[MD] "Could have acted differently" v. "the extent to which we, perceive DQ"

[david buchanan]

Andre said to Steve and dmb:
...I had hoped however that it would clarify some issues and perhaps that it would 'settle' the seemingly months long debate between you two but...it seems not. Excuse my own intellectual shortcomings but I am confused. ...Place this [Lila's battle] in the context of the evolutionary value continuum, the struggle between preference and probability.  ...the MOQ posits that the evolutionary process is a process where all static patterns of value are moving towards Dynamic Quality. "Lila, individually, herself, is in an evolutionary battle against the static patterns of her own life." (LILA, p 367) Can we still speak of determinism or free will here? Of course I argue No. Preferences and probabilities.  ..Was Lila's action somehow 'caused'. Are preferences 'caused'? Could she have acted differently? ... My confusion comes in when the debate still involves 'causation' and 'determinism' because somehow Lila 'could have acted differently'. ...Am I wrong or is my confusion unfounded?



dmb says:

I boiled your points down quite a lot here, Andre. The aim is to focus and clarify, but if something important is missing please feel free to put it back.

Here's how I understand the operative terms. "Determinism" is doctrine that says our actions are not really chosen by us, that we are not in control of our actions. There are various kinds of determinism, depending on what those controlling factors are. Causal determinism is a particular kind of determinism, the kind that says we are controlled by the laws of cause and effect. There are theological forms of determinism, wherein God is (or the gods are) the controlling factor. That's where we get our word "fate", in fact. The Fates were gods that knew and controlled your destiny. Determinism of any sort denies free will, although there are a whole range of reasons for this denial and so there is a whole range of determinisms. It's just that causal determinism is the most common among today's philosophers and scientists (like Parfit and Harris) and that's the kind involved in Pirsig's description of the classic dilemma.

Compatibilism says there are determining factors but not to the extent that free will is denied altogether. There is free will, but within the limits of those controlling factors. I think the MOQ is obviously a kind of compatibilism. This is based on Pirsig's original reformulation into a tension between the static and the Dynamic, of course. "To the extent that one's behaviour is controlled by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is undefinable, one's behaviour is free". (LILA, p 160) One's behavior is without choice to some extent and one's behavior is free to some extent. In this formulation, one's behavior is not being controlled by the laws of causality because they have been replaced with patterns of preference, but there is still a determining factor here. The "one" whose behavior Pirsig is talking about is not an independent entity that "has" free will. That's just the way SOMers would frame and qualify the notion. We can reject that particular version of free will without also rejecting the basic idea that one does have the freedom to act at one's discretion, to make choices and decisions. 

I think your confusion is well founded, Andre, precisely because Steve agrees with none of this. I'm pretty sure that he and I are still NOT on the same page even with respect to the basic meaning of the terms "free will" and "determinism". He simply isn't moved by dictionaries or encyclopedia entries. He insists that they are superglued to a particular metaphysical framework (SOM) that's incompatible with the MOQ. I'm simply saying the meaning of the terms is much broader, that we can reject that particular conception of free will and determinism without also rejecting the MOQ's version of them. 

Let me put it this way: causal laws are one particular way to conceptualize the empirical facts. Restraints and resistances are known and felt and lived through. That is the empirical reality to be explained and causality is an elaborate and well developed explanation for the regularity of those felt resistances. The MOQ explains this empirical reality too but it posits patterns of preferences as an alternative explanation, as a rival concept to replace causality. This move has huge implications but one thing it does NOT do, is dismiss the resisting factors that are empirically felt and known. The MOQ offers a different intellectual description of those empirical facts so that we are not controlled by blind mechanical forces but we are still controlled to some extent. That's why Pirsig says the difference is philosophic and not scientific; because both conceptions purport to explain the same empirical data. And so it is with free will. There are various ways to conceptualize this human agency and the MOQ has it's own particular way to construe that freedom, but the idea has to answer to empirical reality. We feel ourselves striving against and overcoming these resistance. We act to achieve some goal or purpose and sometimes we succeed. Those are the empirical facts to be explained. That's what the idea of free will is about. In fact, following Dynamic Quality (the primary empirical reality - undifferentiated aesthetic continuum) is all about being in touch with the immediate flux of life, with direct everyday experience. Bringing yourself closer to this empirical reality is the name of game. If our ideas only ever refer to other ideas, we remain aloft in abstractions but the main idea here is to bring these concepts back down to the earth of things. 


We can all agree that the law of gravity is just a ghost. But apples still fall to the ground and the moon is still in orbit, you know? In the same way, we can all agree that human action is not controlled by the laws of causality, because those laws are ghosts too, but we know from experience that we are controlled to some extent. Obviously, empirical reality does not bend to our wishes and whims. That's where the idea of object permanence - and by extension the whole idea of an external physical reality - came from in the first place. These concepts are always secondary, like subject and objects, they are derived from experience and their meaningful only to the extent that they can be put to work in experience. Without that relation, that marriage if you will, they are meaningless abstractions.