Hi Steve --
Hi 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.
Natural laws are true to the extent that they are predictable, which I
suppose is what your mean by "pragmatic". I don't know what you mean by
"true as a metaphysical assertion". I see nothing metaphysical about
physical laws.
Nor do I see why man's judgments and decisions should be bound by the laws
of nature. If you drive a car you must make sure that there's gas in the
tank, air in the tires, and that the vehicle is serviced often enough to
repair or replace brake linings, batteries, spark plugs, lubricants, etc.
But there's nothing about this maintenance that determines when or where you
drive the car or whom you take with you. Those are your free decisions.
The same is true of your personal choices in a deterministic universe. The
fact that you need to put food in your stomach on a regular basis, catch a
few hours of sleep each night, and expect the sun to come up in the morning
doesn't restrict your freedom to choose work or play, your preference for
chocolate or vanilla, the type of music you enjoy, or where you decide to go
on your vacation.
You throw a monkey wrench in your analysis, however, when you insist that
reality is Quality. Quality (Value) is relative to the observer. Otherwise
we would all have the same values, and "preference" would be meaningless.
Why is it the Pirsigians don't understand this? The Value of your reality
is what you make of it. You are the supreme judge and arbiter over your
existence. Quality isn't handed to you on a stone tablet. YOU decide what
is valuable, worthy, or moral in this life. Man is the measure of all
things; if this were not so, we wouldn't be talking about values as choices
and preferences or debating whether certain kinds of behavior are moral or
immoral. The whole point of lining in a relational world is that we are
free to value it differentially.
[Ham, previously]:
We simply cannot participate as free agents in a perfectly moral universe
when that universe is directing all our moves.
[Steve]:
What if we are _part_ of the universe rather than metaphysically
divorced from it? Then if there is an aspect of reality which is free
(namely DQ) then we are also free to the extent that we are DQ.
That's making a conflated paradigm out of what is actually a very simple
principle: Value is the essential ground of existential reality. The "free
aspect" of this reality is the sensible agent whose experienced universe is
an objective representation of his differentiated values.
Where I agree with you is in thinking that we can't "get around" the
fact that we have to think of human freedom very differently in the
context of the MOQ. When Pirsig describes free will, he is not
describing anything much like free will as it has been traditionally
understood.
I refuse to distort Free Will into something it is not simply to conform to
a philosopher's radical definition of reality.
Thanks, Steve, Your insights are good except for the box in which you try
to fit them.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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