Hi Horse and All --
Some very important points have been made in recent discussions, and I would
venture to say that, by hook or crook, you folks are working your way out of
the moral morass that has been created by the MoQ paradigm. I know this
will irritate the Pirsigians, but when Marsha quoted Albahari on "The agent
of thoughts (autonomy)" and changed the thread from Morality to Self, she
unwittingly opened the door to an inevitable conclusion:
"The sense of being a uniquely separate _thing_, whether as something
special, or as something autonomous, is strong evidence for our reflexive
ascription of boundedness to the self we assume we are. We can also note
its connection with the long-running debate on free-will, and with the fact
that many philosophers, such as Kant and Frankfurt, have chosen to identify
the most central aspect of our 'selves' with 'the will'."
This insightful statement, remarkable for a Buddhist thinker, completes a
debating cycle that dates back to Apr. 12 when I joined a discussion on
"Free Will (footnotes to Plato)" launched by Mark and Arlo. Here's what I
said then:
"In order for man to be a free agent, he is created as a 'being-aware', an
individuated entity that stands apart from the Creator or Source. He can be
neither indigenous to it nor the essence of its value. But so that he may
realize this value without the bias of absolute knowledge, the psychic core
of man's being is value-sensibility. In existential terms, cognizant
awareness is a non-entity: it cannot be localized, quantified, or directly
observed. The individual is a choice-maker only by virtue of the fact that
he is an autonomous entity."
I would like to quote some pertinent comments posted more recently along the
way:
John observed:
I've often said it's the basis of individuality - that individuality is a
choice and any being which has no choice, has no real independent
being. Like an automaton of some other's scheme.
Steve responded:
Yes, I have tried to make clear that the free will/determinism
debate depends entirely on premises that the MOQ denies. The
MOQ denies free will as well as determinism in favor of a continuum of
reliable to unpredictable preferences. Determinism
is false in the MOQ because determinism leaves no place for
values. Free will is also false since though everything is preference
(or value), it is meaningless to assert that preference is free. What
could a person's preference be free of when all that a person is
is a set of preferences? This freedom to which the traditional
notion of free will refers is the freedom of an independent agent
that the MOQ calls a fiction.
Dmb commented:
Steve keeps saying that it makes no sense to say we choose our
values because we ARE our values. But this seems to assume that
there are no conflicts between our values, as if we can follow
biological values and intellectual values without any contradictions
or tensions, as if we are monolithic or fully harmonized, as if we
were determined by our values instead of the laws of causality. This just
puts us right back into the determinist soup again. This removes richness
and complexity and the unpredictable
Dynamic component too. As Pirsig paints it in the larger picture,
everybody is engaged in struggle with the patterns of their own lives.
To say we are determined by the laws of cause and effect is just
one answer to the question, an answer we can reject without also
rejecting the question. The MOQ's reformulation is a different
answer to the question. I mean, if we are going to discuss the meaning of
Pirsig reformulation, we have to be able to talk about
freedom and control OUTSIDE of SOM and that means that free will is NOT
the free will OF any little god or soul or anything
like that. We have to be able to talk about what constraints mean
OUTSIDE of mechanistic causal constraints. Isn't that the point of
the reformulation? To talk about the extent of human freedom in
the absence of those SOM assumptions?
A Moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference
to right and wrong." Moral agency is a person's responsibility for
making moral judgments and taking actions that comport with morality
Matt conjectured:
Steve said that moral responsibility doesn't start to make sense
"until we get to beings that have social patterns because only such beings
have behavior which is modifiable through praise and blame." That defines
_basic_ social patterns, but because we already sign on
to Pirsig's lauded maneuver of distinguishing between levels, defining
a basic pattern does not by itself imply a reduction of other patterns
that may arise from it (in Pirsig's schematic, intellectual patterns; but
in our own philosophizing, we might distinguish more). That is at the
conceptual level, and Steve's example--of the scolded child--
gives us the pedagogical level. What Steve said suggests that
praise/blame is in some way basic to social patterns and moral
responsibility and that in creating moral behavior in children, one begins
with praise/blame.
Ian (finally) responds to Marsha:
So even an analytical Buddhist agrees that "one must" ... attribute
free-will to self.
And lastly, Horse's summation of the preceding:
What is the difference between an 'autonomous individual self ' and an
'autonomous moral agent'? I'm having a hard time seeing
any difference at all given what's been said so far.
So given my current inability to see where there is an effective
difference in this discussion:
What is it then that has or expresses free will if not an 'autonomous
individual self '.
And if this 'autonomous individual self ' is illusory then the
conventional way of looking at free will is also illusory.
It seems to me that in all the discussions so far there has been a
tendency to fall back to the idea that there is an autonomous moral agent
('autonomous individual self') who 'has' free will and expresses that free
will by making free and independent moral choices.
This doesn't appear to be the case given many of Pirsigs quotes and
references. The overall impression that I get is that the GOF 'Moral
Agent' is being shoe-horned into the MoQ where it doesn't
quite fit!
Yes, progress is being made even as we speak. As I've said before, morality
is a human precept, which means that value-sensibility is prerequisite for
moral judgment. This precept "doesn't quite fit" the MoQ paradigm which
posits Value (Quality) as a universal truth or principle. But unless or
until the concept of free agency is realized and accepted as more than a
"shoe-horn", moral responsibility is without meaning or justification in
Pirsig's philosophy. The individual self -- whether defined as subjective or
illusory -- is that agency.
In defense of individual freedom,
Ham
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