Diana,
That's an intelligent and acute post, and I think it illustrates very well
the way in which RMP's conversational tone can lead to a presentation of the
underlying argument which is both engaging and confusing. We could go for
clarity here at the expense of adding some verbiage, which is what I will
now try to do.
You're quite right in saying that when RMP says that the freewill/determism
issue doesn't come up, he doesn't adequately explain *why* it doesn't come
up. But it seems to me that he's left one whopper of a clue in a previous
paragraph: "If one adheres to a traditional scientific metaphysics of
substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable corollary." -
implying that the important innovation of MOQ on the freewill question is
that it is *not* a metaphysics of substance.
So I think it might be worth our while to reflect on what a metaphysics of
substance is, how the MOQ differs from that, and how this difference affects
freewill.
In point of fact, RMP has sketched these reflections out already in the
quoted passage, but that's just it: they are a bit sketchy. We are told
that to the extent that we follow (he must mean 'pursue'?) Dynamic Quality
then we are free. The way he put's this, it sounds like we are unfree one
moment and free the next, the moment we think about DQ, and of course that's
not the situation at all.
What I think RMP is getting at in the passage is that the mere *existence*
of Dynamic quality proves the error of the substance-metaphysics, and
therefore the error of determinism.
A substance-metaphysics can be understood as a metaphysics which takes the
structure of grammar and uses it to understand the real world. This means
that the substance metaphysicians (beginning with Aristotle) are always
taking linguistic realities like Properties and Objects and Subjects for
realities in the world, and to fit all of the world into just these
categories. If that's your starting point, then determinism is going to be
a natural outcome, because cause and effect is a prime way of relating
objects. So the question of whether determinism is true or not really comes
down to whether it is right to suppose that Objects and their relations are
*out there*. And this is where RMP makes his contribution, because he's
noticed that the only thing which is *out there* is Dynamic Quality: the
objects and their relations, including cause and effect, are our creations,
the fictions of language, conceptual *tools* and nothing more. Static
quality.
So RMP's insight, I claim, is to note out that supposing our wills to be
imprisoned by cause and effect is like supposing that a carpenter is
imprisoned by a chisel.
It may seem wild to claim this on the bare evidence of the passage you
quote, Diana, but this is frankly the impression that I have from Pirsig's
work as a whole, and indeed the references to Plato and Buddhism within it.
When he says about freewill/determinism:
> In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma 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.
- what he really means is that the question comes up, and is definitevely
answered. If your behaviour is controlled by static patterns of quality,
then indubitably you are not free - you are like the carpenter controlled by
his chisel. But the good carpenter is controlled not by his tools but by
what he's aiming at: by dynamic quality. Being controlled by or pursuing DQ
involves deploying one's tools (conceptual and carbon tipped) in a purposive
and choosing way: being the prisoner of dynamic quality is just what being
free is.
This talk of freedom may at first seem to leave open the question as to
whether your *will* is free or not in such a situation, but here I think
RMP's pragmatism is making itself felt: freewill is as freewill does. If
people have freewill then this is because they *demonstrate* this freewill
in their actions. And, as a matter of fact, there is no way that these
people could have entered into their prisons of SQ *except* by freewill: for
it is only be the will that the cutting-up inherent to SQ can take place,
and only by the will that a consensus cutting-up can be accepted.
So it seems to me, in Sum, that RMP's response to the Freewill/determinism
conflict is not to evade the question or restate it in other terms or claim
to have 'dissolved' it, but a straight frontal-attack on determinism and
it's metaphysical foundations. A straight attack on the metaphysics of
determinism and a defence of freewill, together with some new Moqish
metaphysical foundations about the primary reality of the Dynamic, and the
role of freely choosing Humans in creating the Static.
Or so it seems to me - and I do hope I'm not alone.
