[MD] Freewill

[Ian Glendinning]

Steve, dmb

I appreciate the free-will vs determinism (in the MoQ context) debate
here is overlaid with the meta-argument about whose behaviour
"maintaining a weak position" exasperates who and why ... etc. But on
the core point here:

Steve, I side with DMB.
I can't buy your a-determinism / a-free-willist stance.

Free-will is not irrelevant to morals in the MoQ context.

By taking the a-stance I believe you are just denying particular
definitions of free-will and/or determinism.

Yes, the primary DQ/sq split changes our descriptions / explnations of
what is going on, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a
relationship between will chosen by conscious thought being part of
(related to) morality - in the socio-intellectual levels of the MoQ.
(And it gives us an entirely new description in the physio-bio
levels.)

If you deny free-will and determinism concepts outright, surely you
just re-invite a MoQish description of the (as patterns rather than
concepts perhaps) by another name. At the common sense level,
(Buddhist "as if" level) the relationship is still there ?

Sorry if I missed your underlying point, but it is getting hard to discern.
I believed from earlier exchanges we were reasonably well aligned that
free-will and determinism need not be in conflict, if one took an
enlightened - balanced - MoQish view ?
Ian

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi dmb,
>
>> Steve said:... I am saying that the term "free will" has a usage in the English language, and the MOQ's response to the question of freedom is incompatible with this everyday usage. ... and my point is that the MOQ's answer is to accept neither free will or determinism in their usual sense and I'm not talking about underlying metaphysical assumptions but rather the common ways that the term "free will" gets deployed in sentences.  ...To deny free will is to deny the uncaused causer (see also Pirsig's dissolution of the mind-body problem). To deny determinism is to deny the mechanistic universe. There is nothing incompatible with doing both.
>>
>>
>> dmb says:
>> Well, as I see it, you are maintaining a very weak position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
[Snip]