Good point but I'm only interested in the Philosophical aspect of Buddhism not the religious part. — Ross

What use is a philosophy when living by it makes you a loser?!

There is an endless row of examples from human culture where one person's bad is another person's good.
— baker

Correct. But this is what examination of one's thoughts, words, and actions is for. — Apollodorus

To what use, to what end?
Unless one is omniscient, or gifted with enormous self-confidence, then how can one possibly know what is truly, objectively good?

Perhaps we can't be sure that he wouldn't. But we can't be sure that he would either. Personally, I doubt that Plato would have supported Hitler or Stalin. None of them sounds like the ideal philosopher-king to me. Besides, this is all speculation.

We don't know, exactly, and there is just too much at stake to open ourselves up to a philosopher from a past time and take him as our spiritual master.

Selective infanticide was practiced in Ancient Greece? So, female infanticide is not practiced in Modern India? And abortion is not being practiced all over the world?

We aren't talking about taking Hindus or some other people as our spiritual masters.

Well stated for once — DingoJones

*sigh*

You're lucky. At pretty much any other forum you'd be banned for misrepresenting and attacking another poster like you do.
But, hey, Jesus loves you!!!!!

I could go on, but the the failures of reason/logic go on and on, and I tire. — James Riley

In the end, irony will be the winner!!!!!!

What jurisdictions? Nursing homes and hospitals? — Cheshire

All internal and international travel for EU citizens; it's not possible to enter a EU country without a valid covid passport. Then, depending on the EU country: access to public transportation, schools, bars, restaurants, cinemas, any gatherings of more than 50 people, sports facilities, hair salons, cosmetic salons, access to some medical facilities.
These are just the most notable ones, but there are more, and, as promised by the governments, even more to come.

How might one go about finding out God’s standards? — khaled

By being a member of the chosen tribe. IOW, it's not up to one's own choice.

Right. Where does this preclude us from judging said God? God seems to have even made it possible seeing as how we can easily iudge him.

Sure. But we might still go to hell.

What I’m saying is that perhaps predictions and forecasts of the psychological kind could be just as those for the weather are, not so much mysticism but rather something founded in logic and reason about how time progresses. — Benj96

Much of a person's mental and physical behavior is habitual, ie. regular, repeated. So it's no surprise that there is a measure of predictability to it.

As I said, we don't know those. — khaled

Perhaps you don't, but that doesn't mean everyone else is the same as you.

So anyone who pretends to judge God by God's standards is bullshitting. He has no clue if he's correct or not.

If God is a tribalist, and a particular person is a member of the chosen tribe, then they very much have the clue.

Again, what does God being God with a capital G have to do with us being unable to judge him?

Because, by definition, God precedes and contextualizes us, makes us possible. Thus, whatever we do, is made possible by God.

In jurisdictions where covid passports are mandatory for many activities, the matter of whether it is moral or immoral to refuse to get covid vaccinated has been rendered moot anyway, and made into a matter of practical convenience. If you're vaccinated, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and you don't need to get tested. Who wouldn't opt for that?! But whether it will stop the pandemic is another matter.

But if the Israel scenario is anything to go by, then, even if the majority of the population gets vaccinated, this will not stop the pandemic.

So neither tradition preaches "the prosperity gospel", baker — 180 Proof

They both teach people to work hard, earn a lot, and support the clergy.

Neither views poverty as a virtue when it comes to laypeople.

No. Successful people, like kings and emperors, throughout history have been notoriously miserable or dissatisfied people. — 180 Proof

No. You're just sourgraping.

More to the point; Siddhārtha Gautama's life improvde and his wisdom grew only after he relinquished princely wealth and priviledge;

How did it improve?? He became unfit to earn a living!

and Yeshua ben Yosef was it seems a poor carpenter and itinerant preacher who directed his follows to give away all they owned, that the rich will have a much harder time getting into heaven, and that one should live by grace "in this world but not of this world".

Don't forget that he and his immediate followers lived off the mercy and generosity of others, they were parasites, unwilling to meet their own needs on their own. A society could not function this way if everyone would adopt such a lifestyle.
And if a principle is such that not everyone can live by it, due to objective constraints, this means that said principle is immoral and should be abandoned.

In any case, "socioeconomic success" is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for (seeking) wisdom.

Yeah, which is why gutters and prisons are full of enlightened people!

Whereas there isn't a rational reason to not get vaccinated (except in those with health conditions that make vaccinations dangerous), and so can't be excused. — Michael

But not in the case of this pandemic. Nobody gets excused, everyone is put into the same category.

Right in the beginning when they first started vaccinating, the plan was expressed that first the healthy should be vaccinated, in order to protect the most vulnerable. This is the standard approach to vaccination in general.

But in about a week or so, this concern completely died out, and a medically dangerous practice was adopted of vaccinating the most vulnerable first.

It's not clear whether there is any other medication where this approach is taken. Normally, if a person is already immunocompromised or otherwise of vulnerable health, they aren't forced into medical treatments that further stress their already compromised immune system. But with covid, all this caution was thrown to the wind.

Is it not that case that in most traditions, wisdom privileges aestheticism? — Tom Storm

Surely you mean asceticism.

But your thought is nice too. Heh.

It's a reference to this idiom:
"The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/541345#:~:text=%22The%20Only%20Good%20Indian%20Is%20a%20Dead%20Indian%22%3B%20the,traditional%20life%2Dstyle.


The form "the only good (the best) X is a dead X" has wider applications.

the best of companions — TheMadFool

... for what? Misery?

I just don't see what "socioeconomic success"has to do with "wisdom". — 180 Proof

The purpose of wisdom is to improve one's life, and that includes improving one's socio-economic status. Agree?

