Hi Struan and Group:
Struan, you’ve had a lot of fun skewering Pirsig and the MoQ. I was buying
into your arguments for awhile, but the more I read the more I began to
sense the presence of a trickster, one who seems perceptive and reasonable
on the surface but who, when examined closely, is revealed as a sophist.
Here’s an example from your post of 9 Jan:
Struan:
The first thing to point out there is no ‘Free will v. Determinism,’ debate as
Horse correctly implies elsewhere.
Who says so? You expect us to take your word for it? Where does Horse
imply the same?
Struan:
It makes not one jot of difference to free will if our actions are the result of
mechanistic, strict cause and effect series, or if they are the result of random
changes at a quantum level.
You set up a false dichotomy based your unstated and unproven assumption
that mental properties are reducible to (or emerge from) physical properties
(or as you like to say, ‘relations’). Free will advocates believe, based on their
personal experience (i.e., emotions and intuitions you hold in high esteem)
that choice is independent of physical laws, quantum or otherwise.
Struan:
I cannot ‘choose’ a random fluctuation (by definition of the word ‘random’)
any more than I can ‘choose’ a Newtonian deterministic series of events.
So what? According to free will believers, you can ‘choose’ to ignore both.
Struan:
Neither determinism nor indeterminism have an decisive effect on the
concept of free will and it is a ‘strawman’ to lump them together.
Nonsense. The concepts of determinism/free will go together like
space/time, one/many, black/white. You can’t conceive of the one without
the other. The real ‘strawman’ is your attempt to divorce free will from
determinism.
Struan:
One can have free will with determinism and equally one can have free will
with indeterminism. It would help if Pirsig had not conflated the two and I
suggest that we avoid the same mistake.
The mistake is your attempt to separate free will from determinism. The two
are conceptually married. The question is: How can we make choices freely
(exercise free will) when we are integral parts of universe which is subject to
rigid laws of cause and effect (determinism)? The question doesn’t change
simply by your say so.
Another example from the same post:
Struan:
An analogy: A computer is set up to solve an equation.
Using the passive voice ignores the human intelligence(s) that created the
equation and ‘set up’ the computer to solve it.
Struan:
An electronics engineer would consider this to be a physical system set up
according to determinate laws, therefore its behavior is determined purely by
physical causes.
You don’t need to be an electronics engineer to know that a computer is
deterministic, i.e., subject to laws of cause and effect. The ‘engineer’ is
irrelevant.
Struan:
The user, on the other hand, would consider that what matters is that the
computer’s behavior is determined by the problem it is solving.
What matters for the user is solving the problem. How the computer
‘behaves’ in accomplishing the end is irrelevant.
Struan:
There is no conflict here as the equation is not something outside the
computer but embodied within it in such a way that the computer’s behavior
is determined both by the physical forces and by the equation.
There’s an important difference between equations and physical forces. One
is material, the other intellectual. ‘Determinism’ as used in the free
will/determinism debate refers to a world independent of thought that acts in
certain predictable ways we cannot change.
Struan:
The solving of the equation is the significance of the physical activity and so
the two answers to the question, ‘What determines behavior?’ are not rivals
but complementary. (A and not A!)
The answer to what determines behavior of the computer is its physical
activity. A is A. It would help if you had not conflated the means (the
physical computer) and ends (solving an equation). Or, as Pirsig might say,
confusing hardware with software, the physical with the intellectual.
(Your computer analogy reminds me of the paradox of those who design
software to ‘prove’ that evolution can happen by mindless chance.)
Struan, to your mixture of unsupported assertions, unprovable assumptions
and fallacious arguments you toss in a liberal sprinkling of insults, accusing
those who disagree with you as being confused, simplistic, hopeless,
amusing, lesser thinkers and off their rockers while attacking their views as
convoluted, obscure, mythical, distorted and mere word games – to mention
just a few.
All of which makes for a concoction of legerdemain that had me fooled. But
once in a blaze of self-revelation you wrote:
Struan:
Total, utter and unmitigated scepticism about all claims to a correct view of
life is my view of life, Jon - and yes, that scepticism also applies to my
scepticism.
Which is precisely the way, thanks to your lead, I now view your posts.
Platt
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