ROGER LOOKS AT FREE WILL FROM SEVERAL DIFFERENT ANGLES
To Rich and Horse:
I needed to step away from the free will issue for a few days and gain fresh
perspective. I guess I was too caught up in stable patterns . Now I'm
back, and I see the issue in a new light.
What has suddenly occurred to me is that Pirsig changes the concepts in the
middle of his free will/determinism platypus. Free will ( as we usually
think of it) is being independent and able to "choose freely." Pirsig starts
with this definition when explaining the platypus, but then does a quick
redefinition at the end to "choosing freedom."
"To the extent that one's behavior 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 behavior is free" (p180)
By doing this, Pirsig equates freedom with pursuit of dynamic quality, with
his "code of art", and hence with Kevin's pursuit of mysticism. On the other
hand, he evaded the original question. Namely, how free are we to choose
dynamic quality rather than static patterns? I believe the MOQ does resolve
this issue, and I would like to run a solution by you. Then I will loop back
to Pirsig's extended definition of Free Will.
Before starting on free will though, I would like to mention that determinism
is no longer even an SOM platypus. Quantum mechanics and complexity theory
have both shown that the universe is not deterministic. Similar to the MOQ,
these theories explain reality in terms of probabilities, tendencies, and
attractors. In other words, as "value."
FREE WILL IN AN MOQ CONTEXT
As for free will, I believe the MOQ explains away the issue without having to
"choose to pursue dynamic quality". To address the issue, I relied heavily on
my favorite radical empiricist Zen philosopher, Kitaro Nishida. Nishida
defines Free Will as the uniting of desired experience with experience. The
will is seen as a unifying process. Seen this way, the Will is a pattern's
ability to actualize value. The will is value, and free will is unencumbered
value.
For example, a single celled organism wills and values the experience of
sunlight, and brings forth this experience. In SOM terms, it moves to the
light. This is free will. (Note the similarity to autopoiesis)
Nishida writes:
"We usually contend that the will is free. But what is this so-called
freedom?...... We think we can freely desire anything, but that simply means
that it is possible for us to desire..... It is not so much that "I" produce
desires, but that actualized patterns are none other than me."
In other words, "I" am realized value patterns. I think Pirsig should have
shown that the Free Will of SOM is some type of theoretical value
independence. But patterns are not independent. In fact, a truly
independent pattern would have no value and thus not exist. Diana wrote
something along this line last Fall, and suggested that Free Will implies a
free subject. It is probably more accurate to say that a value is free than
that a subject is free.
The real world is neither deterministic nor composed of completely
independent patterns. Entities are composed of value patterns, which are
patterns of actualized will. Free will is the ability of a value pattern to
actualize itself.
PIRSIG'S PURSUIT OF DQ
The path to freedom, for Pirsg, is to pursue Dynamic Quality. By this he
means to get closer to direct, unpatterned experience and thereby to
experience new sources of good. He introduces Dynamic Quality on page 131:
"There's a dynamic good that is outside any culture, that cannot be contained
by any system of precepts, but has to be continually rediscovered as a
culture evolves."
Pirsig's model for following DQ was the brujo. The brujo represented a new
and different approach for society. The tribe sensed higher value in the
brujo and followed him to a prepatterned, unpatterned, unknown experience.
Once there, new patterns were established and known.
"The brujo was good because he saw the new source of good and evil before the
other members of the tribe did" (132)
On page 134 RMP explains that mysticism is one path to get closer to this new
source of quality:
"The purpose of Mystic meditation is not to remove one's self from experience
but to bring one' self closer to it by eliminating stale, confusing, static,
intellectual attachments to the past"
At the end of the book, Pirsig personalizes this pursuit of freedom. When
Rigel asked if Lila has quality the author answered impulsively that she did.
He did " the one moral thing on this whole trip."
What was this "moral thing"? Is impulsiveness moral? Of course not. What is
most moral is to follow the code of art. It is pursuing Dynamic Quality, and
hence freedom. Phaedrus rejected static patterns and followed quality. This
was the metaphorical breakthrough leading to higher pattern Metaphysics of
Quality.
Dynamic Quality is prepatterned and preknown. It is not pre experience. It
is the cutting edge of experience. By attending to direct experience and
stripping away old static quality patterns derived from past experience, we
can get in touch with the new source of quality.
Roger
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