Good morning Steve,
> Steve said to DmB: > Sorry, but as I have been trying to tell you, you are quite wrong > about what is meant by compatiblism as opposed to incompatiblism. You, > my friend, are clearly an INcompatiblist. That is to say that you hold > that in order to assert free will we must deny determinism--that free > will and determinism are incompatible. > > Ron: > Really Steve, all Daves post have been about nothing else but a compatabilist > stance against your persistant insistance that freewill is not a possibility > in a MoQ. > That choices and values are not free at all. Steve: Two things here. First of all, understand that dmb is taking the classical INcompatiblist position as the SEP defines the issue: "For ease of reference and discussion throughout this entry, let us simplify the above argument as follows: 1. If a person acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise (A-C). 2. If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does (D-E). 3. Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will (F). Call this simplified argument the Classical Incompatibilist Argument." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ Isn't that what dmb is saying? That we must REJECT determinism in order to make sense of asserting free will? Well, that is _in_compatiblism not compatiblism. Compatiblism is the position that free will and determinism are compatible rather than mutually exclusive positions. Some (like Dennett) even go so far as to say that free will is predicated on determinism being true. Ron: Dmb is rejecting, more precisely, that there is a specific, general meaning of the term "free will" " "It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it" A response to your position that the idea has definite metaphysical meaning that must be rejected in a MoQ. You then assert that there is no will because there is no agent and that there is no freedom because all choice is statically determined. This leads one to believe that your position rests on the notion that all freedom and choice are really static prefferences. You have based your entire dispute apon this. DmB is rejecting this as Determinism, which it is because it does not allow for any "real" freedom. "We are our values" is represented as "we are static prefferences" which you extend to mean that all our choices are static prefferences thus all freedom is static prefference. To sum it up, youseem to maintain then that there is no freedom and no will, and that all reality is as thus determined. Dave is not rejecting Determinism, and I think he has made that plain, he is rejecting your particular brand of determinism as central to the Moq thesis which then rejects any conception of "free will" as moot since in this formulation it doesent really exist. Which, Steve is an incompatabilist position because it denies that free will exists and asserts a position compatable with traditional ideas of Determinism. So I can't really accept that explanation as viable. Steve continues: So, presumably, the reason dmb hasn't yet responded is because he now finally understands this and is very embarrassed. He has to deal with the fact that he has been berating me for months for asserting logically contradictory notions and not using terms properly, when his own beloved SEP contradicts his usage of the term "compatiblism." In fact, he recently accused me of poor reading of all the compatiblist philosophers I have quoted while the SEP article on compatiblism is something _he_ quoted to _me_ weeks ago without even realizing that it defines compatiblism as the _opposite_ of what he has been arguing for. Further, it cites those philosophers I have quoted as supporting compatiblism as the compatibility of free will with determinism. Ron: As per my reasons above, it seems to me that you are the one taking the incompatabilist position. Dave has posted many, many quotes supporting the view that determinism is a requirement for free will, in fact also asserts that free will is a requirement for determinism. The charge holds little water. Steve: Secondly, let me explain my position on the MOQ and the free will-determinism conundrum. I think that the terms "free will" and "determinism" have strong associations with SOM, so it is best to let them stay that way. Pirsig doesn't accept the premise of causality as mechanistic laws governing the universe, and he doesn't accept the premise of the Cartesian self. In their traditional SOM forms, the MOQ says "mu" to the free will/determinism, and I would prefer to leave it at that. Pirsig has given us plenty of tools to use to talk about freedom without entering into the ancient arguments over these particular terms where there is little agreement about what they even mean. Steve concludes: HOWEVER, if one wants to keep these terms and use them in an MOQ context, then they must first be shed of their SOM appearance-reality baggage. There is no Cartesian "I" sitting behind the scenes running the show, and there is no illusion versus reality question with regard to what is REALLY going on with regard to causality. Once we do that, we have two intellectual patterns for talking about human experience which can both be used (like polar and rectangular coordinates) for whatever purposes they are good for without having to decide which one describes the way things REALLY are despite all illusions to the contrary. We have a view of freedom where this non-metaphysical version of free will is compatible with a non-metaphysical version of determinism. Ron: Thats all Dave has ever been saying Steve. I think he took it as granted that most of us here shed the SOM baggage on most every issue, and that is not an unreasonable assumption to take on this forum. All his criticism has been based on this assumption. It's an un-needed assertion to constantly posit in a "Quality" based discussion. Kinda like what I do whenever anyone pulls out the old "appearence-reality" terms. I bang on the notion that this is not what was originally maintained by the idea nor intended. What Socrates (by way of Plato) described was the mimicking of the good (apearence of good) with what is actually good in ones own experience (the true). But that can be another thread should anyone be interested in discussing it. Thnx Steve. It's not that I hit and run so much, it's just that life is hard these days and I have little time to contribute. ... 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
