Hi Steve (Arlo mentioned) --
On Tues, 9/13/11 at 12:07 PM, "Steven Peterson" <[email protected]>
wrote:
On p222 of Lila's Child, Bodvar asks: "If the world is composed of
values, then who is doing the valuing?
Pirsig's response to Bodvar: "This is a subtle slip back into
subject-object thinking. Values have bee converted to a kind of
object in this sentence, and then the question is asked, "If values
are an object, then where is the subject?" The answer is found in
the MOQ sentence, "It is not Lila who has values, it is values that
have Lila. Both the subject and the object are patterns of value."
(Annotn 76).
[snip]
If the individual is a figure of speech, then talking about the
individual "making choices" is a figure of speech about a
figure of speech. At no point does it begin to make any MOQ
sense to say that the individual possesses or does not possess
"free will." We literally are our value choices. Quality has Lila.
The question in the MOQ is not about whether the individual
possesses free will but whether values themselves are free.
Pirsig's answer is that DQ is the free sort. SQ is the non-free sort.
Talking about a person choosing one thing or another has no
metaphysical reality in the MOQ. It is just a figure of speech.
There you have succinctly laid out the inconsistencies in Pirsig's thesis
that result in an incomprehensible epistemology. Everything is analogy -- a
"figure of speech"; so there is no fundamental principle that we can believe
in and rely on. The individual himself is a figure of speech -- a
collection of Quality patterns; so there is no sensible agent who can assess
or interpret the Value that ostensibly resides in the realm of Dynamic
Quality. Most importantly, where there is no "chooser" there is no Choice,
which rules out Free Will as well as moral responsibility.
The author's statement that "Quality has Lila" would suggest that Value
itself is an agent (agency?) of reality. But does that agency possess the
sensibility needed to make moral decisions? No, because Morality is posited
as the inherent quality of the evolutionary universe, which makes such
appraisals unnecessary. In other words, since the continuous movement to
Betterness is deterministic, the individual in only a redundant product of
evolution with no active role or purpose in the process.
Later, Arlo says to Dan:
I'd say that seeing "free will" as some existential "out there" thing that
floats around and controls experience is certainly an illusion. But the
concept of "free will" is an intellectual pattern of value, a way we
explain and make sense of our experience.
[Steve comments]:
Once we reject the first sense of an existential free will, what is left
to debate in the old free will-determinism controversy?
[Arlo replies]:
Little, personally. But I think we can (and are) continuing to improve
our explanations of experience.
Really, Arlo? If you can explain experience in the absence of a sensible
agent, you'll be doing RMP and the rest of us a momentous favor.
Thanks Steve, and good luck Arlo,
--Ham
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