[MD] Free will according to the MOQ

[david buchanan]

 Pirsig said: "But the MOQ can argue that free will exists at all levels with increasing freedom to make choices as one ascends the levels."


Steve replied:
I posted that quote months ago and am well aware of it. ...It is certainly not the logical and necessary basis for moral responsibility like the traditional view of free will.


McWatt says:

".., it's apparent that this 'value' continuum (of freedom) stretches between largely determined sub-atomic particles to complete artistic freedom. This is important (metaphysically) as this continuum facilitates, in a largely deterministic physical world, a notion of moral responsibility and a considerable intellectual freedom for an individual regarding aesthetic decisions." ( Anthony's PhD, P 137).


Steve said to Ron:
Right, there is no need to get rid of the term "the individual" but as Pirsig describes what that means in MOQ terms it stops being important to ask whether this "collection of patterns" _has_ free will. 


Pirsig says:
"But the MOQ can argue that free will exists at all levels with increasing freedom to make choices as one ascends the levels."



Steve says:
In my opinion free will ceases to be a useful concept for describing experience once we embrace MOQ terms. Worse, I think that the way dmb uses the term he is slipping a bunch of SOM BS in the backdoor of the MOQ (e,g,, when he says that accepting that humans have free will is necessary for thinking that humans can be held morally responsible for their actions). 


dmb quotes Pirsig and McWatt in response:

Pirsig says, "But the MOQ can argue that free will exists at all levels with increasing freedom to make choices as one ascends the levels," and McWatt says, "This is important as this continuum facilitates, in a largely deterministic physical world, a notion of moral responsibility and a considerable intellectual freedom for an individual regarding aesthetic decisions."


Ron said to Steve:
When Dave says that accepting free will is necessary for moral responsibility he is framing the idea in MoQ context. Because free will {DQ} the ability to change and evolve is moral responsibility, because the consequences are to risk poor quality and death, to not exist. Adhere to the static, stick to the conservative, and one risks being left behind. We see it manifest in every facett of life from politics to staying competitive in the job market.   It has very "real" Pragmatic consequences in experience.


dmb says:

Thanks, Ron. Yes, I certainly want to be framing the issue in the context and terms of the MOQ. (It sure feels like I'm constantly having to repeat myself just to clear away Steve's distortions.) As I see it, in the MOQ there is both freedom and constraint. This freedom is not conceived as the property that some independent entity "has" and the constraints are not conceived as causal or mechanical laws. Those ways of conceiving freedom and constraint are predicated on the context and terms that the MOQ has already rejected, of course, namely SOM. If we're going to talk about freedom and constraint ACCORDING to the MOQ, we have to detach them from those rejected metaphysical assumptions. This is why I objected to Steve's use of Harris and Parfit. It's just terribly confused and backwards to discuss the MOQ's formulation in terms of causal determinism. Pirsig's formulation is predicated on rejecting exactly that premise. Instead of extending the laws of cause and effect upward from atoms to the sphere of human action, as classical scientific determinism usually does, the MOQ begins with the human capacity to make choices and extends it downward to atoms. 

In the MOQ, people are not something apart from Quality. The MOQ divides all of reality into the static quality of order and the Dynamic Quality of freedom. And that's how it describes Lila's battle and everybody's battle. It's an evolutionary battle against the static patterns of her own life, an evolutionary struggle toward freedom. In the MOQ, freedom and constraint are not just real, they are the whole game. That's why I object so vigorously to the suggestion that the whole question is an illusion or that "free will" is permanently superglued to the assumptions of SOM or the Cartesian self so that it should just be thrown out with the bathwater. I'm saying there is definitely a baby worth saving. Why? Because "the MOQ can argue that free will exists at all levels with increasing freedom to make choices as one ascends the levels" and this is "important as this continuum facilitates, in a largely deterministic physical world, a notion of moral responsibility and a considerable intellectual freedom for an individual regarding aesthetic decisions."