Category Archives: Emotion

Following science as a layperson

13 Sunday Dec 2009

Posted by in Certainty and Doubt, Epistemology, Faith, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Humility, Natural Science, Philosophy of Science, Politics, Social Science, South Asia

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Perhaps the trickiest thing about trying to be a philosopher today is the explosion of information in natural science: we are in the era of “rapid-discovery science,” as Randall Collins calls it in The Sociology of Philosophies. Aristotle could write not merely a Metaphysics but a Physics, and his wide range of general knowledge was enough to make him one of the experts on the subject. Even as recently as the 19th century, Schelling and Hegel could have a decent shot at writing “philosophies of nature,” in which they tried to think philosophically through the whole scope of the way the natural world works. But today, not even a professor of natural science can know all the science that’s out there, even in relatively general terms. To some extent, we need to rely on the authority of experts we trust to know their fields well – what Indian philosophers called the śabdapramāṇa, the source of knowledge beyond inference and personal experience. And even if we somehow could know all the science for a moment, we’d lose it almost instantly as the science changes. Continue reading →

Wealth is not neutral

04 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Buddhism, Economics, External Goods, Flourishing, Happiness, Monasticism, Psychology

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It’s common for those new to Buddhism to ask: “Do Buddhists think wealth and making money are bad?” It’s equally common to answer: “no, wealth itself isn’t bad, it’s just what you do with it.” The Thai scholar-monk Prayudh Payutto (also known as Phra Rajavaramuni and several other names, but this one is the easiest to track him down by) is probably the best-known exponent of this view: in his Buddhist Economics he says “it is not wealth as such that is praised or blamed but the way it is acquired and used.” (61) Others writing on the topic, such as Peter Harvey and Donald Swearer, have said similar things; the topic’s on my mind right now because Justin Whitaker said the same thing in a recent comment here.

There are a number of passages in the suttas that support this interpretation, on which wealth itself is neutral to our well-being (although I suspect that these passages are not always being read in their proper context). But it’s worth pointing out that there’s another view in South Asian Buddhism that takes a significantly more negative view of wealth and its accumulation, one that appears strongly in Śāntideva. Continue reading →

The pleasurable life of a doll

01 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Flourishing, Happiness, Pleasure, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Self, Sex

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The cast of <i>Dollhouse</i>I’ve recently been enjoying Joss Whedon‘s underrated science-fiction TV series Dollhouse. Whedon’s ingenious plot twists and a strong supporting cast have made the show highly enjoyable, at least since the middle of the first season; beyond that, the show’s premise is bait for philosophers, especially those who focus on the ethics of technology or enjoy “thought experiments.” It’s about a secret operation that erases people’s memories and personalities and “imprints” them with completely new ones. Given the rapid pace of advances in contemporary neuroscience, it is not entirely far-fetched to say that such a process could become feasible within my lifetime; and it raises a great deal of questions, familiar to Buddhists, about the nature of personal identity.

Last Friday’s episode, Belonging, implicitly makes a further point about the good life. (Spoiler warning, if you haven’t seen this episode.) Continue reading →

The trouble with nice

24 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by in Aesthetics, Courage, Fear, French Tradition, Gentleness, Mahāyāna, Social Science

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When asked what makes Canadians different from Americans, many Canadians will respond that Canadians are nicer. I think that this characterization is (as generalizations go) entirely accurate. I’m just not so sure whether it’s a good thing.

Niceness, in my books, is not necessarily a virtue like kindness or gentleness, though it’s also not necessarily a flaw like timidity. Like extraversion, it is a personality trait with its benefits and flaws; the latter tend to receive less attention. I’m not just referring to the view that “nice guys finish last”; one might argue that that’s part of the point of niceness, to be self-sacrificing or altruistic so that others may do better. But even if one would argue that that’s a good thing, there are ways that niceness can hurt others as well as the nice themselves.

Consider the distinction between niceness and gentleness – or more concretely, between the nice guy and the gentleman. Continue reading →

Is pleasure the only intrinsic good?

14 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Confucianism, Emotion, Foundations of Ethics, Happiness, Monasticism, Morality, Pleasure, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Psychology, Truth

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I recently had the pleasure of reading an interesting paper by Neil Sinhababu, a friend I met while I was a visiting scholar at the University of Texas. Neil’s paper, thoughtfully posted online, is entitled The Epistemic Argument for Univesal Hedonism. In it, Neil makes an argument for a strong and controversial position that I’ve flirted with before myself: that pleasure and displeasure are the only things intrinsically good or bad in any ethical sense.

Neil’s argument proceeds roughly as follows (and this summary, qua summary, must necessarily leave out some of the detail and precision of his argument): Ethical judgement all derive from one of two sources: emotional perception and phenomenal introspection. The source of most of our commonsense judgements about morality is emotional perception: a process by which we react emotionally to states of affairs in the world, form moral judgements in connection with these emotional reactions, and thereby perceive the states of the world as having objective moral qualities. Neil draws on Jonathan Haidt’s empirical research to support this point.

Neil goes further, however, in arguing that we are wrong to make moral judgements on the basis of emotional perception, thus rejecting Mencius’s metaethics as well as those of the moral sense theorists. Emotional perception, he claims, is inherently unreliable. Continue reading →

One and a half noble truths?

30 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Buddhism, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Greek and Roman Tradition, Happiness, Meditation, Psychology

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In almost any contemporary introduction to Buddhism, one of the first things one learns is the Four Noble Truths:

  1. Everything is suffering (dukkha).
  2. Suffering is caused by craving.
  3. There is an end to suffering.
  4. One can reach this end by following the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path.

