[MD] Free Will

[X Acto]

----- Original Message ----
From: Dan Glover <daneglover at gmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Tue, June 21, 2011 1:43:24 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Free Will

Hello everyone

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Hey Ron,
>
> Matt said:
> The trouble with Pirsig's metaphysical strategy, in specific relationship
> to the multifarious free will debate, is that his explanatory strategy is
> to treat Value as a primitive: you treat it as the only given, and explain
> everything else from that first step.  That strategy is very successful on
> a number of fronts, but not in explaining what value is, or how it works.
> How could it?  You've already been asked to cede its equipment as a
> given for explaining everything else.  This is why Quality can remain,
> explanatorily speaking, undefined.
>
> Ron said:
> By equating value with experience, Pirsig is placing the explanation in
> the now of experience, what it means to "be". Everyone knows what
> it is. Which is a really neat way to sew all the ends of explanation
> together in Value as being.

Dan:

Experience is both undefined and infinitely definable. By stating
Dynamic Quality and experience are synonymous, we all know what "it"
is, but the definition just keeps on going, like a continuous stutter.

>
> Matt:
> Yeah, but its _too_ neat for the purposes of attacking practical
> problems in moral and political philosophy (let alone real life).  What
> kind of explanation is it if the purpose of the explanation is to tell you
> that you already know, which is just a way of saying, "Why did you ask
> for an explanation?"  The kind is some form of epistemological,
> specifically one in which the epistemological framework requires one
> to answer certain kinds of questions.  Pirsig's explanatory strategy is
> to make you wonder why you asked the question, to make you see the
> framework and start tinkering with the framework so you can pose
> better questions.  In other words, things that make you go mu.

Ron:
I think that is a good way to put it because when we begin to wonder
about why the value of asking better questions is meaningful, why
the desire of rendering the unintelligible, intelligible, includes wonder,
gestalt shifts, and static pattern breaking, we can begin to invite those 
aspects into our theory building practices.

Dan:

LILA (from what I gather from Ant's dialogue with RMP) is meant to be
a play on the old koan: does a dog have buddha nature, or not? But it
doesn't necessarily follow that we shouldn't ask for an explanation.
It is to show that the explanation goes on and on. We keep defining
and re-defining as our experience grows and evolves. At least, we
should, if we are to grow as human beings.



>Matt:
> So, you're right that "Pirsig is placing the explanation in the now of
> experience," but that should just make one realize how much more
> work there is to do in producing all those myriad "ends of
> explanation" that you know, now, will be sewn together by Pirsig's
> metaphysical explanatory strategy.

>
> Ron said:
> I think moral responsibility is tied into freedom of will in terms of
> value being "the good" and Pirsigs use of breaking up species of the
> genus of "good" into 4 levels of moral order really expands the
> understanding of what we mean by "moral" behaviour".
>
> Matt:
> I'm not sure I see what was explained.  First, I think it's important
> that we say not "moral responsibility is tied into freedom of will," but
> rather "freedom of will is tied into moral responsibility."  The object
> of the inquiry is to explain our modes of moral responsibility--if it
> wasn't, for Jamesian reasons Steve has just made explicit, it isn't
> clear why we should care about free will vs. determinism.  And my
> comments about what Pirsig wrote explicitly about free will and
> determinism were intended to convey that Pirsig was, indeed,
> forwarding a James-like solution, which is also just to say that Pirsig
> was not saying anything directly relevant to moral responsibility, but
> rather solving an epistemological problem incurred by thinking about
> free will in isolation from moral responsibility.  As I had said, it just
> wasn't his quarry in that section.
>
> Second, what isn't perspicuous to me is where "freedom of will"
> came into any of the rest of that sentence.  It _might_ somewhere,
> but it isn't clear how you perceive what Pirsig's arrangement of things
> puts freedom of will into play and makes sense of how "value being
> 'the good'" is supposed to make an impact on our thinking (for
> example, one might think the phrase simply redundant) or makes
> sense of the four levels of moral order (or the other way around).
> The static levels don't _explain_ anything about moral responsibility
> by themselves, they just put into place conceptual resources that
> then need to be exploited for that purpose.

