[MD] Freedom within structure.

[david buchanan]

Ham said:
David emphatically denies that he conceded anything like a free agent to Steve.  ... Doesn't "one's behavior" imply an agent or self?  And if the "question of freedom is about you and your life," how is that life identified other than as a proprietary 'self', 'subject', or 'free agent'?

Dan replied:
... The self is no more autonomous than an object of perception is independent of that self. Reality smears onto the self and neither subject or object can be taken as independent of the other. Tat Tvam Asi roughly corresponds with the MOQ notion that self is a collection of patterns and not existing as a true individual. Yet the ideas of individual freedom and personal responsibilities are high quality ideas to be sure.


dmb says:
Yes, I definitely think that Pirsig's comments about "one's behavior" are comments about the actions of the self. But the MOQ does not construe the our moral agency as essentially rational not does it construe the self as autonomous or proprietary. As Dan rightly points out, the MOQ's self is not independent of the context in which he or she exists. Like James and Dewey, Pirsig rejects the notion that we are fundamentally different from the world from which we emerged. We are part of the ongoing process of evolution.

What I have emphatically denied are the various positions that Steve has falsely assigned to me - and there have been many of these false attributions. At various points, he has wrongly construed me as advocating pre-destination, the existence of divine souls, moral agency as essentially rational in nature (Plato, Kant, etc.) and the Cartesian self, just to name a few. Steve, on the other hand, simply denies that there is any moral agency in the MOQ. For Steve, apparently, freedom consists in knee-jerk reactions like jumping off a hot stove or single-celled organism moving away from sulfuric acid. He thinks the MOQ has nothing to say about moral responsibility and he follows Sam Harris in thinking that people are as morally culpable as tornados. I think that Steve's position is completely ridiculous. Like I keep trying to explain to him, it's logically incoherent and he has to misuse all the central terms in order to maintain this nonsense. It seems me that he has a real hard time "interpreting" dictionaries and encyclopedia entries, not to mention the MOQ, about which he is not even in the ballpark. If I seem too emphatic, it's probably just a result of the frustration that comes from dealing with such an incorrigible "thinker".