Folks-
Here is an excerpt of a recent LS post where I discuss free will and how,
with the proper redefinition of a few key terms, the free will/determinism
platypus is aptly resolved by the MoQ. The entire post is at:
http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/lilasquad/9906/0009.html
///
FREE WILL IN THE MOQ
This leads, as Rich, Roger, and others noted, into some questions about
free will and what it means to choose one course of action over another.
While this might be ranging some from the main topic, it is interesting
ground that seems to come up often.
These issues seem relevant because if you accept the Socrates statement,
you seem to be denying free will in some form. This contradicts the moral
basis of the MoQ. Why would morality even exist if man could never
knowingly choose something of lesser quality? What would be the point? This
statement attributed to Socrates seems like another attack on Quality from
a proponent of Truth.
On 6/5/99 at 12:40 PM -0400, RISKYBIZ9@aol.com (Roger) wrote:
> The second fundamental concern with Pirsig's definition of Free Will is
> that it hinges upon "the extent that one follows". Who or what exactly
> wills or chooses to follow DQ? Can you choose to follow/not follow it?
> Or do you follow/not follow it deterministically? Introducing DQ does
> not settle the Free Will controversy, it just adds a new step in the
> process.
> Free will is an SOM term that Pirsig should have thrown out as a
> fiction along with the independent self.
I think the sentence before the one quoted is important to this discussion
of free will since there is an implied parallel. I will quote the whole
paragraph (p. 180, (ch 12) in the teal paperback of Lila, bracketed
material is mine):
"In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma [free will versus determinism]
doesn't come up. 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."
First, if you rewrite the last sentence in the quote to make a better
parallel with the one before it, you get:
"To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of
quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one's behavior is not
controlled by static patterns of quality it is with choice."
I am almost positive that this is a simple truism. Freedom, this ability to
choose, can be easily equated with Dynamic Quality in terms of the MoQ.
After all, if you are not able to make a choice, then you must replicate
some extremely static pattern.
If you accept that and you make a simple substitution, you end up with:
"To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of
quality it is without dynamic quality. But to the extent that one's
behavior is not controlled by static patterns of quality, it is with
dynamic quality."
When there are only two things, DQ and SQ, this certainly becomes a truism.
Furthermore, I would argue that Pirsig's mistake in this whole section (I
only quoted one paragraph) is that he continues to talk of free will versus
determinism only in terms of man when the terms can be broadened within the
MoQ to apply to any static pattern of value. He should have made that
broadening clear there. If accepted, "one" can be anything including a
society or a molecule. That is why the issue, the dilemma, dissolves.
Let me try to back up that claim. As I understand it, the MoQ cannot exist
without choice. When the MoQ restates causation (A causes B) as preference
(B values precondition A), we must allow for the fact that A can lead to
multiple outcomes, the most likely of which is B, and that B can decide
which preconditions are better.
How does one outcome occur over the others? Well, in SOM terms (we are
suspended in language after all), we could say that we allow for A to
choose between B and any available alternatives. We do not like saying that
a grape makes choices, but at the inorganic level it can be true. I will
not go into Pirsig's arguments for this or quantum theory here. If we
accept this fundamental principle (the reworking of causation in the MoQ)
than anything, any SPoV, has the ability to make choices.
This would make more sense if we were not caught up in SOM all of the time.
My point here is that "choice" does not imply sentience in terms of the MoQ
and it should not imply subject/object either, at least not any more than
"B values precondition A." That B values one thing over another implies
that B can make choices. Any other definition of choice is pure SOM.
Free will can be redefined as either the ability to not be determined or
the ability to choose, which is limited to man in SOM (if anything).
However, free will cannot be limited to the intellectual level and man in
the MoQ. We should no longer look at free will as the "doctrine that man
makes choices independent of the atoms of his body." Instead, we should say
that free will is an analog to, a measure of, Dynamic-ness. Free
will/determinism is a continuum with intermediate values rather than a
simple yes/no choice. The more dynamic the level of a static pattern, the
more free will it shows. Dynamic Quality shows pure free will.
Under this interpretation, if I stifle a yawn during a logic class, that
could be considered showing free will since it is a social act (stifling)
controlling a biological one (yawning). If I make the conscious decision
not to stifle the yawn, ignoring the standard static social patterns of
politeness in order to convey some message to the professor, that response
is more dynamic and therefore shows more free will. Some would say it was
willful even. If I am not able to stifle this yawn even though I would like
to, that shows less free will as biology is winning over social and
intellectual.
Interestingly, this means the amount of free will shown by the act of
yawning (not stifling) depends on the static layers involved in the choice.
The intellectual decision not to stifle the yawn shows much more free will
than the biological inability to stifle the yawn, yet they yield the same
result. Oh, that is a handy change to make when talking about free will in
terms of the MoQ: static patterns do not have or possess free will, they
show free will to the degree they are dynamic.
This makes sense. A man operating on all four static levels shows more free
will than a grape only operating on one or two static levels at a time. A
holdover idea from SOM would be to believe that that as long as man is
thinking he possesses free will. Also, a grape could never possess free
will in SOM terms. The MoQ perspective would be that the grape is showing
some aspects of free will simply by being alive and, for that matter, so is
the man. The difference is that the man can show more aspects of free will
on more levels. SOM artificially hordes free will for humanity, MoQ does
not while still realizing that a man has more free will than a grape.
To sum this section up, I think that free will and determinism exist, but
that they are simply yet another way of saying "more dynamic" and "less
dynamic." In SOM, free will is just a way of saying that something "has the
ability to choose" and it can only apply to subjects and man. In the MoQ,
everything has this ability to choose to different degrees and on
different, sometimes multiple, levels. This also means then that the more
moral that an action is, the more that action shows free will as opposed to
determinism, dynamic quality as opposed to static quality, and "higher"
SPoVs as opposed to "lower" SPoVs.
Finally, not only is a man who has learned about right not necessarily
righteous, but the same applies to molecules and societies and everything
else. Nothing always chooses the best known outcome or there would not be a
"choice" involved at all. Choice is fundamental to morality and, in my
opinion, choice is fundamental to the MoQ.
///
There were a few replies to this, most of which I am in the middle of
replying to now. Since free will is slightly off-topic in the LS right now,
I plan on posting my replies here instead. In a follow up post to the LS
(not posted yet), I also address a concern of Carmen's:
///
On 6/12/99 at 12:43 AM -0300, Carmen Flynn wrote:
> I don't know if this makes any sense, but while I have the two quotes
> from Roger and Mark, something tell me that we all here at the LS seem
> to think that a Dynamic choice is always a better choice than the
> static choice. Free will and the most Dynamic choice is not always the
> best course to take, if, in the process we are 'destroying a lower
> value pattern'.
I agree. When I equated total free will with pure Dynamic Quality, I did
not mean to imply that pure free will is a good thing. Without Static
Quality, we would end up with chaos. Pirsig says this well on page 170 of
the teal version of Lila (second to last paragraph of chapter 11).
///
Cheers,
Mark
________________________________________________________________________
Mark Brooks <mark@epiphanous.org> <http://www.epiphanous.org/>
How do you know who wrote this? <http://www.epiphanous.org/mark/pgp/>
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