Hi Ham, Thanks for reminding me of your question. NO! MoQ is not a philosophy which subscribes to determinism of any kind. Everything is an ethical activity. Ethics imply Will. Everything has free will, from you down to the electron, and up to the universe. Pirsig makes this quite clear in Lila.
More below. On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Ham Priday <[email protected]> wrote: > Back to you, Mark -- > > Ham> > I ask a question and you return with another one. That's a new dialectical > twist, isn't it, Mark? But at least we agree on the "reality" of the self. [Mark] Yes, the Self is real. Sometimes too real, which is why Buddhism has tools to bring the Ego back into balance. But it is real alright, the Self wants to escape the cycle of rebirth according to the Buddhist teachings. The Self, or the Atman, or Soul, or whatever you want to call it is what tells one that he is looking though his eyes, and not someone else. Pirsig is a Self, Phaedrus is a Self who is Pirsig, just with some very different ideas, but it is the same self. Like Phaedrus, Lila is a Self who is on the edge of sane reality, but fully knowledgeable of her reality. All this confusion of Self, because people have this fixed idea of what they want to find and cannot. The Self creates logic, logic cannot be used to find the Self, that is preposterous. A house cannot find it's architect, it wouldn't even try. So, people seem to think that if they cannot find it, it does not exist. When you dissolve salt into water, you can no longer find it, yet the water tastes salty. The Self permeates this body in the same way, it creates Value, as you know. > > Ham You are asking me to define the limits of free will. I could respond by > saying that, since it is experience that brings being into existence, will > has NO limit. But that would be stretching what you mean by "free will". > And it's Freedom that really is in question here. > > So let me start, as experience starts, with the precept of a pluralistic > otherness whose components emerge and relate in an orderly fashion according > to what we are told are the Laws of Nature. The physical parameters of this > objective otherness--the energy, mass, and forces by which its constituents > function--are intrinsic to the differentiation of its source. By this, I > mean that the (absolute) source doesn't just fragment randomly into so many > finite entities, but instead negates ("excludes") some of its Sensibility to > create a self/other dichotomy. This dichotomy establishes the primary > Difference from which the value-sensible agent and its experience of > differentiated otherness are derived. [Mark] As you know, I am trained as a scientist, and make my living using those tools every day. So often we speak across each other since your approach is more philosophical. To me the brain is not a black box, it is another organ, like the liver. So, when you speak of "other" (as in You), I am not quite sure what you mean. Now, if you mean the self, then perhaps I can understand. I would simply say, that everything has a Self, and Man is not so special (except to us). This is not nihilistic, since it raises the whole of creation to our level. So it is uplifting. Otherwise, I understand your metaphysics in simple terms as you present above. >Ham > So much for my cosmology. Now, to answer your question, I would say that > Free Will begins with the free agent's realization of Value within this > co-dependent relationship. It ends when the sensible agent has reclaimed > the full complement of Value from which it had been estranged as an > individuated self. In epistemological terms, this means that one's > apperception, understanding, knowledge, appreciation, sense of meaning, and > moral judgment of experiential reality are all manifested expressions of > Free Will. More explicitly, the "qualitative" aspects of the physical world > are actualized--I would even venture to say "determined" in this context--by > the will of the individual subject. [Mark] And so I try to pinpoint where that realization takes place in our physical incarnation, and I look for Value creation within our bodies and resort to the standard reductionist approach. But, I am fine with the conceptual approach of To be or Not to be, so I will not belabor it as I have done in the past. We certainly create an image of the world through our interaction with it. This image is incredibly simplified since we rely on simple chemistry and narrow physics to do so. Light comes through the eyes and is interpreted in the back of the brain (which is in the dark). Some people who are cortically blind have no problem with their eyes, but cannot see because the image cannot form. With this physical determination of image in mind, I do not believe the Self can solely determine such things, but can participate in a small way. >Ham > I'm aware that my epistemology invokes "volition" and "intention", along > with the "actions" or behavior typically associated with Free Will. But, as > I stated in a post on Moral Responsibility two weeks ago, "We all have the > freedom to act (or not act) within the limitations of our physical being. > Volitional acts are motivated by one's sense of value. Whether a particular > action is moral or not is determined by both the actor's value system and > the mores of his/her society." [Mark] Again, Pirsig states that the entirety of creation is moral activity. One cannot claim morals if there is no intention. Each person has its own interpretation of morality, as does everything else. As humans we can understand (at least a little bit) where another human is coming from, but we have not idea how morality is interpreted by other things. All we can see is that things aspire to greatness. As such, we cannot create morality, we can however, interpret it in our own way. There are so many things that can be built out of sandstone (Quality), us human do one thing, the river does another. There is no difference, it is all astonishing. >Mark > Hopefully, this valuistic analysis will not be viewed as another "Ham > attack" on Pirsig's Quality thesis. As you can see, Value (Quality) factors > prominently in my philosophy of Essence. Where I differ with Pirsig > involves a metaphysical issue. He posits Quality as the fundamental reality > of experience, while explaining away subjects and objects. I maintain that > sensible subjects are necessary for the free realization of Value in > objective existence, but that Absolute Essence, not Dynamic Quality, is the > fundamental Reality. [Mark] No, this is no attack at all. Quality is what subjects and objects are made of. All that we can sense is the quality of something. That is, if it is hard or soft, if it is bright or dim, etc. We have no knowledge of the thing itself. Because everything interacts through Quality (DQ) to form the material or conceptual (sq) it seems appropriate to call this a Quality world. I am not sure what you mean by sensible subjects, do they have to contain nerves? This sounds akin to Buddha's sentient beings, but he included all of the animal kingdom (and some more) with that. Why stop with the animal kingdom? Everything is Grand, not just that which we can directly relate to because it has some similarities. Sometimes I find a dog to be much more sensible that a human. >Ham > Have I been "reductive" enough in answering your question, Mark? If so, you > still owe me a response to my question: Is the MoQ a deterministic > philosophy? [Mark] I accept your explanation, and will work with it. Thanks, Ham, the "Evil Doer" Barbarian Cheers, Mark > > > 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 > 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