Ron:
Right, and you go on with some really great examples below at what I was driving
at in that sentence. I apologize for generalizing in such a esoteric fashion but
it seems you understand.
>
> For example, one might tie in Pirsig's explicit comments about free
> will by saying that when, say, you eat you are being biologically
> determined, but when (according to other explicit comments by
> Pirsig) you have sex, you are being Dynamically free.  But who's this
> "you"?  Ah, it's the biological you.  Pirsig calls that you "Me."  And on
> the other side of the break between the biological level and social
> level, between the end of "object" and the beginning of "subject," is
> the "We."  The We is at a higher level than the Me, and so has some
> jurisdiction over constraining the Me and its pursuits of freedom.  At
> earlier stages of society (goes this explanation), it made sense to
> constrain your sex partners because social and economic roles were
> determined by genealogy.  This is to say your place in society was
> thought of as a _property_ (and think of it straight up on the analogy
> with economic property: who gets the land? the kingship? if nobility
> is a property in the blood, what happens when you start mixing
> blood?).  But now we have later stages of society: it produced the "I."
> So now we have three levels Me-We-I (and we can think of these
> according to Freudian id-superego-ego terms or Platonic
> darkhorse-whitehorse-charioteer terms).  Once we get here, to where
> our particular kind of "we" is, we can see that while the We should
> constrain Me, the entire point of We is to produce I's, and not get in
> the way of it.  So now we have freedom of thought, and that thought
> has realized that the idea of properties of nobility in the blood is stupid,
> so it tells We to let up on Me in certain cases (creating the double
> meaning of the freedom of effing: the freedom of thought producing
> the freedom of sexual partner


>Matt:
> But where was free _will_ in all of this?  Where's the will, and what
> kind of freedom does it need?  It seems to me that Pirsig's levels
> lead one to think that, following Greek-cum-Enlightenment thinking,
> we have different wills, or rather, we will from different places, our
> impetus to act comes from different places: biological, social,
> intellectual.  Pirsig's levels also suggest that complicated, historically
> inflected lines of reasoning are needed to determine how particular
> phenomena should be judged.  The levels help categorize things, but
> there's no way one could understand _why_ sex _was_ constrained
> but now _shouldn't_ be constrained without shooting up into those
> categories some actual historical thinking.  And that's just to say that
> when one wants to talk about moral responsibility and freedom of
> will with Pirsig's MoQ, all Pirsig's MoQ does is give you some
> conceptual resources: they still need to be motivated, and you have
> all the hard work ahead of you.  And _after_ you've done all the
> work of showing where freedom and will fall into Pirsig's categories,
> you still have to yet to show the incompatibilities with other
> conceptual arrangements (e.g., the ones conditioned by the same
> pure-epistemological-problem shrugging off maneuver that Pirsig
> begins with).

Ron:
Right but remember the basis for the entire exercise is to better understand
the case history, the koan of the particular drawn from the genera of the levels
with the idea not to arrive at some absolute judgement because it also serves
as a guide to understanding the reasons for our own actions.
I dont think its alot of work because Socrates and Aristotle already did it.
In Pirsigs MoQ freedom of will IS moral responsibility, natural selection
is a moral act and if we see intellectual patterns as a natural extention 
of dynamic change we find free will is an extension of the good.

.

Matt:
> That last comment isn't directed necessarily at you Ron, but it is at
> people who take issue with Steve's recent advancing of redundancy
> arguments against the notion of a _free_ will.  Steve's interested in
> normal, practical kinds of freedom, but what he doesn't have
> patience for are the metaphysical kinds of freedom that seem to
> serve no purpose in connecting with the practical kinds.  If Value is
> Pirsig's assumed starting point, and for value to exist you must be
> able to freely choose between X and Y, then Pirsig has _assumed_
> the existence of free will, and made it the kind of thing that every
> existing thing has.  He has neither explained it nor argued for it
> (though he has argued for why we should reject SOM's arrangement
> of things).  He has also, by making it the kind of thing a rock has,
> made it nearly useless as a concept--if it stays at its assumed-status
> starting point--for practical reasoning.  To bring free will back down
> to earth and make it useful again is just find yourself, as a theorist,
> in the area of thinking Steve is suggesting is the only useful place to
> occupy: wanting to talk about practical kinds of constraint and
> freedom, not metaphysical kinds.

Ron:
But isnt that the advertised special of the MoQ? connecting practical
kinds of freedom and constraint with metaphysical ones? what is more useful
than an idea of freedom and constraint that DOES connect the two?

when you say:
"If Value is
> Pirsig's assumed starting point, and for value to exist you must be
> able to freely choose between X and Y, then Pirsig has _assumed_
> the existence of free will, and made it the kind of thing that every
> existing thing has.  He has neither explained it nor argued for it"

Ron:
He has explained that it provides an alternate way to interpret data.
Not much more, an expansion of rational explanation. But as you
say by assuming the starting point is value he is in fact asserting
that free will is what determines static patterns. Existence
is nothing but raw sheer will and the fact that it changes and evolves
hints as to its freedom.