[MD] Free Will

[Steven Peterson]

Hi dmb,

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 12:36 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve said to dmb:
> ... Also, you keep putting up some radical determinism as the only alternative to belief in a radically internal entity called "the will." To deny free will is only to deny the existence of this entity. It is not to say that everything is already determined. Most things could just be random or just held to be of unknown cause.
>  ..., the MOQ says we are not free to the extent we are controlled by static patterns and free to the extent that we follow DQ, but in the MOQ, where does the traditional metaphysical entity called "the will" come in? Nowhere that I can see. All I find are denials of it.
>
> dmb says:
> I did not realize that you were talking about a radically internal metaphysical entity. I thought we were talking about people.
>
>
> I thought we were talking about the capacity to resist impulses and desires, not some metaphysical entity's ability to alter or eliminate them. We're on two different topics, apparently. Never mind.


Steve:
"Resisting impulses and desires" usually translates in MOQ terms as
"social and/or intellectual patterns sometimes trump biological
patterns under certain circumstances." But there is no more freedom in
such situations understood as the product of the freedom of an
independent willing agent than there is in that biological patterns
such as flying birds resisting the impulse to fall in acquiescence to
gravity. Pirsig opposes such a view of freedom as "freedom from causal
forces" in favor of "freedom to flourish." The seed planted in good
soil is more free to flourish than one planted in sand, but neither is
any more of a willful agent or any more free from causal environmental
pressures.