Steve said to Ham:
I wonder if Dennett takes determinism as the belief that natural laws are true
as a metaphysical assertion or a pragmatic one. If the latter I agree with
Dennett and in some weak sense a "determinist." If we take determinism to mean
that there is a degree of predictability about the world, then few would deny
it. But this is not how Pirsig defined determinism as the doctrine that "man
follows the cause-and-effect laws of substance." I deny that sort of
determinism along with Pirsig. Note also that reality is Quality, then even
substances don't follow the cause and effect laws of substance but rather
exercise preference.
dmb says:
These are the sorts of comments that make me think it would be reasonable to
describe your positions as a kind of value determinism. Or maybe even better, a
kind of soft determinism, a.k.a. old school compatibilism. Didn't you post that
famous Schopenhauer line? "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he
wills". And doesn't Sam Harris's neurological determinism make the same basic
claim? "In other words", Wiki puts it, ", although an agent may often be free
to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined." Sam's
version would say those motives are a product of the brain. But Wiki also
says....
"Compatibilists are sometimes called "soft determinists" pejoratively (William
James's term). James accused them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by
stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism. Immanuel
Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery." Ted Honderich
explains that the mistake of Compatibilism is to assert that nothing changes as
a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of
origination."
That pretty well reflect my complaint about your position, wherein freedom
becomes quite meaningless and inert, a mere involuntary reflex action. You're
free to hold this view, of course, but it is going to clash with the MOQ in a
very big way because of the way the whole things pivots around freedom as the
engine and goal of all evolutionary development. That is hardly meaningless or
inert. This Quality doesn't just get you off hot stoves. It is the source and
substance of everything, the ongoing stimulus that created the world, every
last bit of it, Pirsig says.
Think about the meaning of "involuntary" action as opposed to action that is
natural and spontaneous. I think you'd be making a mistake to a presume that
our actions are either taken on the basis or rational deliberation or they are
as automatic as the heartbeat or breathing. There are more than two options
here, you know? And I'm guessing that you want to frame the issue around the
hot stove example because then you can sort of dismiss DQ as a biological
reflex action. But when we pose the question in terms of Pirsig's most
sustained and elaborate example, fixing motorcycles with artistry and writing
excellent essays, this kind of physiological reductionism will get you nowhere
fast. Being a slave to your biological impulses simply isn't the same thing as
unpremeditated spontaneity. That's the mistake that the hippies made, according
to Pirsig. They confused DQ with biological sq, he says. Because neither of
them is social or intellectual, they were taken to be the same thin
g.
Zen and the Art of knee jerk reactions? I don't think so.
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