Category Archives: ethics

Compassion and the Epistemology of Suffering Thresholds

Posted on by
Reply

In an attempt to get clearer, and less hyperbolic, about the value of suffering, I earlier suggested the idea of a suffering threshold, which is the “point” at which suffering loses its (positive) value and warrants easing. The idea of easing suffering leads directly to compassion/pity and this passage from section 338 of Nietzsche’s the Gay Science:

The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed–all such things that may be involved in distress are of no concern to our dear pitying friends; they wish to help and have no thought of the personal necessity of distress, although terrors, deprivations, impoverishments, midnights, adventures, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and for you as are their opposites. It never occurs to them that, to put it mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, the “religion of pity” (or “the heart”) commands them to help, and they believe that they have helped most when they have helped most quickly. (Kaufmann’s translation)

The last line in German is: “die ‘Religion des Mitleidens’ (oder ‘das Herz’) gebietet zu helfen, und man glaubt am besten geholfen zu haben, wenn man am schnellsten geholfen hat!” Kaufmann translates “‘Religion des Mitleidens’” as “‘religion of pity’”; however, the German “das Mitleid” can be translated as either “compassion” or “pity,” among other things. Perhaps nothing hangs on the difference between “compassion” and “pity.” However, Jeremiah Conway notes a possible difference of importance. In “A Buddhist Critique of Nussbaum’s Account of Compassion” he writes:

Continue reading →

Share

Buddhism and Aristotle on the Appropriateness of Suffering Grief: A Further Mark Against Buddhism

Posted on by
4

In the well-known parable of the arrow, the Buddha responds negatively to the usefulness of answering certain metaphysical questions. The point that he makes is that they are not important for furthering the goal of alleviating dukkha (suffering/existential dissatisfaction):

Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair – and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things because they are not useful, they are not conducive to tranquility and Nirvana. What I have explained is suffering, the cause of suffering, the destruction of suffering and the path that leads to the destruction of suffering. This is useful, leading to non-attachment, the absence of passion, perfect knowledge. (Found here. My emphasis.)

The Buddha seeks to live a full life, but one that eliminates suffering and the cycle of rebirths. Since the whole purpose of Buddhism is to alleviate suffering, it isn’t wrong to say that suffering has a negative value for Buddhists. This need not imply that it is never instrumentally valuable for the Buddhist; nevertheless, any instrumental value it has is to be transcended, ultimately leaving the suffering behind, negatively valued. For more detail on the value of suffering, see here and here.

Buddhism’s view of suffering and happiness is not as crude as Bentham’s, for whom pain varied only in intensity, duration, certainty/uncertainty, and propinquity/remoteness, but not quality: consider the difference between stubbing your toe, nausea, and the death of a loved one. Nevertheless, for both suffering is bad and happiness is good, even if “happiness” means very different things for each. An important difference between Buddhists and Bentham is that the Buddhists don’t understand all pleasures as being intrinsically valuable. They would presumably say the pleasure of meditating is positive (barring attachment to it), whereas the pleasure of heroin and a dozen donuts at one sitting is negative. Bentham, on the other hand, seems to say that when considering actions, it’s simply a matter of summing pleasure and summing pain, and if the balance is on the side of pleasure, then the act tends toward good and vice versa (See chapter IV of Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation).

Continue reading →

Share

Against Essentialism in Ethics

Posted on by
1

It has long seemed to me folly to assume that one thing can determine the right or the good in all contexts in the way that, for example, Kantian deontologists and utilitarians claim. Each time I teach global ethics, this “feeling” is heightened. Why could it not be the case that in one context consequences are more relevant and in another intentions?

For example, a person is careless while driving, looking at his iPod, and ends up killing someone, quite unintentionally. In another case, a young man intends to hurt another but bungles it, and there are no bad consequences, except, perhaps, in regard to his self-image and how he might act in the future.

