[MD] The Quality of Free Will

[david buchanan]

Steve asked dmb:
Maybe you can answer this as our master of logic. How can you still think it is an interesting question to wonder about whether a DEPENDENT self has INDEPENDENT (free) will?

dmb says:
How can I think it's interesting to ask about the DEPENDENT self's INDEPENDENT (free) will?
Well, I don't think that is an interesting question at all. I think the question is absurd. The question confuses and combines two completely different conceptions of the self. In the MOQ, everything exists in relation to everything else and, in that sense, there is no such thing as independence. But you don't seem to understand that asserting a dependent self is not at all the same as saying there is no self at all. In Pirsig's formulation, the "one" who is free to some extent and the "one" controlled to some extent is not independent. 

Steve said: 
You accuse me of changing the subject, but my point all along has been that the free will determinism debate is an SOM problem which as Pirsig says, doesn't come up in the MOQ.  ...If there is no independent (free) self, then in the SOM sense of the term (and "free will" is an SOM term) the MOQ denies the "free will" horn of the ancient dilemma. If reality is Quality, the MOQ denies the determinism horn of the dilemma as well. What we have here is not some middle ground that says we have a little free will and are also a little bit determined by forces external to the will (since the MOQ doesn't play that internal/external subject-object game). Instead the MOQ denies the SOM premise (the independent self in a world of objects) upon which  it could possibly make sense to ask the free will/determinism question. That doesn't mean we can't talk about freedom, but in the MOQ we aren't talking about "free will" since there is no independent self who could possess this faculty.

dmb says:
Yes, so you keep saying. You keep insisting that "free will" is superglued to SOM and the independent self. That is just an arbitrary rule that you made up and that's exactly why you keep re-inserting the Cartesian self into my sentences, even the ones in which I reject the Cartesian self. That arbitrary rule of yours is, in effect, a straw man factory. You're cranking them out by the dozen. You are objecting to claims that nobody made. You're asking me to defend the ridiculous nonsense produced by YOU at YOUR straw man factory.