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comment by Chinabean
Chinabean  ·  3432 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ethics in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism

I'm not sure what you are saying is fair - my argument was largely that ethics is a discipline which consists of using rational arguments to attempt to underpin all morality with simple logically consistent principles.

Buddhism is doctrinal, and so there is an inherent difference. Besides, what is being practiced is morality, not ethics - it is an expression of certain values, rather than an attempt to derive a single central principle from it. Most ethical disciplines in WP can be boiled down to single-focus principles - maximisation of happiness for the greatest number, rational self-interest, universalisability, etc.

Buddhism perhaps could be seen as a minimisation of suffering, but the structure of the texts don't work in quite the same way. It is not that there isn't an assumption of objectivity, but rather that it is more than that - it assumes universality, not mere 'objectivity' (which properly refers to commonly available perspective rather than universal or absolute truth, though the phrase 'objective truth' necessarily entails something which is true, and the truth of which is objectively available), and does not argue from abstracts like WP, but rather from resonant observations, such as the Buddha's journey where he encounters an old man, a sick man and a corpse. It is a very different approach, is all I'm saying.

I was not arguing against the idea of an objective framework - I have a very strong detestation of relativism. I was merely making a direct comparison between two isolated disciplines.

Ethics is 'objective morality' in the sense I speak of it - morality is just a set of normative behavioural judgments held commonly to a certain group or society, whereas ethics attempt to make these values commonly available for scrutiny by using universal metrics - reason and empathy.

Finally, mine was not a comparison between Western and Buddhist morality, it was a direct response to the topic of discussion, which was a comparison of the concept of ethics, and how it applies to the Western Philosophical tradition (which is a specific thing, different from practiced social values, and actually rather ivory-towery if I'm being honest) and Buddhism (which as a doctrine, can be assessed in the WP tradition as if it were another theory) respectively.

Having taken a few classes in philosophy, I can tell you, it is far different from just reading and comparing opinions, although there certainly is a lot of that. There is a lot of rather anal attention to syllogistic argument and the construction of useful conceptual definitions, consistency of semantics, etc. The late 19th and 20th century saw it formulate universal rules for logic and codify them into mathematical formulae. So it leans with a good deal of heft on a priori reasoning, logic, rational discussion, structure, and so on. Often it gets very nitpicky, mainly because all premises must be justified.

You'll notice a lot of people talking in terms of 'but here you assume xyz', or speaking of logical fallacies, unsupported premises, etc. That's the imprint of WP. Not western culture, which is a different thing, but rather Western Philosophy, which has its roots in the Elenchus, Socrates's teaching method, which consists mainly of eliciting more and more foundational explanations from the interlocuter until a contradiction is revealed. Plato's Republic is full of examples of this in practice.

Socrates's whole method was formed in response to the dogmatic and doctrinal teachings of what were called Sophists, and were essentially private tutors with their own curricula, and own ideas of what made for a good man and the good life, etc. Socrates changed the focus to truth for truth's sake, so that learning was no longer an instrumental activity, but a good in itself.

Of course, these are all crude reductions, but this isn't an academic article. Anyways, I don't think there are 'apples and oranges' comparisons. Those are only the case if you haven't narrowed your parameters sufficiently. I mean, if someone assked me 'are apples or oranges better', it would be meaningless, but if 'better' meant 'a more viable farming option', that is certainly an answerable question, we just look at soil conditions, planting time, time to maturity, output, market price projections, labour intensivity, etc.

Same here - I think the question is narrow enough - how does the WP concept of ethics apply to Buddhism? My answer is 'weakly', basically.





forevergreen  ·  3432 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Comparison is not always about determining which is "better," but rather, in order to compare two things as opposed, they need to have something in common, a third thing, through which the comparison is made legitimate.

My post, briefly, was to avoid the dangers of illegitimate comparison by assuming the absence or presence of any related system of ethics-moral programmatic in either camp. These terms, morals, ethics, objectivity, etc., are not Indian terms, they are English terms with a heritage. Simply translating them, by using them, into a different context obscures a) the Buddhist system and b) our utilization of these terms.

Since you're a student of philosophy interested in Buddhist ethics, you ought to think about taking some religion courses that teach this kind of critique.