Hi Ron,
>> Ron: >> The impression given by the phrase "the serpent of causation is thus over >> everything. "... >> is that it promotes a kind of true description of how things are beyond the >> appearence of >> "freewill." > > Steve: > I don't want to give that impression. What I mean to call up is the > Jamesian claim that the we can't separate a World As It Is from the > human contribution to conceptions of reality as we know it. James > said, "The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything," and > this applies to the notion of causality as well as anything else. We > only make the descriptions we do in terms of causality or other terms > because we have the needs and desires we have. Description is never > neutral, it always has some human purpose. Combined with that idea is > this particular pithy little remark was the notion that when we go > looking for causes, there is no logical stopping place. We just keep > finding/making causes upon causes upon causes with no Ultimate Cause > be it the human will or the big bang. > > Ron: > Not sure how causuality or infinite reduction figure into the topic at hand > of how > both freewill and determinism are followed 100 percent, how "we ARE our > prefferences " compatably coexists with the capacity to preffer better-ness . Steve: Causality in the above refers to determinism. I was describing an innocuous pragmatic version of causality upon which to build an innocuous non-metaohysical notion of determinism as opposed to metaphysical determinism built upon metaphysical mechanistic cause-and-effect under which it is imagined as a set of fundamental laws written into the very fabric of the cosmos. What I have been suggesting is a distinction between the (I.) metaphysical question about free will (do we REALLY have free will? Is free will or determinism the one correct description of The Way Things Really Are?) from (II.) non-metaphysical pragmatic versions of the terms "free will" and "determinism." I. On the metaphysical side of the issue, we have to further distinguish between SOM and the MOQ. In SOM, the traditional free will/determinism question is one about the Cartesian self and the extent to which it can have any control in an otherwise deterministic world governed by that set of mechanistic causal laws mentioned earlier. The MOQ of course says, "mu" to that version of the free will/determinism question since it does not accept the S-O premises on which it is based. But it has its own metaphysical version of the question of freedom which is not articulated in terms of "will" as a capacity of the Cartesian self. It replaces that sort of self with small self, i.e. a collection of static patterns of all four types, and Big Self, i.e. DQ. Big Self is free. Small self is determined, i.e, controlled by static patterns. The question thus gets dissolved. Free will and determinism are both true and both false depending on which "self" you are talking about. They are compatible when thought of as referring to different notions of selfhood. They are incompatible notions where only one can correctly apply when referring to just one of these notions of selfhood. (My complaint here has been that in talking about Pirsig's reformulation of the question of freedom is that "will" seems like the wrong word. And note that in Lila, Pirsig did not explicitly call his notion of freedom as the extent to which one follows dynamic quality "free will." I think it would be best not to use the term "free will" since it is likely to only lead to confusion while we have plenty of other Pirsigian ways of talking about freedom without it.) II. On the pragmatic side of the issue, if we are going to take an innocuous non-metaphysical view of free will, it only seems fair that we ought to be willing to do the same for determinism, and when we do that we find that free will and determinism are compatible concepts. Instead of free will being the faculty of a Cartesian self to function as an internal ultimate cause which can occasionally violate the external laws of causality, it is merely the fact that we make choices, act on our desires and intentions, and could have acted differently if we had wanted to. Likewise, instead of taking determinism to insist on causality as the one true way of thinking about all of reality, it is simply the human hope for increasing our power to predict and control things by making explanations of things in terms of causality (the non-metaphysical kind of causality), with the recognition that there is much more to life that predicting and controlling things. On this pragmatic account, I see no reason why becoming better at predicting could be held as mutually exclusive with the ability to act responsibly. In fact, the more determinism there is, the more meaningful our free will is since our actions have predictable consequences. If the importance of free will is thought to be moral responsibility, then clearly being held responsible only makes sense if our actions have predictable results. On this view (from Dennett), moral responsibility is not only compatible with determinism but is predicated on it. Note that if someone says, "how can we be held morally responsible if everything we do is controlled by forces beyond our control?," this person has clearly slipped back into an SOM metaphysical version of the free will/determinism which says that one or the other--either free will or mechanistic causal determinism--is the way things REALLY are and our choices are perhaps mere illusions. A pragmatist doesn't ask which description (causality or choice?) is what is REALLY going on. Both are intellectual descriptions made by human beings because human beings have the desires they have (descriptions which are forever entangled with those human values) rather than because a particular account free of human values was simply handed to us by the universe. > Steve: > We certainly DO prefer betterness. The only answer I can see to "why > prefer betterness?" is simply "because it is better." > > Ron: > Perhaps it is an extension of having the freedom to choose, from atoms to > ideas. > But you did not answer the other question "One of your arguements was that > since > we ARE our prefferences it makes no sense to talk about the capacity of > preffering "better-ness" or better "patterns" or did I get you wrong." Did I > get you > wrong Steve? Steve: I think even in the description of small self being determined there is freedom since small self is not really _controlled_ by the patterns in Pirsig's philosophy. Small self _IS_ is the patterns. Small self is free to do what it wants, it just isn't free to do other than what it wants or choose what to want. But why would you want to want what you don't want anyway? Note also that "what we want" (where "we" refers to small self) is never simple since we are a forest of often conflicting desires where conflicts between values are only settled by other values. >> Steve continues: >> I am determined to the extent we are controlled by static patterns. To >> what extent is that? Well, if "I" refers to small self, a collection >> of static patterns of all four levels, then 100%. >> I am free to the extent that I follow DQ. To what extent is that? >> Well, if "I" refers to Big Self, 100%! >> >> Ron: >> OK, lets frame it like that, the "I" refers to the Big Self. To what extent >> do we >> have the capacity to preffer better-ness if we ARE our prefferences? > > Steve: > "We are our preferences" refers to small self, just the static patterns. > > Ron: > From the compatablist perspective Steve, the one that says we follow both 100 > percent, > therefore the question still stands "To what extent do we have the capacity > to prefer > better-ness if we ARE our prefferences?".You say these are NOT mutually > exclusive ideas > yet your answer implies that it indeed is an exclusive idea. What gives? Steve: I hope that my explanation above clears up this issue for you. 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