Elephant
> From: diana@hongkong.com
> Reply-To: moq_focus@moq.org
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:21:57 +0800
> To: <moq_focus@moq.org>
> Subject: MF Free will
>
> MFs
>
> In response to point 6.1:
>
> 6.1 Pirsig's explanation of free will is flawed because in order to have
> free will you must have a subject, or else who's "will" is it that is free?
>
> The offending passage from Lila is below:
>
> * * * * *
>
> A third puzzle illuminated by the Metaphysics of Quality is the ancient "free
> will vs. determinism controversy." Determinism is the philosophic doctrine
> that man, like all other objects in the universe, follows fixed scientific
> laws, and does so without exception. Free will is the philosophic doctrine
> that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body.
>
> This battle has been a very long and very loud one because an abandonment of
> either position has devastating logical consequences. If the belief in free
> will is abandoned, morality must seemingly also be abandoned under a
> subject-object metaphysics. If man follows the cause-and-effect laws of
> substance, then man cannot really choose between right and wrong.
>
> On the other hand, if the determinists let go of their position it would seem
> to deny the truth of science. If one adheres to a traditional scientific
> metaphysics of substance, the philosophy of determinism is an inescapable
> corollary. If "everything" is included in the class of "substance and its
> properties," and if "substance and its properties" is included in the class of
> "things that always follow laws," and if "people" are included in the class
> "everything," then it is an airtight logical conclusion that people always
> follow the laws of substance.
>
> To be sure, it doesn't seem as though people blindly follow the laws of
> substance in everything they do, but within a Deterministic explanation that
> is just another one of those illusions that science is forever exposing. All
> the social sciences, including anthropology, were founded on the bedrock
> metaphysical belief that these physical cause-and-effect laws of human
> behavior exist. Moral laws, if they can be said to exist at all, are merely an
> artificial social code that has nothing to do with the real nature of the
> world. A "moral" person acts conventionally, "watches out for the cops,"
> "keeps his nose clean," and nothing more.
>
> In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma 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.
>
> * * * * *
>
>
> What Pirsig ends up implying in this passage, sort of, is that when we behave
> dynamically we have free will and when we behave statically we are determined.
> The trouble is if we have free will when we are dynamic then we must be
> subjects when we are dynamic ... But then again, that isn't exactly what he
> says; he actually just says our behavior is "free" when it's dynamic. Which
> must be right because "free" is one of the synonyms for "dynamic". So all he's
> really said is that there are problems with free will and with determinism, so
> let's just say that when we're dynamic we're dynamic and when we're static
> we're static.
>
> At best this is just tautology, at worst it's a fudge because he's not
> responding to the question that's being asked. He says the dilemma doesn't
> come up, without saying why it doesn't come up. Then he plays with the word
> "free". He detaches it from the word "will" and attaches it to "behavior". But
> the question isn't: is "my behavior free". The question is: "is my will free".
> "Will" is the key word here. The question “do we have will?”, is completely
> different from the question “do we have behavior?” Obviously humans have
> behavior. The ancient free will question concerns whether or not we ourselves
> initiate that behavior.
>
> To answer the question as it could have been answered, I'd have said that "do
> I have free will?" is a subject-object question. In other words, the question
> actually says: "do I-the-subject have free will?" So the answer in MOQ terms
> should simply be: the question can't be answered because the MOQ doesn't
> accept the assumption of the Subject. (or to be precise, the MOQ sees
> "I-the-subject" as an intellectual concept, nothing more). Merely as a matter
> of having an internally consistent metaphysics, the MOQ can't dismiss the
> Subject as an "impossible fiction", and at the same time say that the Subject
> has the potential for free will, even if it is only under dynamic
> circumstances. And if there's no Subject there's no free will.
>
> This might seem like a disastrous conclusion, but it isn't really because
> under the MOQ both free will and cause and effect are still intellectual
> truths. For the intellectual purposes of law and science they are good truths,
> and we should adhere to them.
>
> It seems to me that the MOQ may be able to answer the free will question after
> all, but it bothers me that Pirsig didn't do it.
>
>
> Diana
>
>
>
> MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:31 BST