[MD] Hot Stoves and What To Do About Them

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
He [Pirsig] defines free will as "the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body." I contend that "free will" can't merely be the capacity to make choices and have preferences. Otherwise philosophers would have regarded animals as having free will since they exhibit preferences and make choices.

dmb says:
Free will can't be what Pirsig says it is because philosophers disagree about animals having free will? 
But Pirsig is disagreeing with those philosophers on purpose. Why should his reformulation have to answer to their definition of free will (as something that is uniquely human) when that is the very thing he's disagreeing about? 

In the paragraphs immediately following his reformulation, Pirsig says: 

"...even at the most fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of values and moral judgements are identical. The 'Laws of Nature' are moral laws. OF COURSE IT SOUNDS PECULIAR AT FIRST [precisely BECAUSE it DIFFERS from those philosophers you mention!] and awkward and unnecessary to say that hydrogen and oxygen form water because it is moral to do so. But it is no less peculiar and awkward and unnecessary than to say chemistry professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect forces of the cosmos force them to do it. IN THE PAST the LOGIC HAS BEEN that if chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the laws of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too. But his logic can be applied in A REVERSE DIRECTION. We can just as easily deduce the morality of atoms from the observation that chemistry professor are, in general, moral. If chemistry professors EXERCISE CHOICE, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that ATOMS MUST EXERCISE CHOICE TOO."

dmb resumes:
As I see it, your contention is that Pirsig's reformulation can't be what he says it is because it disagrees with the view he's rejecting. You want his view to answer to the view he is rejecting. Come on. Think about it. That's like saying we can't convert to the metric system because it doesn't use imperial measuring units. That's like saying electric cars cannot work because they lack a gas tank. In that sense, I think your objection misses the point of converting to a better system, which is to get rid of the old, to reject what philosophers usually regard as correct.  
 

Steve said:
But there remains a problem with equating free will with the capacity to follow dynamic quality. It isn't that following dynamic quality isn't free. It is by definition. The problem is that following DQ is at least not always intentional. It is not necessarily a matter of will (a voluntary act accompanied by a felt intention) at all. ...If getting off the stove is following DQ and if there was no conscious decision to get off the stove, then it was not a voluntary act. It was not a willing. So it would seem to be a serious error to call it free will when it doesn't involve will.

dmb says:
It only seems like an error because you are using "will" to mean what Pirsig does not mean by it, as explained above. By insisting that "will" means an intentional conscious decision, it cannot be applied to anything except the rational deliberations of human beings. But, as you just saw, that is not what Pirsig is saying. "When inorganic patterns of reality create life the MOQ postulates that they have done so because it's '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." In the reformulation, of course, he says one's behavior is free to the extent that one follows DQ. A few paragraphs later we see that even inorganic patterns are following DQ, are doing things because it's better. Interestingly, this is the reason that Pirsig himself gives for writing his books, because it seemed better than not writing them. In the MOQ, then, this freedom is not uniquely human. It extends from particles to Peterson and Pirsig. Not just life, he says, but EVERYTHING is involved in this ethical activity. The definition of free will that you keep injecting simply makes no sense in this context. It makes no sense to ask the MOQ's reformulation to accommodate the old formulation.