[Steve]
I appreciate your response. I especially liked your analogy of "having"
free will in the conventional sense that we say someone "has" ADD, but I
think there is an important possible difference.
[Arlo]
Well, no analogy is perfect. :-)
[Steve]
We can certainly understand ADD pragmatically in terms of the different
experiences we have of those with it versus without it, but how does the
same apply to free will?
[Arlo]
I think we can understand "freedom" (or agency) pragmatically, although
we don't have a control group we can point to as "not having agency". In
fact, I think the MOQ tries to do just this. Remember that even with
"ADD", the fact we assign a "have" and "have not" group is a culturally
pragmatic distinction, and not one everyone agrees on. But what we do
start to see with the MOQ is varying levels of agency, so while we don't
have a "free-less" group, we do see varying degrees of potential, both
between levels in the MOQ and even within (e.g. on the biological level
an amoeba compared to an ferret).
[Steve]
What experiences could ever distinguish between a will that is
determined versus one that is free?
[Arlo]
I'm going to point out that I think the question is flawed. Not that I
have much to say about "free will/determinism", but you've removed
"will" in a way that makes it an object (I think) which can either be
"free" or "determined"? And, given that I agree with Pirsig that our
activity evidences both freedom and constraint, I don't think a "will"
(even as a figure of speech) has much value as being Absolutely Free or
Absolutely Determined (wasn't one of the quotes Andre posted along these
lines?).
The question is, can we distinguish between ranges of potential
(agency), and I think we can.
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