The Four Truths are central to the teaching of the early Pali suttas, so something like them was probably central to the teaching of the historical Buddha. There’s been a recent trend in Buddhist studies to disparage the Four Truths, on the ground that they were far removed from the practice of most Buddhists in history, whose lives (especially but not only in East Asia) focused much more on devotion and magic. But never mind. I’m far less concerned with learning about the historical structure of past Buddhist societies, and more with the question of whether these truths – undeniably revered and treated as truths by many Buddhists throughout history – are indeed true.

I noted before that the Second Noble Truth was of great importance in my own spiritual development. I would still count it as the most important thing I’ve learned from Buddhism. Maybe not all suffering comes from craving, but a huge chunk of it does.

But what about the other three? Continue reading →

Zest

16 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Buddhism, Flourishing, Food, Greek and Roman Tradition, Health, Monasticism, Patient Endurance, Pleasure, Self-Discipline, Zest

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One of the most important virtues to consider, to my mind, is what Bertrand Russell called “zest.” Zest, in Russell’s terms, is the healthy enjoyment of worldly pleasures. He explains it as follows:

Suppose one man likes strawberries and another does not; in what respect is the latter superior? There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good, to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. What is true in this trivial instance is equally true in more important matters. The man who enjoys watching football is to that extent superior to the man who does not. The man who enjoys reading is still more superior to the man who does not, since opportunities for reading are more frequent than opportunities for watching football. (Russell did not live to see ESPN.) The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days. (Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, pp. 125-6)

Zest in this sense, I think, is and should be a controversial virtue. There are many lists of virtues in which it does not appear. Continue reading →

Śāntideva helps Lucretius

13 Sunday Sep 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, Death, Epicureanism, Fear, Greek and Roman Tradition, Happiness, Self

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In my post on marriage I wrote about Lucretius as offering something of an alternative to Buddhist views on death. There is a contrast in emphases: where Buddhists warn us of the terrible losses that come with death, Lucretius tells us death isn’t so bad and we should stop fearing it. But I think there is a way in which the two can go together.

The biggest problem with Lucretius’s advice is that it’s so hard to follow. Often those who don’t fear death simply don’t treat it as a real possibility. (The young, I think, are especially prone to this.) Once you really contemplate the possibility of your own death, the fear becomes much more real. You think you don’t fear death, but you really do.

The thing is, as long as your worldview focuses on yourself, your death is inevitably going to be a problem for you. You can live to improve the remaining moments of your life, but eventually those get fewer and fewer. Egoistic consequentialism, at least, seems to end in futility. This would seem a logical reason to fear death, against Lucretius – maybe not death itself, but the last moments that precede it, where everything you do means nothing.

Here, I think, a Buddhist view can help – especially Śāntideva’s. He takes the basic Buddhist doctrine of non-self and runs with it: claims that because the concept of a self makes no sense, we need to live for everyone and not just ourselves. I’m not sure I buy the metaphysical arguments, but there’s a lot to be said for their practical consequences. One of Śāntideva’s verses that has really stuck with me is BCA VIII.129: “All who are suffering in the world are suffering because of their desire for their own happiness. All who are happy in the world are happy because of their desire for others’ happiness.” Śāntideva doesn’t explain what he means by this, but I think this may be a part of it: getting over ourselves helps us to be happy, partially because it lets us live for things that extend beyond our deaths. (I’m reminded of this passage when I read of Jesus saying “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.”) On this score, it seems to me, Śāntideva helps us to be better Lucretians.

Why I’m getting married

08 Tuesday Sep 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Buddhism, Death, Epicureanism, External Goods, Family, Flourishing, Friends, Greek and Roman Tradition, Grief, Happiness, Jainism, Monasticism, Pleasure, Sex, Social Science, Virtue

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I’ll begin with happy news: I’m engaged! This weekend I proposed to my beloved Caitlin, and I’m delighted to say she accepted.

Now, I’ve tried to be explicit that this is a philosophy blog, not a personal blog – while a great deal here is autobiographical, the purpose of even those entries is to point to bigger questions, questions that I hope my life story can help illuminate in some way. So I’m going to talk today a little bit about my reasons for deciding to marry. The particular reasons, of course, are all about my sweetheart herself, a beautiful, smart, funny, playful, charming, sexy, adventurous, responsible, virtuous woman. But there are more general reasons that tie to the blog’s bigger concerns.

Above all, my action this weekend is not one that Śāntideva, or the Buddha of the Pali suttas, would view as a part of the highest, best, most fully virtuous life. They speak at length of the disadvantages of the household life, the life spent among family with a paid job in the everyday world. The life of a monk is a higher and better one to pursue. Eros keeps us mired in the suffering of everyday life, enslaved to the desires and craving that only cause us yet more suffering. The monk, by contrast, devotes himself or herself fully to the development of virtue, much more able to rise above craving and suffering.
Continue reading →

Inconsistency in the incest taboo

03 Thursday Sep 2009

Posted by in Disgust, Morality, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Psychology, Sex

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I’m often surprised by people who see gay rights as an entirely one-sided, good and evil issue – and then turn around and condemn incest, even consensual adult brother-sister incest, as sick, disgusting and therefore wrong. (The “therefore” is the most intriguing part.) I’ve always enjoyed Dan Savage‘s sex columns, but after his continued attacks on those who condemn gay sex as disgusting (such as ensuring that this (NSFW) is the first Google hit for Senator Rick Santorum‘s name), I lost a lot of respect for him when he repeatedly proclaimed incest to be wrong.

Savage’s arguments are startlingly poor. Continue reading →