I’m quite sure that the Kantian and the utilitarian could explain the wrongness in each case, and the countless others that one might invent. But I’m guessing they could cover all such cases only via various contortions of reason and mis-descriptions of the facts.

On the other hand, there might seem to be a real problem if we were to say different things account for the right/good in different contexts, for then how do we determine which is salient in each case? How do we know that here it is the intentions and there the consequences that really matter?

But is this really a problem? Most of us don’t operate consciously, purposely, or explicitly as deontologists or consequentialists in daily life. Isn’t this a good place to appeal to a kind of Aristotelian idea of learned competence that is akin to chicken sexing? Perhaps that takes it too far into the inexplicable. For we do debate in normal contexts about whether motivations are more relevant than the consequences. As we grow up and become responsible moral agents, we develop skills in sorting out what is relevant and what not. Some of us are better at this than others, but the point is that we do it quite naturally. So why assume that we need some principle to appeal to in order to say what’s relevant when? Isn’t that just making the same mistaken assumption that for all cases there is some condition or set of conditions that make something right/good?

Perhaps, however, I have oversimplified matters. Perhaps the contortions of reason and the mis-descriptions I worried about earlier would be mitigated by distinguishing, as people do, between wrong actions, blameworthy actions, and actions warranting punishment. So the bungled attempt of the young man to harm another is blameworthy from the consequentialist’s perspective even if the bungled action wasn’t wrong per se, and as such still warrants punishment. It’s not clear, however, how one accounts for the blameworthiness of the bungled action without appealing to some kind of consequences: either the bungled action really produced bad consequences after all or we need to recognize that, according to a rule consequentialism, willing harm, successfully or not, leads to worse consequences than not in the long run. But then, the action is blameworthy because it is wrong. Perhaps the kind of cases I’m thinking about where it makes sense to separate out the bad from the blameworthy are those, for example, where one causes harm unavoidably and without fault, e.g., when the brakes give out in a new car, but no one was negligent, and someone is run over and killed. The driver is not to blame, did not act wrongly, though the consequences are bad. The point here is that it’s not clear that adding the above distinctions will solve the problem at hand.

I have focused here on Kantian deontology and consequentialism for simplicity’s sake and because they seem to go wrong in similar but opposite ways. The Kantian seems to neglect the importance of consequences and the consequentialist the importance of intention. And we are left wondering in one case why the consequences aren’t relevant and in another why the intentions aren’t relevant. Clearly, Kant and Mill were subtle thinkers; Kant surely acknowledges our intuitions about consequences and Mill the importance of intentions. While nothing I’ve said here is definitive, my aim has been “merely” to push the question: But why think that there has to be some one thing that runs through all right actions that makes them right? I would greatly appreciate being helped out with this question.

Share

Nietzschean Buddhism: An Experiment

Posted on by
1

I have long been drawn to Buddhism and to Nietzsche’s ideas. After much thought, I propose a reconciliation; I propose the creation of a Nietzschean Buddhism. How could this be a possibility? After all, the third noble truth of Buddhism is that there is a way out of suffering, and the fourth noble truth gives us the way out. Suffering is optional, as is staying in samsara, the eternal recurrence of rebirth and a life of suffering. How is that reconcilable with Nietzsche, who writes:

You want, if possible—and there is no more insane “if possible”—to abolish suffering.  And we?  It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it—that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible—that makes his destruction desirable  (Beyond Good and Evil, 225).

Yet it is exactly along the lines of the value of suffering that a most fruitful reconciliation is possible. I want to sketch out a way in which Buddhism and Nietzsche’s thought can combine along the lines of the value of suffering, the nature of compassion, the importance of psychology, and the role of mindfulness. I will not address all of these issues here. Those that I don’t will be addressed later.

