[MD] Free Will

[Ham Priday]

Hi Horse, John, Steve, and All --


Horse says:

> So we're kind of back to the idea that 'Free Will' is an illusion!

John observed:
> I've often said it's the basis of individuality - that individuality is a
> choice and any being which has no choice, has no real independent
> being.  Like an automaton of some other's scheme.

Steve responded:
> Yes, I have tried to make clear that the free will/determinism debate
> depends entirely on premises that the MOQ denies. The MOQ
> denies free will as well as determinism in favor of a continuum of
> reliable to unpredictable preferences.  Determinism is false in the
> MOQ because determinism leaves no place for values. Free will
> is also false since though everything is preference (or value), it is
> meaningless to assert that preference is free. What could a person's
> preference be free of when all that a person is is a set of preferences?
> This freedom to which the traditional notion of free will refers is the
> freedom of an independent agent that the MOQ calls a fiction.
>
> ... But the notion of free will is such a cherished one that even
> MOQers who deny the existence of the fundamental reality of an
> independent subject nevertheless are horrified to think that this
> subject who does not exist lacks free will.

In these seminal statements John expresses the cosmic purpose of 
individuality, and Steve lucidly exposes the flaw in the MoQ that makes Free 
Will an epistemological impossibility.

If there is no independent subject, and a "person" is no more than "a set of 
preferences", all choices are determined and there is no free agent.  Of 
course this means that human experience is simply the serialized 
(patterned?) awareness of Quality's evolution to an undefined Betterness.

But why should this "horrify" the MoQer who doesn't believe subjects exist 
anyway?

So, stop puzzling over what freedom means.  Get your patterns in line and 
march in lockstep to the predetermined goal of otherness!

Qualitatively speaking,
Ham