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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Andrew Ollett

Ethics of disposition, not decision

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Action, Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Psychology, Unconscious Mind, Virtue

≈ 9 Comments

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Andrew Ollett, Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Damien Keown, Daniel Kahneman, Śāntideva, trolley problem, virtue ethics

I’ve been thinking further on the decision/capacity distinction first articulated by Andrew Ollett, and I want to take a further step. So far Andrew and I have merely acknowledged the existence of this distinction – identifying different thinkers on either side and exploring the distinction’s implications for philosophical methodology. But I am, at this point, ready to make a more substantive claim: the “capacity” approaches are better. In ethics, we should be “capacity” rather than “decision” thinkers. I had stressed before that we can and should address the “capacity” approach philosophically and not merely historically; now I want to actually do so, and say that it is correct. Continue reading →

Philosophical and historical uses together

20 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Practice, Truth

≈ 1 Comment

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Andrew Ollett, Buddhaghosa, Immanuel Kant, Michel Foucault, religion

Last time I examined Andrew Ollett’s distinction between “decision-oriented” texts like Kant’s Grounding and “capacity-oriented” texts like Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, and the ways in which that distinction might suggest a “philosophical” versus a “historical” approach to those texts. I discussed what I found problematic about that application of the distinction, but noted Andrew’s quote that points beyond it:

Although these different uses of texts pertain to very different sets of questions, I’m not convinced that the “historical” use of texts is unphilosophical—which is a mild way of saying that attention to the ways in which ethical systems are constructed and lived in history is exactly what philosophy needs.

For me, this claim calls our attention to an important point, related to my recent methodological reflection on religious studies: Continue reading →

Decision and capacity, philosophical and historical

06 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Self

≈ 1 Comment

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Andrew Ollett, Buddhaghosa, James Gustafson, Journal of Religious Ethics, Ronald Green

Andrew Ollett has recently taken up the point I made earlier this year that Buddhist ethics, in distinction from modern analytical ethics, is not primarily concerned with decision procedure. He identifies Indian non-analytic approaches as “capacity-oriented”: “They maintain that ethical decision-making and action always presuppose being formed as a subject with particular capacities, dispositions, habits, and so on.” That is not quite how I would put it, because for a Buddhist thinker like Buddhaghosa, we are not actually subjects, formed or otherwise; our systematic delusion forms an idea of ourselves as subjects, but this idea is false, and part of the goal of ethics is to un-form or at least de-form it. I do agree, though, that in Buddhist ethics there is an emphasis on the development of beneficial dispositions and habits – virtues – that stands in distinction to the analytical emphasis on a decision procedure. (It seems to me like this might not be the case in Mīmāṃsā, whose legalistic mode of ethical reasoning does seem oriented to a decision procedure, but Andrew knows more about Mīmāṃsā than I do.)

Andrew’s post gets particularly interesting when he maps the decision/capacity distinction onto “disciplinary and methodological differences, or perhaps better, differences of outlook.” I think there is something to this point. I am not entirely in agreement with it, but I’d like to parse out that disagreement, as I think it points to something of deep methodological importance. Continue reading →

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