Hi dmb,
> dmb said: > If Pirsig can reject the Cartesian self or SOM's self and STILL say that > one's behavior is free to some extent, then why can't we? > > > Steve replied: > Sure, one can _say_ it, but is it true, and what does it even mean to say so? > > dmb says: > You don't know what it means and you want to know if it's true? Steve: No, what I am saying is that it doesn't mean much to say so if you don't know what it means. If you think freedom is a capacity of the will or as some particular sort of the ability to choose, then I think you are taking his statement to mean something it was not intended to mean. Freedom is the capacity to respond to DQ. It is the capacity for an amoeba to move away from acid and for a chemistry professor to hop off a hot stove. Since DQ is pre-intellectual experience, it is most certainly not the capacity to rationally deliberate and self-consciously choose between possible courses of actions. I thought we had finally agreed on that. > Steve replied: > Well now you slipped free _will_ into this picture where Pirsig talked > behavior and perception rather than _will_ being free. > > > dmb says: > Slipped free will into this picture? Steve: Yes, that is what I just said. dmb: Not at all. Pirsig's claim is the MOQ's reformulation of free will and determinism. Steve: I think this would be much better put as Pirsig's reformulation of freedom in terms of static and dynamic quality IN PLACE of the traditional free will/determism conception of human freedom. > Steve asked: > How could we behave so as to perceive more or less of it? If dynamic quality > is the leading edge of experience, how does anyone _not_ perceive it? Why > does he see perception rather than will as the key to human freedom where > most philosophers of the past have been concerned with a particular sort of > the capacity to choose? Unfortunately, rather than shed light one the matter, > for me this quote just muddles things further. > > > dmb says: > I think Pirsig's comments only clarify and illuminate the very issue we've > been debating for months and I think it is your questions that just muddle > things. Pirsig says that one's behavior is free to the extent that we can > perceive and follow DQ. Your question construes that backwards, as if we > could behave our way to free behavior. This perception and following of DQ is > not opposed to freedom of the will. Steve: Right, not necessarily opposed but still not the same thing. In Pirsig's NYT formulation PERCEPTION is either free or not rather than WILLED CHOICE being free or not. I'm not muddling matters. My questions are aimed at pointing out what has already been muddled in the conversation. What is further muddled here in this quote is the ability to read what Pirsig is saying as an endorsement of free will as you have been trying to do. My point is that this matter is muddled on this forum and this quote doesn't help to clear up any differences we have. Instead it raises another term that I think separates freedom as a willing from freedom as Pirsig conceives of it--in this case as a perception, in the Lila formulation as a following, in neither case is it an aspect of the faculty of the mind for conscious deliberate action (i.e., the will as it is ordinarily defined). dmb: It is his description of freedom within the MOQ. He is only talking about one's capacity to decide upon or choose a course of action. Steve: Now this you just pulled out of your butt. Pirsig is describing freedom as following or perceiving DQ, and you are adding this "deciding and choosing a course of action" stuff to make it look like he is supporting free will as it is traditional understood--per Stanford, as "a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millennia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.)" I think you are misrepresenting Pirsig to say that he is getting into the fray with these philosophers about which sort of the capacity of a rational agent to choose is the free sort when instead he is offering a different conception of human freedom altogether. dmb: There is no good reason to keep loading one's "will" with all sorts of objectionable metaphysical claims. He's just talking about people, about your freedom and your life. This baggage is not only unnecessary and unwanted, it's a wrench in the gears of your thinking. It's got you jammed up quite badly. Steve: Again, I had thought we were passed this. I am not doing anything metaphysical with "will." What I am suggesting we do with the word will is use the term as the dictionary ordinarily defines it since as Pirsig insisted that we do so in LC... from dictionary.com will "1.the faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own actions: the freedom of the will. " That word has nothing to do with Pirsig's conception of freedom explicated as sq/DQ. 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
