Hi dmb,
> Steve said: > I watched all those videos this morning. ...Bob Doyle sure seems to think > he's got this problem licked. He seems more evangelist than philosopher at > times. > > dmb says: > I watched Bob Doyle's lecture on Jamesian free will too and it's hard to > imagine what could be more helpful to this long-running debate. He's a > thinker in transition, moving from science to philosophy, and he's talking to > the William James Society at Harvard. I think your insulting, dismissive > attitude toward him is pretty darn despicable. I'm certainly not surprised > that you remain baffled and unmoved, Steve, but his lecture should have > clarified all the major the points for you. It was a coherent overview of the > present state of the debate and he made it quite clear that Dennett's > compatibilism, which represents the majority view, is different from James's > "comprehensive compatibilism". Steve: Note that Boyle is selling an idea for understanding James and is coining a brand new term called "comprehensive compatiblism" as the compatiblism of free will and INdeterminism rather than determinism. "Compatiblism," which he calls the majority view (i.e., the one that you repeatedly called me "wildly incoherent" and defying simple rules of logic for taking), is the compatiblism between free will and determinism. Anyway, are you suggesting here that Boyle's Two-Stage model for understanding Jamesian free will, is what Pirsig means by freedom? I think that would be news to Pirsig who aligned freedom with Dynamic Quality. dmb: > Listening to that lecture gave me a spooky feeling, as if he had been > watching this endless debate and had decided to step in to help me out. It's > like he was talking directly to you, Steve, even going so far as to put the > thinkers you've been quoting in context so that you could see who is on which > side. I mean, if this doesn't do the trick, then what could? Steve: It would perhaps have helped you if the issue was that I didn't understand what Jamesian free will was. But the issue for me is that you are slipping the traditional notion of free will in the backdoor of the MOQ. Jamesian free will is not Pirsigian compatiblism which I think is best understood in terms of small self (determinism)/Big Self (freedom) rather than "first chance, then choice" or "first free, then will." Pirsig's notion of freedom is not a matter of the will of a free agent. While the model Boyle is peddling may be an interesting and helpful model for understanding James, I don't see this view anywhere in Pirsig's writing. 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