Continue reading →

Share

The Value of Suffering and the Importance of Suffering Thresholds

Posted on by
1

In an earlier essay I raised some questions about the value of suffering, especially the default assumption that suffering is to be avoided and brought to a quick end when it does occur. In Nietzsche’s writing we find claims that suffering has instrumental value and intrinsic value, or at least it will to the higher types of human beings who have the appropriate will. Here I want to consider the claim that suffering has instrumental value and what that means for our attitudes towards our and other’s suffering.

Nietzsche’s remarks about suffering might lead one to think that an endorsement of his views would imply that we shouldn’t try to end suffering ever. For example, in the Gay Science, Nietzsche writes:

The whole economy of my soul and the balance effected by “distress,” the way new springs and needs break open, the way in which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed–all such things that may be involved in distress are of no concern to our dear pitying friends; they wish to help and have no thought of the personal necessity of distress, although terrors, deprivations, impoverishments, midnights, adventures, risks, and blunders are as necessary for me and for you as are their opposites. It never occurs to them that, to put it mystically, the path to one’s own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell. No, the “religion of pity” (or “the heart”) commands them to help, and they believe that they have helped most when they have helped most quickly. (Part of Section 338. Kaufmann translation.)

However, I do not think that Nietzsche here or elsewhere claims that all instances of suffering have instrumental value—but regardless, we needn’t think that they do.

Continue reading →

Share

Why Not Suffering? Buddhism, Nietzsche, and the Value of Suffering

Posted on by
5

The cessation of suffering is Buddhism’s end goal. The Buddha has discovered how to do it, according to Buddhism and Buddhists who have achieved the goal. A supposedly central requirement for achieving the goal is to realize the truth of no-self: there is no substantial self that endures over time. Leaving aside what exactly this means, an important question regards why one should accept the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha gave arguments for the view and later Buddhists gave still more.

Here is the important point: these arguments are philosophical arguments just as susceptible to objections and problems as any philosophical argument. Faced with such a difficulty, faced with the wide morass that is the debate about no-self, a Buddhist practitioner may claim that the convoluted metaphysics of persons is not what matters. What matters is whether the Buddha’s method of ending suffering works. Belief in no-self can come through practicing selflessness over time—by seeing the results of selflessness, i.e., the lessoning/ending of suffering. It needn’t come as the result of an argument.

Here is the problem: belief in no-self may lead to less suffering, may even lead to its complete cessation, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a substantial self. It just means that belief in a substantial self likely leads to suffering. If giving up the belief in a substantial self did help to end suffering, then that would certainly give credence to the overall method of the Buddha. That is, it would mean that he was right that his eightfold path will bring an end to suffering. But, again, that doesn’t mean that he was right about there not being a self. Again, it only means that he was right that giving up the belief in such a self will help end suffering.

Continue reading →

Share

Understanding Desire

Posted on by
Reply

When doing philosophy, when trying to understand something better, one should optimally do a combination of the following: think about the topic, research what others have said, and talk to friends and colleagues about the topic. Here I’m writing the results of the first and hoping to engage in the third. I’m feeling a bit lazy about doing the second, at this point.

Thinking about desire, I am fairly perplexed. One way to begin thinking about desire is to say that a person desires X if she finds it valuable. But finding something valuable is certainly not sufficient for desiring it. I find the Mona Lisa to be valuable, but I don’t desire to possess it and only desire a bit to see it. If not sufficient, is judging something valuable necessary for desire? Are there cases of true desire that don’t involve valuing something? I cannot think of any, though that is by no means decisive.

Continue reading →

Share

Why So Many Disagreements Are Just So Damn Intractable

Posted on by
2

In a recent essay, I made a distinction between what I called epistemic reasons and purely causal reasons. The former are potentially truth preserving (capable of providing epistemic justification) the latter are not even potentially truth preserving (and thus are incapable of providing epistemic justification). In this essay, I’m going to appeal to the same basic distinction regarding reasons that do and do not provide epistemic justification, but I’m going to refer to them simply as epistemic reasons (ERs) and non-epistemic reasons (non-ERs).

