[MD] Free Will

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, Steve --

 On Wed, 7/06/11 ar 4:27 PM, "Steven Peterson" <peterson.steve at gmail.com> 
said to dmb:

> It is meaningless to add the word "free" in claiming "free will."
> We make choices. Sure, but what does it mean to say that your
> choices are free? They aren't free, they are manifestations of your
> preferences, and we don't freely choose our preferences.
> In the MOQ we ARE our preferences, so the MOQ clearly
> denies both horns of the supposed dilemma.

 The only dilemma here is the attempt to explain Will in the absence of a
 free agent.  Will is nothing more than volition (wishing or wanting) on the
 part of an individual.  It is always free.  But it implies "choice", since,
 if there are no options to wish for, there would be no volition in the 
first
 place.

 If, as you say, "we ARE our preferences", those preferences or values are a 
'fait accompli' and we have no options to choose.  But you also say . . .

> We assert our values all the time.  And what is deliberation but an
> intellectual pattern of value?  Our values our made manifest in the
> choices we make (deliberated or not).  The difference in our views
> here is that I don't think that there is anything to the MOQ way of
> describing the situation (associating freedom with DQ) that is at all
> like what is traditionally meant by the term "free will."  Just ask Ham.

 Earlier you said to Ron:
> dmb and I certainly agree that there is no metaphysical entity deep
> inside each human called the soul which possess free will and
> separates us from the animals. But that is what is usually meant by
> free will. (Just ask Ham. That's the only sort of free will he thinks
> is worth having.)  Instead, in the MOQ what separates us from the
> animals is social and intellectual patterns

 No one has bothered to ask Ham, so let me speak for myself.

 There is no "metaphysical entity inside each human", but there is a
 cognitive 'self' whose core essence is value-sensibility.  If you deny 
this,
 you forfeit any hope of accounting for Freedom, let alone Will.  It's not
 that I think free will is "worth having", it's that life for a rational 
human being would be meaningless without it.  The Value we sense is the 
basis for our experience of the universe and relations with our fellow man. 
Imbued in this Value are the cosmic principles by which our world comes into 
being as an organized, self-sustained system.

Not only are we dependent on Value for our being, our conscious 
differentiation of it literally creates our reality.  The qualities and 
attributes we experience in this world are "volitional" in that they 
represent the beingness that we make of Value.  In other words, we color it 
in hues of our choice.

The point of all this is that we are the free agents of an intelligently 
designed system which would not exist without our sense of Value.  And the 
goodness or morality of what we experience is not innate in a deterministic 
universe but a measure of our own sensibility.  This is what makes man's 
role in existence a unique and remarkable phenomenon.  As rational, 
value-sensible agents, we have the freedom to shape the intellectual and 
social course of history as we "will it to be".

I don't know if this resolves the horns of your dilemma, Steve, but perhaps 
it will suggest a more meaningful definition of human cognition than 
"predetermined preferences".

Essentially speaking,
Ham