[MD] self: agent of action & thinker of thoughts

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Horse]
And if this 'autonomous individual self ' is illusory then the 
conventional way of looking at free will is also illusory.

[Arlo]
The way I see it, "free will" is intellectual pattern we use in an 
attempt to describe experience. Like "polar coordinates", it can be 
useful or not, and should be evaluated by how valuable a description it 
provides (is it pragmatically useful? or something like that).

As such, I think the "free will/determinism" patterns are far less 
useful (valuable) than "agency/structuration", also intellectual 
patterns we use to describe experience. Both are, of course, analogies, 
like "Cartiesian" versus "Polar" they are attempts to map experience.

The question I ask is, what is valuable about describing experience 
using "free will"? And can a better description (agency, for example) be 
more useful.

[Marsha]
Marsha, I don't call that rejection, but a warning as to the illusory 
nature of the autonomous individual self.

[Arlo]
I'm going to take exception to the term "illusory" and suggest instead 
that the concept of "self" has staying power because it is pragmatically 
valuable. It is an "illusion" only in response to the idea that it is 
some existential existant (is that redundant?). You sign your posts 
"Marsha" for a reason. From within a MOQ, a "self" is not an illusion OR 
an existant, it is a pattern of value, and should be evaluated as such.

So the "existential self" would be an illusion fostered by a concept 
such as "free will". And that's one reason why I think "free will" is 
not as valuable as term as "agency" (keeping in mind that "agency", like 
"free will" is also an intellectual pattern of value).

"Agency", I hold, is a term that we can use to describe the range of 
potential responses any pattern has to its environment. It can apply to 
rocks (very, very, very little agency) and dogs (a greater range of 
agency) and humans (the greatest range of agency within a MOQ view). 
Whereas "free will" is a term that makes sense only (really) on the 
"human" or "self" scale, "agency" can apply across the MOQ hierarchy in 
a quite sensible way.