MF Just to keep things moving, I'm reposting Dennis Poisson's answers to the self/free will questions. (Are you still there Dennis?) >FREE WILL > >6.1 Pirsig's explanation of free will is flawed because in order to have >free will you must have a subject, or else who's "will" is it that is free? This answer was rushed OK, and everyday I find that this is the perfect example of Pirsig's most glaring flaw : he's no scholar, and is neither patient nor thorough in his works. People on this forum (including me) have already proposed what seems to me to be a logical MOQ answer : free will is a intellectual chimera, because a will comes from a self, and the self (as any Buddhist will tell you) is an illusion. Pirsig says that a person is a collection of patterns from all four levels, and from this wonderful start he flubbers the free will problem. We act according to what our values are, with the occasional dynamic insight setting us on one course or another, and in the meantime our intellect insists on getting all the credit. You can attack this all day and it still makes sense. It even still make sense for a society to destroy or imprison the values that threaten it. Personnal responsability doesn't disappear, it just changes. Whether or not we have a deeper "atman" mystic self that tries to set us on the course of "higher goodness" is a question for mystics. Let's not overestimate ourselves. Or Pirsig, for that matter. >SELF > >7.1 Pirsig doesn't explain how an individual being, a self, fits into the >MOQ. See above >7.2 If we operate from the belief that there is no such thing as the self, >and that Quality or Reality is one undifferentiated continuum, then the >question of choice, freedom, good and morality does not arise. Freedom and choice are SOM notions. They do disappear in the MOQ. Good and Morality don't. Why is this so difficult to accept ? They seems to me to be more than a little demagogy here. >7.3 If there is no self and the MOQ is reduced to being only a "feel good" >Metaphysics of Mysticism then evolution in all respects should follow a >linear progression by itself, without any setbacks or reversals since DQ as >an evolving force is complete and fully present at all times. I can't see by which miracle the Self has anything to do with the emotivism charge, or where does this ties with a "linear progression" of evolution. Would somebody care to make this clearer ? >7.4 Since all conceptions, beliefs and their counters are aspects of >perception can "static patterns of value" have any existence outside >perception? Simple one : NO. Outside perception (before it, in fact) lies raw Quality. MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
