laws of Nature' are moral > laws. OF COURSE IT SOUNDS PECULIAR AT FIRST [precisely BECAUSE it DIFFERS > from those philosophers you mention!] and awkward and unnecessary to say that > hydrogen and oxygen form water because it is moral to do so. But it is no > less peculiar and awkward and unnecessary than to say chemistry professors > smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect forces of > the cosmos force them to do it. IN THE PAST the LOGIC HAS BEEN that if > chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow > only the laws of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the > laws of cause and effect too. But his logic can be applied in A REVERSE > DIRECTION. We can just as easily deduce the morality of atoms from the > observation that chemistry professor are, in general, moral. If chemistry > professors EXERCISE CHO > ICE, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it > follows that ATOMS MUST EXERCISE CHOICE TOO." > > dmb resumes: > As I see it, your contention is that Pirsig's reformulation can't be what he > says it is because it disagrees with the view he's rejecting. You want his > view to answer to the view he is rejecting. Steve: Pirsig is certainly rejecting the doctrines of free will and determinism as traditionally posed. What I am arguing here is that he is not reformulating the question so mush as answering a different question, and since his answer does not distinguish between volitional and convolutional action it is a mistake to use the term "will." > Steve said: > 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. ...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. > > dmb says: > It only seems like an error because you are using "will" to mean what Pirsig > does not mean by it, as explained above. Steve: We know from LC that Pirsig insists on using ordinary dictionary definitions for words otherwise we can't be understood. What we see in the above quote is that he extends choice to all levels. That is not the same thing as "will" which is voluntary deliberate choice. How Pirsig is using the word "will" is something we can only infer, and I still contend that if we take Pirsig to be using the word will in the way implied by the quotes I provided in the OP for this thread, then that is a misuse of the word "will" which only serves to associate what he is talking about with regard to dynamic quality as a conception of freedom with a lot of old philosophical baggage. dmb: By insisting that "will" means an intentional conscious decision, it cannot be applied to anything except the rational deliberations of human beings. Steve: True. And it also means that we can't apply it to humans when they are making unintentional unconscious non-volitional actions such as hopping off of hot stoves. But that is what the word "will" means. It makes more sense to me to discuss will in MOQ terms as having intellectual and social patterns. From there we could discuss whether or not we have _free_ 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
