[MD] Freewill

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
It didn't escape my notice that you still haven't responded to this even though I've pointed out this oversight a couple times already...

> "Look, you have to deal with the fact that if you want to equate free
> will with the capacity to follow DQ, you have to reconcile some things
> that Pirsig has said about following DQ with what is meant by the word
> "will." Pirsig said that to the extent we follow DQ our behavior is
> free which you take to be a sort of free will. But if we want to know
> what Pirsig means by "follow DQ" in order to see if that equation
> makes any sense we have to consider some of the paradigmatic examples
> he offered for following DQ such as jumping off a hot stove and an
> amoeba moving away from acid. It is just absurd to talk about these
> things as any sort of will let alone _free_ will."



dmb says:
But I have responded to this objection several times already, like yesterday's explanation for example. 

---------------------------------------If the extent to which we are controlled by static patterns is 100% and following DQ does not entail making choices, then no one is responsible for any of their actions. How could you square this conclusion with the fact that Pirsig has reconstructed all of static reality as a moral hierarchy? How could you square this conclusion with the MOQ emphasis on "spur of the moment decisions" being the engine that drives evolution? I think your conclusion totally cuts against the grain of the MOQ. This is largely a result of the way you read that pithy little reformulation.

I mean, don't forget that he is talking about the extent to which one is free and controlled. Don't forget that this "one" is DQ and sq at the same time, that experience has both elements at the same time, that reality is both of them together, that they are ultimately aspects of one reality. The new song that blows you away the first time you hear it isn't going to have any effect on you whatsoever is you don't also have some static patterns that tell you what music is and you can't spontaneously run down to the records store unless you already know about streets and money and such. I mean, come on. We are talking about the way people live their lives, not the properties of abstract metaphysical entities. That is why we can have so may various example of DQ from so many ordinary situations, like bike repair, jumping off hot stoves, writing essays or philosophical novels. 

Or remember the equation of DQ and "Manitou"? The whites interpreted the latter as "God" but Pirsig points out that the Native Americans had a much broader concept so that Manitou refers to anything out of the ordinary, any auspicious event. Or think about Pirsig's description of DQ as the force that drives the formation of new hypotheses and the ongoing evolution of science itself. There are many ways to put it. The Zen idea that DQ is found by mastering static patterns and the notion that following DQ doesn't mean escaping from the "system" but rather by mastering it and putting it to work. The over-arching idea is to reverse the relationship between DQ and sq, particularly intellectual static patterns. The over-arching idea is to make intellect subordinate to DQ instead of the other way around. The idea is that static patterns are tools that serve human purposes, that serve life. We're not supposed to be controlled by them or determined by them and the subordination of static quality to DQ is supposed to effect a change so that we see sq as a liberating resource rather than a prison to be escaped from. Like Emerson, the main idea here is that we ought not be a slave to tools of our own making. They are supposed to serve us, not the other way around. 

And yes, I'm saying that has to be some kind of human agency for this to make sense. For the MOQ's moral framework to make sense, "one" has to be free to some extent.--------------------------------------------

dmb continues:
Your question seems to be tangled up in that inappropriately narrow definition of "free will". I keep telling you that it just means will that is not determined by necessity or fate. It's not a metaphysical entity. It simply refers to the concrete experiences, as Sam put it, wherein our actions are a continuation of our intentions, goals and desires.  A free will is the opposite of a determined will. You seem to baffled by the idea that the amoeba likes to move away from the acid and does so. But well aware of Pirsig's explanation of value all the way down even to subatomic particles, right? He extrapolates this will from us to them, rather than extrapolate cause and effect upward from physics to human action. So it's the same volition we know, only much less so. 

How does your objection, that it is absurd to talk about will at the level of single celled organisms, make any sense in the MOQ? It doesn't. The objection only makes sense if you insist on defining this "free will" as something completely at odds with the MOQ. But then you are only objecting to your own addition of this ill-fitting concept, because that's not what I'm talking about.  That's not what Pirsig is talking about. Nobody around here is pushing that notion, Steve. 

I had a couple of exchanges with Dan recently when he asked me "where is the will?". You didn't see that, apparently. I got a little side-tracked a couple of times but it's not too bad. In any case, I've not been shy about it in the least.