[MD] Free Will

[Ham Priday]

Hi Steve --

> You are missing the point. The question is not whether actions have
> consequences, but rather where that decision to exit the room or not
> comes from.

The question is whether choices represent the free will of the individual or 
are predetermined "patterns of quality (or intellect)" that the individual 
is obliged to follow.  In that context, I am right on point.

> I'm just saying that the future follows from the present which
> follows from the past to the extent that we can tell stories about
> how we got from the past to the present in terms of causes and
> effects and constantly work on improving those stories to better
> enable us to predict the future.
>
> I don't think we will ever get very good at predicting the future
> though we have a good mastery of some situations which can
> be well-described by simple laws from physics.

You are still talking causality, Steve.  This rationale is tantamount to 
saying that human life follows from cellular organisms which follow from 
inorganic matter in the chain of evolution.  Human civilization does not 
advance by causal evolution but by the will of free people who determine 
their own history.  History is shaped by the values we aspire to and the 
moral systems we institute to embody them.  Wherever man's free choices are 
suppressed by autocracies or religious dogma, civilization is stifled. 
Applying the lessons learned from history is an important adjunct to human 
progress, but structuring morality on causative factors alone would exclude 
the value judgments that are vital to advancement.

[Ham]:
> I can only wonder at the "reasonableness" of a philosophy
> that is determined to undermine man's innate freedom.

[Steve]:
> Freedom from what? What do you think your idea of free will
> helps you to escape? A chain of causality perhaps?  MOQers
> are not bound [to] the chain you seem to think we are. In the
> MOQ, causality is an intellectual pattern. It is part of a late
> evolutionary development. It is not something viewed as
> foundational for reality. It is a tool for coping with reality.

Individual Freedom and Free Will are not "escape mechanisms"; they are the 
means whereby we may direct our values to bettering our own lives and the 
course of history.  Human beings are not simply robotic creatures running on 
a programmed track through life.  We are endowed with the value sensibility 
and reason to develop novel approaches to challenges, control and enhance 
our environment, and create  technologies that make our productivity more 
satisfying and efficient.  None of these innovations is a simple 
cause-and-effect phenomenon.

> I don't think that the fact that we will always be able to tell
> stories about actions and consequences to explain how we
> got from the past to the present without appeal to an extra-added
> ingredient must lead to fatalism. I don't see how it even CAN
> lead to fatalism without imagining an omniscient god.

This "god fixation" is an anomaly that seems to have infected the MoQists. 
The primary source is not an "extra-added ingredient" but the necessary 
ground of reality.  Unlike Quality, which is dependent on the realization of 
a cognizant being, the Source accounts for the intelligent design of the 
universe as well as the creation of a free agent to realize its value 
differentially.  There is nothing "fatalistic" about the ontology of 
Essence, and "omniscience" does not logically apply to an absolute source.

Essentially speaking,
Ham