[MD] Freewill

[david buchanan]

Steve, Horse, and all interested MOQers:

Horse made some points:

1) In a reality in which everything is a moral activity (MoQ) any act is a moral act - so we can't help but act morally according to the MoQ. The argument which requires free will in order to act morally would appear to be irrelevant - we can't help but act morally regardless of the existence of free will.

dmb says:
You don't mean to say there is no such thing as an immoral act, do you? 
The MOQ's moral hierarchy says that reality is value all the way down but there is a distinction between the levels of values and roughly defines morality as a matter of choosing the right level of values when competing values come into conflict. To make the same point from the other direction, in the MOQ we are always acting on the basis of values and immorality is roughly defined as going with the lower values instead the higher ones. You know, germs over the patient or celebrity over truth. In the MOQ, some things are definitely wrong, don't you think? When church morals suppress scientific truth or when scientists fudge their data, etc.. I don't see how this framework could make any sense without some kind of human agency, without some capacity to act freely. 

Horse's point #2) There seems to have been a tendency recently to equate free will with DQ. Equating (or more accurately conflating) the two in this way is a mistake - in my opinion - as it tends to intellectualise/compartmentalise DQ. Which is always a mistake.

dmb says:
If you're talking about the debate between Steve and I, it's about the term "free will". Steve insists that the term is superglued to traditional conceptions of the self. I'm saying the term only refers to human agency of some kind. Using the term doesn't necessarily entail a commitment to the Cartesian self or the Christian soul. I'm saying the term refers to concrete, everyday experience. I mean, free will or human agency are concepts that refer to actual experience. It's not a metaphysical claim about metaphysical entities. It's about striving and struggling against felt resistance and either overcoming them or being overcome. It's about negotiating your way through experience as it's felt and lived through. I'm saying the MOQ does not deny this agency or freedom. It reformulates the idea and finds a new place for it within the MOQ's framework. I don't actually use the term all that much. I'm just saying that Steve prohibition of it's use is kind of pointless. His concern seems to be withthe possibility of misleading hypothetical non-MoQers who are not here. 



Horse's point #3) The degree to which we are free to act - i.e. have the greatest choice - increases as we move up the static value hierarchy but still doesn't appear to be completely free. Statically, we can only choose between those patterns that already exist - i.e. we can have a PRE-ference for a PRE-existing static pattern. If we choose not to prefer an existing pattern and instead opt for a new pattern of our own creation then we are following DQ. Opting for another's creation is certainly not following DQ. I think this ties in with what Pirsig says re:SQ/DQ and behaviour: "In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma doesn’t come up. To the extent that one’s behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is undefinable, one’s behavior is free." I think we need to come up with a better way of expressing the idea of free will cos at the moment it just doesn't seem to be getting too far.



dmb says:

We have create new patterns to be considered free? I think that would be pushing freedom into a teeny tiny corner, something known only to mystics and rare creative geniuses. 

Let me try to get at this from a different angle. 

It seems to me that Steve, and maybe you too, is saying we are controlled by static patterns to the extent that there ARE static patterns. If your choice involves picking this or that, this reasoning goes, there is no freedom because this and that are both static. On this view, following DQ means choosing no static patterns at all. There is only control on the static side and freedom only on the DQ side. I'm calling this a compartmentalization problem, wherein DQ is on one side, sq is on the other side and never the twain shall meet. The result is that the extent to which we are controlled by static patterns is 100% and the only point at which we do have freedom, when we are following DQ, it is without "choice". As Steve conceives it, free and spontaneous action is really more like an automatic response to DQ over which we have no real choice. This paints freedom into such a tiny corner of reality and makes it so abstract and removed that it is virtually meaningless. I'm calling this position "value determinism" because of the way it denies any human agency and moral responsibility. This is what I've been criticizing. 

Here's the different angle. Think about static patterns as instruments or tools rather than determining factors. I mean, does it make any sense to say that Einstein's equation CAUSES to think or act in some determinative way? If we understand the equation and use it to do work in physics, is it reasonable to say we are controlled by that static pattern? Or is it that mastering E=Mc2 and a whole web of inter-related patterns gives one the freedom to do work in physics and to then maybe come up with a better idea in physics. If static patterns are tools in the service of life, then they are supposed to work for us and not the other way around. On this view, the extent to which we are CONTROLLED by static patterns is not equal to the extent that there ARE static patterns. We can use static patterns without being controlled by them, without following them blindly or automatically. 

The past, the present and the future. Memories are static and plans are static but right there in the middle is the now, is direct everyday experience. We bring our past to it and we put our plans upon it, but DQ is the ongoing moment of the present. That's the primary empirical reality to which all our concepts must answer. We can only understand that new moment in terms of what we already knew, but analogy to previous experience. But those patterns have to "work" in the sense that they successfully operate in experience, which continues to include that ongoing present, that immediate flux of life. If these patterns are not operating in experience, as James puts it, they have failed to preform their "marrying function". These ideas must re-enter the stream of experience and do real work there, he says, otherwise the point and purpose of our cognitive function has been short circuited. In both cases, James is saying that static concepts are only true and meaningful to the extent that they operate in conjunction with the dynamic and continuous flow of experience. As you can probably see, this conception of the relation between DQ and sq as "married" and otherwise working in conjunction with each is very far away from the compartmentalized picture Steve presents.