Hi Elephant,
Thanks for the response. You mention you can't make sense of my
disconnected/influenced dichotomy. I am not sure if it is because I was
unclear or perhaps -- God forbid -- IT MADE NO SENSE. Let me try to help us
decide the matter....
ELEPHANT:
I don't follow your disconnected/influenced dichotomy. I would have thought
that there arer all kinds of connections that one thing can have with
another *other than* the connection of being influenced by it. No? How
about: contiguity, compressence, codetermination, etc etc. Do you see?
ROG:
No argument here.
ELEPHANT:
What might give your disconnected/influenced dichotomy some force, would be
if it were assumed that subjects and objects were both physical realities.
In that case, one might say, to be is to be influenced. In other words, no
physical object can escape cause and effect.
ROG:
Let me clarify that it was indeed this set of assumptions that I was
suggesting lead to the problem when I wrote:
>To me, FREE WILL has always been an inherent oxymoron of subject object
>metaphysics. If we start with a distinct subject, it must be either
>disconnected from the envirionment -- which is absurd -- or influenced by
its
>environment -- which leads to determinism. The SOM self leads to the free
>will / determinism controversy.
ELEPHANT:
......So if we assume
that 'subject' and 'object' both refer to physical realities, it stands to
reason that they are either connected and influencing (indeed determining)
each other, or entirely disconnected.
ROG:
Help me out here, because I think I meant to say what I think I understand
you to have written.
BIG E:
But ofcourse the assertion that 'subject' and 'object' refer to physical
realities is a *false* one (as RMP helps us to understand). Neither
'subject' *nor* 'object' could ever refer to a Physical particular, because
there are no such. It is rather nearer the truth to put things the other
way around and to say that 'physical realities' refers to *grammatical*
enties, i.e. objects (which are patterns of value). Physically, all there
is is continuous value, not disctrete objects or subjects. That being the
case, I cannot, Roger, make sense of your influenced/disconnected dichotomy.
Do please help me out.
LITTLE R:
Again, I meant something really, really similar when I wrote:
>In the MOQ, of course, both the self and the will are abstractions of
>experience.
To summarize my opinion of our opinions, it is that you and I both see free
will as entirely reasonable within a value-based metaphysics, but as
logically inconsistent in a subject /object material causation-type
metaphysics. (I then went on to explain that within a value based
metaphysics that free will can be characterized as a correlation between what
I called particular "abstractions of experience" (or what you called
"gramatical entities"). I wrote:
>Free will in the MOQ is where our "WILL" abstraction and our
>"SELF" abstraction are consistent. My favorite illustration of this is in
>the dieter's proclamation:
>
>" I couldn't resist that piece of chocalate cake!"
>
>If the dieter's self is aligned with the desire to resist eating and be
thin,
>then this action is against their will. If the self is aligned with the
>biological urge, then it is an example of free will.
>
>In the MOQ, free will is as simple as the correlation between two patterns
of
>abstraction. ....
Sorry for being so confusing. Let me know if I misinterpreted anything you
wrote, and if this clears things up or not. I am, as they say, "all ears",
though mine certainly aren't as big as yours.
Rog
PS -- Are you an African Elephant or an Indian Elephant? (Or a British
Elephant)?
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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