Ian said:
The good thing about that exchange dmb & Steve, is that it's on topic.
Causation.
dmb says:
Causation is a very key concept. No doubt about it. It's the premise behind the
majority view and the premise that Pirsig rejects and replaces. The problem is
that Steve is trying to understand Pirsig by way of that rejected majority
view. Steve is reading the MOQ's reformulation in terms of the very thing it
rejects.
"In the past the logic has been that if chemistry professors are composed
exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the laws of cause and effect,
then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too. But
this logic can be applied in a reverse direction. ..If chemistry professors
exercise choice, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms,
then it follows that atoms must exercise choice too. The difference between
these two points of view is philosophic, not scientific. The question of
whether and electron does a certain thing because it has to or because it wants
to is completely irrelevant to the data of what the electron does."
The behavior itself is not in dispute. The action taken is just the empirical
fact to be explained. The question, quite simply, asks if one HAD to act
according to laws or not. But we have to be careful about how we use the word
"cause". If I say that I was the cause of my action, I'm denying that the
action was a result of the laws of causality. Causality and causation is the
relationship between cause and effect. It refers to a mechanistic, law-like
chain of events and the causal determinist claims that these are the laws that
determine our actions. That is the basis on which the CAUSAL determinist denies
that we can make choices, exercise free will or human agency. There are other
forms of determinism but whatever reason is given - metaphysical, theological
or common sensical - the determinist says our actions are determined by
something other than us. Causal determinism is just the most likely form these
days because it fits with the prevailing metaphysics of substance an
d scientific objectivity.
"If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance, the
philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary. If 'everything' is
included in the class of 'substance and its properties,' and if 'substance and
properties' is included in the class of 'things that always follow laws,' and
if 'people' are included int class 'everything', then it is an air-tight
logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of substance. ...All the
social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bedrock
metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human behavior
exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an
artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the
world. ...In the MOQ this dilemma doesn't come up."
I'd bet big bucks that the metaphysics of substance has everything to do with
the fact that Dennett's compatibilism, which represents the majority view, is
different from the MOQ's compatibilist reformulation and from James's
"comprehensive compatibilism".
I'd definitely recommend the Doyle lecture to anyone who's interested in this
topic.
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