[MD] Free Will

Andre Broersen andrebroersen at gmail.com
Sat Apr 23 01:00:36 PDT 2011


Ron previously to Andre:

Pragmatically Andre, DQ being understood as undefined betterness is more 
useful than insisting that it remain unconceptualized.

Andre then:

Yes and no Ron. I sympathize with Pirsig when he argues that we should keep all
concepts out of DQ. 'Concepts are always static. Once they get into dynamic
Quality they'll overrun it and try to present it as some kind of concept itself'( Anthony's PhD, p 35).

Andre now:
And I should have added:
'So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but everything, is an ethical activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've done so because it is 'better' and that this definition of 'betterness'- this beginning response to Dynamic Quality- is an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based.(LILA, p 161)

I take this to mean that 'betterness' can be defined as a 'beginning response to DQ', a 'loosening', a 'weakening', 'challenging' or sometimes having a possible 'disintegrating' effect on static patterns of value. The rightness or wrongness is either considered immediately or centuries later. Seems to me that this ties our views together quite nicely Ron: DQ remains unconceptualized and be considered undefined betterness. The 'elementary unit of ethics' is based on 'this beginning response' to DQ and not on DQ itself.

Does this sound okay to you?






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