[MD] James v. Dewey v. Pirsig w.r.t. "Free will"

[david buchanan]

Steve said:
If these two quotes are actually saying the same thing, I'd be very interested to understand how that could be. Or are you are just doing a "Lucy" here?


dmb says:
Doing a "Lucy" is when you demand answers and then ignore the answers when they are given. That's exactly what you do and that's why we have been going round and round for months and months. Like I said, that's why your questions can be answered by adding "like I said" to the answers already given. I want to quit because you raise the same points and ask same questions over and over even though they've already been answered - usually several times. 

In fact, you recently posted that SEP quote in question as response to a long series of quotes from Seigfried that specifically addressed James's practical, pragmatic view of free will and determinism. But you completely ignored the substance of Seigfried's remarks AGAIN, even though I've posted them about five times in the last three months. It doesn't get much more "Lucy" than that.

Anyway, I think the idea in the SEP quote is that free will and determinism are both based on the same empirical data and so the issue cannot be decided on that basis. The difference isn't based on any practical reality. It's just a matter of how you take it, in the same way that the optimist and the pessimist both live in the same world. The difference is philosophic, not scientific, as Pirsig puts it. That's what makes it a metaphysical dispute. And yet, the Putnam quote seems to be saying, it's still true that serious practical consequences will follow from adopting either position. They both have devastating logical consequences, as Pirsig puts it, because we are faced with the prospect of abandoning either science or morality. Our radical empiricists, James and Pirsig, insist that freedom and restraint are empirical realities and that neither should be treated as illusions or otherwise explained away by metaphysical principles. They insist that it's an empirical question with empirical answers.