[MD] Hot Stoves and What To Do About Them

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
My only quibble then is, why use the term "free will" to describe Pirsig's notion of freedom at all? If it isn't reflective, rational, and deliberate, but rather "about really Being There in the flux of life in a living, breathing, concrete way," then it isn't a matter of will, is it? Or does "will" in your view come in the form of the mystic's training to become more "attuned and aware and sensitive to the pre-reflective aesthetic charge of the situation"?

dmb says:
The question only makes sense IF you insist on defining "will" as purely rational and reflective. That's why I quoted Pirsig talking about "spur of the moment decisions", which are NEITHER rational nor reflective. The new song that blows your mind sends you to the record store with the will and intention to buy a copy, but not because you reflected on it and decided it was the rational thing to do. Choices are made for all kinds of inarticulate reasons, emotional reasons, hunches and feelings and why not? See, one of the central missions of the MOQ is to make rationality subordinate to DQ instead of the other way around. Rationality is a perfectly legit tool, so long as you don't make everything else bend to it's limits and demands. And the only reason to use "free will" to describe Pirsig's notion of freedom is to distinguish it from a determined will, from a lack of freedom such as the one described by Harris wherein our motives and intentions are caused by neurological forces beyond our control and are therefore not choices at all. 


Steve said:
This bit about responsibility sounded like a strange add-on that comes from our other discussion about moral responsibility, but I can't see the logical link between moral responsibility and Pirsig's notion of freedom as you described it above as "[not] anything like the reflective will of a rational deliberator."

dmb says:

The notion that morality hinges on knowledge and intellect goes all the way back to Plato. Kant linked morality and rationality too. Pirsig is in defiance of all that. Static intellectual patterns are not the font of morality or the standard by which to measure all morality. Truth is a species of the good but, again, it is supposed to be subordinate to DQ, which is where the MOQ puts freedom, the ability to respond to DQ. And this freedom only increases as we are able to use a greater range of static patterns. The intellectual level is considered to be more moral than traditional social level morality precisely because it is more open to DQ, because it offers more freedom to act. The connections between moral responsibility and responsiveness and the basic capacity to respond are not just etymological but also evolutionary. The amoeba responds to a felt wrongness and so did the Zuni Brujo and so did Pirsig when he wrote his books.