In the course of reading the first chapter of MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, it occurred to me that we could use the ER/non-ER distinction to help explain disagreements about contentious issues concerning ethics, for example.

Continue reading →

Share

The Atheist’s Values and Motivations: Are the Ungodly Likely Immoral?

Posted on by
3

In a recent article, “Exceptionally Articulate: Obama’s eloquence fails to quiet charges that he does not believe in God or America,” a key issue is the relevance of Obama’s faith to his being worthy of being president. The consensus seems to be that most voters would not be happy if he were not a man of faith. I assume that this is because voters think they can judge a lot about a person from his or her beliefs about god. A person of faith would more likely than not, the thinking goes, be more ethical. For many that presumably means, for example, being pro-life (though for others it might mean being pro-choice). Nevertheless, if you are religious, then you have a set of moral standards that you feel obligated to adhere to. Whereas, if you are an ungodly atheist, you have no moral code to guide your actions. So the thinking goes.

But really, is it more likely for the ungodly to have no moral code, conscious or unconscious, than it is for the ostensibly religious? There are at least two important issues lurking here. The first concerns from whence a person’s moral compass originates. The second concerns whether it is possible to have or justify having a moral compass without their existing some sort of god in whom to ground values—the god who sets the northern pole.

Starting with the second issue, if you study even a bit of philosophy, you quickly see that philosophers have long made sense of value independently of God’s fiat. One place to look would be Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s recent book Morality without God? I have not read the book, but I have listened to a podcast interview with him on Philosophy Bites. From that interview, the book would seem to be a good bet for those wanting to know more. The main point is that we can make sense of value independently of god stipulating what is good, bad, right, wrong (And if arguments against the divine command theory are sound, then we should do so). For example, the most basic form of utilitarianism identifies the good with pleasure, the bad with pain or the absence of pleasure, and right action as that action which maximizes the good, i.e., pleasure, for the greatest number. Utilitarianism may not be the correct account of value and right action, but it at least gives an easy to understand example of how you can get ethics without god.

Going back to the first issue, where do we learn to be moral? Where does a person’s moral compass come from? I take it that there is a relatively straightforward answer to this question: your moral compass comes from your parents and teachers, those who explicitly said, “Don’t lie,” and “Don’t’ be unfair; share with your sister,” and those who set either good or bad examples by their behavior. It’s certainly true that if you had a religious upbringing, then you probably also were taught something about being moral in church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. And your parents and teachers likely were inculcated with morality in similar ways. This is no surprise, since religions do often center around morality (Though here is an interesting article that emphasizes other important roles for religion).

Nevertheless, while religion often plays a role in learning about ethics, many of the contexts in which we learn to be more or less ethical creatures do not explicitly appeal to religion or god. We learn that lying, stealing, and murder are wrong often enough without someone saying, “Because god says so,” or “Because you’ll go to hell if you do.” The point I want to emphasize is that while religion happens to often play an explicit role, it just as often doesn’t. And if god is not necessary for explaining value and we can (and often do) learn to be moral without appeal to religion, then there is no reason to think that atheists are likely to be any less moral than those who believe in god and go to church/mosque/temple/synagogue.

One possible objection to my argument concerns our motivation for acting ethically. The person of faith fears hellfire and acts accordingly; the ungodly atheist may think the right thing to do is to maximize pleasure for the greatest number, but really when it suits him/her, why not just maximize one’s own pleasure—nothing will happen if one fails intentionally or not to do the right thing. Plato considers this issue in his Republic. It is argued by Glaucon that we only act ethically if we think others are looking, this is the ring of Gyges example. And thus, without the fear of some sort of punishment, there is no real reason to act morally.

That is an important objection, one that is too complicated to adequately address here and now. So I will end with a pointed question: when people who are religious, god fearing folk act ethically, are they really only acting ethically because they fear hellfire and eternal separation from god? Or do they act ethically, not lying, stealing, or murdering their friends or even strangers, simply because they believe those things to be wrong?

Share