[MD] Free Will

[david buchanan]

dmb said:
...That's WHY Pirsig REPLACES causality with patterns of preference, because that switch denies the central premise of scientific determinism. It takes the law-like mechanical obedience out of the picture even at the "physical" level - and even less so for evolved creatures like us. This switch introduces choice even among the most predictable and regular patterns we know of and the range of freedom only increases from there.


Dan replied:
Lets consult LILA in an effort to clear things up. This is what RMP says about replacing causality with value: "The only difference between causation and value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference." Note that he states THE ONLY DIFFERENCE... he says nothing about introducing choice, only preference.


dmb says:
He says nothing about choice, only preference? To have a choice means that you can choose or decide when faced with two or more options. It means you can express your preference for one of the options over the others. I mean, given the meaning of the terms "choice" and "preference", it seems quite strange to embrace one and reject the other. Their definitions aren't exactly the same but I can't see any important difference between those terms. 
As I read it, my claim and the Pirsig quote say exactly the same. Where I said causality refers to a law-like mechanical obedience, Pirsig says causation implies absolute certainty. Those are two ways of saying the same thing. Where I said the switch to preferences introduces freedom and choice even among the most predictable patterns, Pirsig says the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference - as opposed to the absolute law-like certainty. We can easily say that is the only difference between causation and values and still say it's a very BIG difference with very big implications.


Dan said:
The way I read this, the switch from causality to value does not introduce choice. It introduces preference. Choice implies certainty, which is not a matter of preference. RMP clearly states that when our behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality we are WITHOUT choice.


dmb says:
Value does not introduce choice? Choice implies certainty? Are you pulling my leg? At this point I have to ask what you mean by the word "choice" because I think you're just plain wrong here. Choice is what you get when the certainty of causality is removed. Making a choice is an expression of our preferences. To choose is to select one option among other options.

Steve keeps saying that it makes no sense to say we choose our values because we ARE our values. But this seems to assume that there are no conflicts between our values, as if we can follow biological values and intellectual values without any contradictions or tensions, as if we are monolithic or fully harmonized, as if we were determined by our values instead of the laws of causality. This just puts us right back into the determinist soup again. This removes richness and complexity and the unpredictable Dynamic component too. As Pirsig paints it in the larger picture, everybody is engaged in struggle with the patterns of their own lives. Lila's battle is everybody's battle, he says. The captain is dominated by intellectual values while Richard Rigel is dominated by social level values and Lila is mostly limited to biological values - and she suffers greatly for it. Her options are extremely limited  - the captain guesses she'll end up in church life or a mental hospital, if not the grave. Rigel is just one of those keep-your-nose-clean types. He's the one who will likely take Lila to church to get her all cleaned up - and considering her extremely low status, that would be an improvement. Rigel has a larger range of options than Lila but he's more or less limited to social level conventions and morals. The captain is a hyper-intellectual but he's also really looking forward to the openness of the ocean, which is a very nice metaphor for DQ.

Quality is what you like. We prefer the choice cuts of meat in the butcher shop window and we are willing to pay more for them. This is static and even routine. But following DQ means we are led forward by a dim apprehension of we know not what. It just seem like the right direction even if we don't see where it's going to lead us. Quality is what you like in that case too. 
As a practical, everyday matter we are constantly making choices because our values are so often in conflict with one another. We cannot simply follow these static patterns because they would lead us in several different directions at once. I mean, a married person cannot indulge in novel nookie and at the same time choose to be faithful. These options are mutually exclusive and so we have to choose one or the other even though, on some level, we value both. And so it is with the whole jungle of preferences, wherein we struggle with value conflicts in many subtle and complex ways. That's why we can't have a formula that prescribes exactly where freedom and constraint is to be found. That has to be balanced and negotiated by living beings like us. The rejection of SOM means that consciousness is a living process rather than a substance or entity that preforms this task. People and thoughts and judgements do not evaporate with the rejection of the Cartesian self. Instead, the MOQ says that the self exists as a living process and that freedom evolves as a result of that process. Here was are talking about the concrete activities of human beings who are not only composed of evolved static values but also capable of perceiving and adjusting to Dynamic Quality. And let us not forget that DQ is "direct everyday experience" or "the immediate flux of life" or what you know directly and immediately prior to intellectual abstractions or verbal descriptions, prior to the static patterns that follow. Freedom and restraint are known and felt directly in this actual living process, in the concrete experiences that we suffer and enjoy, that we go through. And it is NOT just that we have a FEELING of agency, a feeling of expressing our will. From direct, ordinary experience we know that we can act in the world and those actions have real effects. We have goals and purposes and sometimes we can overcome the felt resistances sometimes we cannot. In that sense, success and failure as well as freedom and constraint are the actual realities to be explained by our philosophical views and descriptions. That's the empirical reality to which are ideas must answer. This is the concrete reality to be explained and that's exactly what Pirsig re-formulation does. Those terms refer to us, to our reality, to experience as we know it.