[Horse]
And if this 'autonomous individual self ' is illusory then the
conventional way of looking at free will is also illusory.
[Arlo]
The way I see it, "free will" is intellectual pattern we use in an
attempt to describe experience. Like "polar coordinates", it can be
useful or not, and should be evaluated by how valuable a description it
provides (is it pragmatically useful? or something like that).
As such, I think the "free will/determinism" patterns are far less
useful (valuable) than "agency/structuration", also intellectual
patterns we use to describe experience. Both are, of course, analogies,
like "Cartiesian" versus "Polar" they are attempts to map experience.
The question I ask is, what is valuable about describing experience
using "free will"? And can a better description (agency, for example) be
more useful.
[Marsha]
Marsha, I don't call that rejection, but a warning as to the illusory
nature of the autonomous individual self.
[Arlo]
I'm going to take exception to the term "illusory" and suggest instead
that the concept of "self" has staying power because it is pragmatically
valuable. It is an "illusion" only in response to the idea that it is
some existential existant (is that redundant?). You sign your posts
"Marsha" for a reason. From within a MOQ, a "self" is not an illusion OR
an existant, it is a pattern of value, and should be evaluated as such.
So the "existential self" would be an illusion fostered by a concept
such as "free will". And that's one reason why I think "free will" is
not as valuable as term as "agency" (keeping in mind that "agency", like
"free will" is also an intellectual pattern of value).
"Agency", I hold, is a term that we can use to describe the range of
potential responses any pattern has to its environment. It can apply to
rocks (very, very, very little agency) and dogs (a greater range of
agency) and humans (the greatest range of agency within a MOQ view).
Whereas "free will" is a term that makes sense only (really) on the
"human" or "self" scale, "agency" can apply across the MOQ hierarchy in
a quite sensible way.
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
