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

[Ham Priday]

Hi Horse and All --

Some very important points have been made in recent discussions, and I would 
venture to say that, by hook or crook, you folks are working your way out of 
the moral morass that has been created by the MoQ paradigm.  I know this 
will irritate the Pirsigians, but when Marsha quoted Albahari on "The agent 
of thoughts (autonomy)" and changed the thread from Morality to Self, she 
unwittingly opened the door to an inevitable conclusion:

"The sense of being a uniquely separate _thing_, whether as something 
special, or as something autonomous, is strong evidence for our reflexive 
ascription of boundedness to the self we assume we are.  We can also note 
its connection with the long-running debate on free-will, and with the fact 
that many philosophers, such as Kant and Frankfurt, have chosen to identify 
the most central aspect of our 'selves' with 'the will'."

This insightful statement, remarkable for a Buddhist thinker, completes a 
debating cycle that dates back to Apr. 12 when I joined a discussion on 
"Free Will (footnotes to Plato)" launched by Mark and Arlo.  Here's what I 
said  then:

"In order for man to be a free agent, he is created as a 'being-aware', an
individuated entity that stands apart from the Creator or Source.  He can be
neither indigenous to it nor the essence of its value.  But so that he may
realize this value without the bias of absolute knowledge, the psychic core
of man's being is value-sensibility.  In existential terms, cognizant
awareness is a non-entity: it cannot be localized, quantified, or directly
observed.  The individual is a choice-maker only by virtue of the fact that
he is an autonomous entity."

I would like to quote some pertinent comments posted more recently along the 
way:

John observed:
> I've often said it's the basis of individuality - that individuality is a
> choice and any being which has no choice, has no real independent
> being.  Like an automaton of some other's scheme.

Steve responded:
> Yes, I have tried to make clear that the free will/determinism
> debate depends entirely on premises that the MOQ denies. The
> MOQ denies free will as well as determinism in favor of a continuum of 
> reliable to unpredictable preferences.  Determinism
> is false in the MOQ because determinism leaves no place for
> values. Free will is also false since though everything is preference
> (or value), it is meaningless to assert that preference is free. What
> could a person's preference be free of when all that a person is
> is a set of preferences?  This freedom to which the traditional
> notion of free will refers is the freedom of an independent agent
> that the MOQ calls a fiction.

Dmb commented:
> Steve keeps saying that it makes no sense to say we choose our
> values because we ARE our values. But this seems to assume that
> there are no conflicts between our values, as if we can follow
> biological values and intellectual values without any contradictions
> or tensions, as if we are monolithic or fully harmonized, as if we
> were determined by our values instead of the laws of causality. This just 
> puts us right back into the determinist soup again. This removes richness 
> and complexity and the unpredictable
> Dynamic component too. As Pirsig paints it in the larger picture,
> everybody is engaged in struggle with the patterns of their own lives.
>
> To say we are determined by the laws of cause and effect is just
> one answer to the question, an answer we can reject without also
> rejecting the question. The MOQ's reformulation is a different
> answer to the question. I mean, if we are going to discuss the meaning of 
> Pirsig reformulation, we have to be able to talk about
> freedom and control OUTSIDE of SOM and that means that free will is NOT 
> the free will OF any little god or soul or anything
> like that. We have to be able to talk about what constraints mean
> OUTSIDE of mechanistic causal constraints.  Isn't that the point of
> the reformulation? To talk about the extent of human freedom in
> the absence of those SOM assumptions?
> A Moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference
> to right and wrong." Moral agency is a person's responsibility for
> making moral judgments and taking actions that comport with morality

Matt conjectured:
> Steve said that moral responsibility doesn't start to make sense
> "until we get to beings that have social patterns because only such beings 
> have behavior which is modifiable through praise and blame." That defines 
> _basic_ social patterns, but because we already sign on
> to Pirsig's lauded maneuver of distinguishing between levels, defining
> a basic pattern does not by itself imply a reduction of other patterns 
> that may arise from it (in Pirsig's schematic, intellectual patterns; but 
> in our own philosophizing, we might distinguish more).  That is at the 
> conceptual level, and Steve's example--of the scolded child--
> gives us the pedagogical level.  What Steve said suggests that 
> praise/blame is in some way basic to social patterns and moral 
> responsibility and that in creating moral behavior in children, one begins 
> with praise/blame.

Ian (finally) responds to Marsha:
> So even an analytical Buddhist agrees that "one must" ... attribute
> free-will to self.

And lastly, Horse's summation of the preceding:
> What is the difference between an 'autonomous individual self ' and an 
> 'autonomous moral agent'? I'm having a hard time seeing
> any difference at all given what's been said so far.
>
> So given my current inability to see where there is an effective 
> difference in this discussion:
>
> What is it then that has or expresses free will if not an 'autonomous 
> individual self '.
>
> And if this 'autonomous individual self ' is illusory then the
> conventional way of looking at free will is also illusory.

> It seems to me that in all the discussions so far there has been a 
> tendency to fall back to the idea that there is an autonomous moral agent 
> ('autonomous individual self') who 'has' free will and expresses that free 
> will by making free and independent moral choices.
> This doesn't appear to be the case given many of Pirsigs quotes and 
> references.  The overall impression that I get is that the GOF 'Moral 
> Agent' is being shoe-horned into the MoQ where it doesn't
> quite fit!

Yes, progress is being made even as we speak.  As I've said before, morality 
is a human precept, which means that value-sensibility is prerequisite for 
moral judgment.  This precept "doesn't quite fit" the MoQ paradigm which 
posits Value (Quality) as a universal truth or principle.  But unless or 
until the concept of free agency is realized and accepted as more than a 
"shoe-horn", moral responsibility is without meaning or justification in 
Pirsig's philosophy. The individual self -- whether defined as subjective or 
illusory -- is that agency.

In defense of individual freedom,
Ham