[MD] Freedom within structure.

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
If you don't take that position then what have we been arguing about for the past several months? No, what I said is nearly a direct quote of what you have been saying for some time.

dmb says:
No, it's a direct quote of the Stanford encyclopedia and I never used the word "rational" in describing my own reading of human agency in the MOQ. And we had a series of exchanges in which I explained how rationality is NOT what makes the agent free in the MOQ. And I was quoting Stanford to dispute a claim you made about free will, a point you missed entirely, as usual.

And this is just one more example of why talking to you is so frustrating and pointless. You just can't keep track of your own behavior. You can't remember anything so that I have to say everything five times and you still forget. It's ridiculous. In fact, the Stanford quote was intended to get you to understand an objection I have been raised repeatedly for weeks and weeks, if not months. About 7 weeks ago, for example, I was asking you these same questions.


On July 7th, dmb said to Steve:"Pirsig's statement is about the extent to which one's behavior is controlled or free. How in the world do you figure that is NOT about one's will or the freedom of one's will? He's talking about the extent to which people are free or not within the terms of the MOQ. I think you're bending over backwards to deny the obvious in several different ways and this is certainly one of them. Like I said, the MOQ avoids this dilemma by saying that our behavior is both free and controlled. The MOQ does not avoid this dilemma by REJECTING both horns but rather by saying they are not mutually exclusive options. The MOQ says freedom and restraint are both empirically known and they're both real to various extents. ...Obviously the MOQ is not framing freedom and restraint as a matter of subjectivity and objectivity but in terms of static and Dynamic, which is the quality of order and the quality of freedom respectively. And this is not some wishy-washy middle ground on this particular dilemma but the MOQ's first and most central distinction, as well as a description of what we are."

dmb now adds:
Don't you see how the MOQ reformulation fits with the MOQ's static-dynamic distinction and with the MOQ description of what we are? In all cases, it is a balance of freedom and order. We ARE a forest of static patterns with the capacity to respond to DQ. This is what I've been saying all along and this description of human agency does not depend on "rationality". But it is still human agency and that is all I mean by free will, for the hundredth time.

When I was a kid we had a dog named Suzie. She used to chase her own tail. Round and round she'd go.