[MD] Freewill

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
You have asserted that would need to drop the notions of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness if we drop the term "free will." But consider, where do Poincare's ideas come from? Certainly not his conscious willing of them. It is not _will_ that makes him praiseworthy as a thinker. Likewise it is not "free will" that makes bad behavior reprehensible. We simply do not need this concept to talk about morality.

dmb says:
This is another point that you are pressing against overwhelming evidence. Pirsig makes the linkage between free will and moral responsibility, the Stanford encyclopedia makes this linkage, the dictionary makes this linkage and this linkage is logically necessary, as I've tried to explain several times. 

The Stanford encyclopedia on Free Will:"It would be misleading to specify a strict definition of free will since in the philosophical work devoted to this notion there is probably no single concept of it. For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for, maybe not exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of agency that is NECESSARY FOR PERSONS TO BE MORALLY RESPONSIBLE for their conduct."

My computer's dictionary says, determinism is "the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and CANNOT BE HELD MORALLY RESPONSIBLE for their actions."


dmb said to Steve:
If I follow your reasoning, you're saying that DQ is pre-intellectual, therefore the MOQ's version of human freedom is an unconscious freedom that couldn't possibly involve anything like a conscious, deliberate choice. Is that about right? ...I think you are compartmentalizing DQ and sq so that never the twain shall meet. There's just freedom on the DQ side, but it's a special, mystical freedom over which we have no control, and then we are controlled on the static side entirely because it is the static. This mischaracterizes the relation between DQ and sq in a very big way, I think, and it leaves us with a totally meaningless version of freedom.

Steve:
But Pirsig said there are two distinct aspects of the freedom situation. We agree that to the extent that we follow DQ there is freedom, to the extent we follow sq there is constraint.



dmb says:
You are answering criticism that says you are compartmentalizing DQ and sq and your reply is to say they are distinct aspects? But saying they are distinct is just another way to say they are in separate compartments. You've not replied to the criticism, Steve. All you did was re-assert the objectionable assertion using a slightly different term. Sorry, but that does not count as a argument even by the loosest standards.  


Steve said:
What people are seeking in their hope that science and philosophy can support the concept of free will is not freedom in the DQ sense at all but rather control. They want to be able to say that it is "I" who is in charge. This "I" refers to the conscious self, which again, is not the part of the self that is associated with DQ which is pre-conceptual awareness. It is the good that comes before being conscious of the locus of goodness to the extent that we can make conscious choices about it.


dmb says:
Pre-conceptual does not mean unconscious. Pre-intellectual does not mean that either. Where did you get that idea that the capacity to respond to DQ is unconscious? Do you have ANY evidence for that view and how could that possibly work? The students who learned to see Quality in writing weren't unconscious. The motorcycle mechanic who follows DQ has not lost his mind. The MOQ does not deny the existence of conscious self. It denies the Cartesian self, the subject as a metaphysical substance or entity. To deny the existence of ANY KIND of conscious self would be ridiculous because denying it entails employment of the very thing you're denying. In other words, it's logically incoherent. 


Steve said:
Again, this sort of "forget yourself" experience is not what is sought in the usual hope that science or philosophy can find some room for "free will." What is sought is a way for the self to be in control rather than a chaining of oneself to a free master. This "forget yourself" grooving is indeed a sort of freedom, but it is not what anyone means by free will because the self-conscious willing is completely missing from the picture.

dmb says:
Again, you are only saying that the MOQ differs from the usual stance. Yes, of course it does. We all understand that. Yes, human agency is conceived differently in the MOQ. Nobody says otherwise so your often repeated point is beside the point. We're talking about free will according to Pirsig. Period. What's that? You want to make that point again anyway? Okay, but I don't see how it helps anything.


Steve said:
... It isn't what anybody I ever talked to means by free will. You can apply the term in this "when I say 'cat' what I mean is 'dog'" sort of way, but in doing so, you are bound to be misunderstood and therefore sneaking free will as the freedom of a conscious chooser in the back door. This is no better than the common attempt to sneak God into the MOQ as a word for Quality which annoys you so much (and annoys me too).


dmb says:
Yes, it's more than just annoying when people try to sneak theism into the MOQ. But it's also true that Quality and "God" are equal terms if those terms are taken a certain way. Only a true mystic can make this equation, Pirsig says. In the same way, it would be more than annoying to sneak the Cartesian self back into the MOQ but nobody is doing that. AND it's also true that the MOQ does have a conception of the self and that self is free and controlled to some extent. And so what if nobody you ever talked to thought about free will from a MOQ perspective? You are talking to me about the MOQ, obviously. Why does it matter what non-MOQers think, especially since they are not here and you are not debating them. What relevance could they have to my criticisms of your take on the MOQ?