Hi Mark, Mark: > I am not sure where you are getting your definitions from.
Steve: I responding to dmb's suggestion of a definition for determinism: dmb says: >>> Here's how I understand the operative terms. "Determinism" is doctrine that >>> says our actions are not really chosen by us, that we are not in control of >>> our actions. I responded... >> Steve: The problem with this definition is that the MOQ agrees that "our actions are not REALLY chosen by us" since "us" doesn't have any REAL metaphysical status. Lila doesn't REALLY have the patterns, the patterns have Lila. So this definition doesn't work to show how the MOQ disagrees with determinism. To affirm or deny that "our actions are not REALLY chosen by us" would be to implicitly accept the s/o metaphysical picture upon which this claim rests (as punches up an appearance reality distinction with the "really.") The MOQ can't do that. Instead it ays "mu" to the free will determinism debate about whether choices or causal laws are what is REALLY real and reformulates the issue of freedom to a point where we stop wondering whether "free will" or "causal laws" are more real. BOTH are real in the exact same way. Both are intellectual patterns of value. NEITHER free will nor causality can claim the the metaphysical high ground--the more primary metaphysical status. The metaphysical status that "freedom" has as Dynamic Quality is not a capacity of will and is in no way threatened by the fact that humans can often successfully predict experience in terms of causal laws. Mark: Since you read William James, I will refer to my recollection of what he wrote in the Pluralistic Universe (in my own words of course...Determinism means that we are a domino that is falling at a predetermined time. This means that everything that happens was set out with the Original Idea, or Intelligent Design. Steve: That agrees with my sense of what James was saying on the subject in his talk "The Determinism Dilemma." What he is describing as determinism is what I think people today would call fatalism. He endorses indeterminism over determinism in that essay which equates with chance. Post quantum mechanics, people's idea of determinism includes chance and fits what James is saying about indeterminism (that if you could somehow rewind history and play it again it would come out differently.) Mark: There is no such thing as partial determinism as I believe Jan wrote. This is like being partially pregnant or partially dead. Determinism is a premise in philosophy that keeps getting perpetuated for ever by short sighted people who think that there is no hope. I thought Pirsig had put that to rest in Lila. On page 181 of Lila I quote: "So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but that everything, is an ethical activity. It is nothing else.". This quote states two things. One is that determinism is not a correct way to frame the universe since ethics and determinism are not compatible. Steve: I don't accept it as an axiom that determinism is incomptible with ethics. If we are willing to subjtract the metaohysical baggage from free will to allow it to function as an intellectual pattern in the MOQ, then we can do the same with determinism. If both are seen as aesthetic creations of the intellect, then both can peacefully coexist like polar and rectangular coordinates without need to ask which is teh REAL way to think of human choice. Best, Steve 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
