[MD] Free Will

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Steve:
.., if you can't see how causality precludes moral responsibility then there are many, many explanations available for your edification and amusement. Nobody has to take my word for it.


Steve:

No, I don't take your word for it, but you've given me nothing more than that.

dmb says:
Determinism is the philosophic doctrine that man, like all other objects in the universe, follows fixed scientific laws, and does so without exception. Free Will is the philosophic doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body. This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under SOM. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong. On the other hand, if the determinists let go of their position it would seem to deny the truth of science. If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary. If 'everything' is included in the class of 'substance and its properties,' and if 'substance and properties' is included in the class of 'things that always follow laws,' and if 'people' are included int class 'everything', then it is an air-tight logical conclusion that people always follow the laws of substance. ...All the social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bedrock metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human behavior exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the world. ...In the MOQ this dilemma doesn't come up. ...The MOQ says that if moral judgements are essentially assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff of the world, then moral judgements are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world. It says that even at the most fundamental level of the universe, static patterns of value and moral judgements are identical. The "Laws of Nature' are moral laws. Of course it sounds peculiar at first... But it is no less peculiar and awkward and unnecessary than to say chemistry professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect forces of the cosmos force them to do it. In the past the logic has been that if chemistry professor are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the law of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too. But this logic can be applied in a reverse direction. ..If chemistry professors exercise choice, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that atoms must exercise choice too. The difference between these two points of view is philosophic, not scientific. The question of whether and electron does a certain thing because it has to or because it wants to is completely irrelevant to the data of what the electron does. So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but everything is an ethical activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns of reality create life the MOQ postulates that they've done so because it's 'better' and that this definition of 'betterness' - this beginning response to Dynamic Quality - is an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based. (Lila 155-7)


Steve said to dmb:
If causality is understood in MOQ terms as a stable pattern of preference, then obviously causality is no threat to moral responsibility. 
dmb says:
As you can see from Pirsig's explanation, cause and effect relations are law-like and that's what precludes moral responsibility. The laws of cause and effect preclude any freedom or choice. So we can't righty understand causality AS a pattern of preferences no matter how stable. That's just not what the word "cause" means. As Pirsig put it in the quote above, "If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong." Preferences have to replace causality, rather than figure in to it, simply because one logically precludes the other. And you can see that this quote backs up my contention that "causality and preference are rival ways to think about the same empirical facts". The question of whether atoms HAVE TO (are caused) or WANT TO (is preferred) is a philosophical difference, not a scientific one. The data is the same either way, he says. But these are the rival views.


Steve said:

And again, I don't accept your say so. I don't see Pirsig anywhere saying that we ought to throw away the word "cause" in describing our experience. All I see him doing is saying what "cause" may mean in MOQ terms. If you have textual evidence, please provide it.

dmb says:
In the passage above you see that preferences go all the way down to the inorganic level and even the "laws of nature" are moral laws. The elementary unit of ethics goes all the way up. There is no need for causality anywhere here because its all covered by preferences instead. I'm not so sure we have any good cause to throw the word away, but the MOQ can describe any static pattern without it. Not just life, he says, but everything is an ethical activity, everything from chemistry professors to atoms. 

Steve:

To my knowledge Pirsig never talks about responsibility, but he does talk about freedom. In fact in his preface to ZAMM he describes freedom as merely a negative and therefore a lousy goal, and he describes ZAMM  itself as offering a positive alternative to freedom that can serve as a positive goal, namely Quality.

dmb says:

In the passage above Pirsig says that abandoning free will is to abandon morality. Determinism, which is predicated on causality, says that man is not free to choose and therefore cannot be held responsible. I have quoted the dictionary, Charlene the James scholar and now Pirsig on this point. (We simply cannot have an intelligent conversation on the topic unless and until the you use the central terms properly.) I mean, the issue of determinism and freedom hinges on whether or not we must inevitable follow the laws of nature. This has absolutely nothing to do with the political and social aspirations of the hippies. That is a different topic entirely. (The difference between positive and negative freedom is not at all unique to Pirsig either.) 

Steve said:
You see? The freedom you think I am undermining is something that Pirsig thinks is a negative rather than THEE foundation for moral responsibility, and he even hangs his hat on having offered us a positive alternative for freedom.



dmb says:
The freedom I think you're denying is the freedom to act or not, the freedom to make choices. It's much more basic and fundamental than the hippy's desire to remove social and political restraints. It's about whether or not we are determined by causes beyond our control. What sense does it make to talk about positive goals if we are not free to act at all? What sense can it make to press positive freedom over negative freedom when freedom is just an illusion? This position is not logically coherent.
As I understand it, freedom and restraint are both as real as it gets. We know this from all our experiences, every freaking day. To deny it seems kinda crazy. And it's a nihilistic moral nightmare.