My point is that judging God by human standards is in conflict with the basic definition of God.
— baker

Then by what standards shall he be judged if not by humanist standards? — khaled

God's standards.

What else do you think omnibenevolent meant?

Think of God as a capitalist businessman or a tribalist. Now, because he's God, his perspective is all that counts, and if he happens to be a capitalist businessman or a tribalist, then this passes for omnibenevolence.

God. One cannot hold, even if just for the purposes of argument, that God is omnimax, and then judge God, and still think one is being consistent.
— baker

Yes one can

How??

If there is no such causal link then the argument is unjustified — Ghost Light

Indeed. Again, if we think of God as a capitalist businessman, the Abrahamic narrative and the way things are in the world (with all the pain, suffering, injustice) make sense.

Also, if we see God as a tribalist, preferring one tribe over others, so that good is whatever is good for the chosen tribe (even if that means death to other tribes).

It's not clear there is any reason why we shouldn't view God as a capitalist businessman or a tribalist.

I was talking about the empathy and compassion that can come form facing adversity together, not hatred and contempt. — Janus

You mean like this?

Do as I suggested and we can engage in the merits on anything you want. Until then, your a fascist, racists, inconsiderate, disrespectful, selfish person. — James Riley

Well, that advice was stupid from the start since it has also always been acknowledged that the vaccines are only about 90% effective.

But not in the popular social narrative. If people who are so enthusiastically in favor of covid vaccination would have really acknowledged what you're stating above, then whence their hatred and contempt for everyone who doesn't fall in line with their enthusiasm?

From that it follows that there can be no guarantee that you are not infectious even if vaccinated. That advice is already changing due to the extreme infectiousness of the Delta variant.

But what isn't changing is the enthusiasm of the pro-vaccers, nor their hatred and their contempt.

As to your road rage example, I haven't said that everyone gets vaccinated on account of altruistic motives, so it's not clear to me what you think you are arguing against there.

The point about altrusitic motives for vaccination was in the context of another discussion with other posters earlier in the thread who are on a crusade against those who aren't all that enthusiastic about covid vaccination. The argument of those crusaders is like the one I quoted in the beginning of this post. "If you don't get vaccinated, you're selfish" is one of their points.

You said earlier: "Nah. I doubt anyone in this whole thing really thinks of others. It's just politically correct to say one is doing it "for others". It makes for such good PR." and now you say
I wasn't generalizing human nature. I'm saying that the people who do as described above (from aggressive drivers to employers who have their employees work in unsafe conditions) often happen to be the same people who are enthusiastically in favor of the covid vaccine.
— baker

Can you not see that you are contradicting yourself and that the first statement is a generalization about human nature?

?
I do not believe that the selfish-altruistic distinction is meaningful to begin with. I do not believe that humans are, by nature, selfish, nor that they are, by nature altruistic. I think they are strategists.

I object to the idea that people get vaccinated out of concern for others; but this doesn't mean I think they get vaccinated out of selfish reasons. Like I said, I do not believe that the selfish-altruistic distinction is meaningful to begin with.

The popular social narrative about covid vaccination would have us believe that we should get vaccinated out of concern for others, and that those who don't get vaccinated are selfish, while those who do are acting altruistically. Yet when you look at so many vaccinated people and so many enthusiastic supporters of covid vaccination, you can see that they are hardly people who can be described as "caring for others". So it's hard to believe that they got vaccinated out of concern for others.

The popular social narrative about covid vaccination is one thing, and people's actual reasons for vaccination are another matter. Yet some people love to hide behind the popular social narrative about covid vaccination. Virtue signalling and white-knighting and whatnot.

If all you're willing or able to do is engage in politically correct watercooler talk, then what on earth are you doing at a philosophy forum??!

However, "goodness" in the Platonic sense means being good to others and to yourself in every respect. — Apollodorus

See, this is goodness, in every respect:

Do as I suggested and we can engage in the merits on anything you want. Until then, your a fascist, racists, inconsiderate, disrespectful, selfish person. — James Riley

Do as I suggested and we can engage in the merits on anything you want. Until then, your a fascist, racists, inconsiderate, disrespectful, selfish person. — James Riley

This is true goodness. True goodness. True human goodness. The role model of human goodness you are.

In order to speak about "omnibenevolence" ("unlimited, infinite benevolence"), we must first speak about "benevolence", which is "The quality of being well meaning; kindness" (common definition). This is something that makes sense, and it is real for most of us, since we are all human beings, i.e., entities of the same kind. However, when we start talking about God (or a "god"), we are bringing in an entity that is of a totally different kind and about which we know very little (for a lot, even nothing). How can we then know 1) if what we call "benevolence" exists for God and 2) assuming that it does, what would that mean to Him? In short, how can we know what does God consider as "benevolent"? Because only then we could judge whether everything that happens here, on our miniscule planet, created by God, as most people believe, can be considered "benevolent" or is in accordance with a benevolent plan. — Alkis Piskas

No, this is backwards. We start off with a definition of God, and God is, by definition, omnibenevolent. We then proceed to interpret the world in line with that definition.

But we don't have to go that far. Here's a more "earthly" example. Quite often, it is necessary to punish children, always in good will, so that they can really undestand the severity of a mistake they made. However, in doing this, we appear to be "mean" to them. Yet, they usually understand later that we did that in good will and it was a correct decision.

Anything can be justified that way. Anything.


Also, I don't know if there exists a study on this, but I bet that children are punished the most for not respecting certain societal taboos.

Correct. However, "goodness" in the Platonic sense means being good to others and to yourself in every respect. — Apollodorus

This is vague.

Christians can argue that God is always good to people, and that this also means he is good to those who he condemns for eternity. Christians were burning witches "for their own good". The Nazis believed it was for the own good of Jews that they be annihilated.

And so on. There is an endless row of examples from human culture where one person's bad is another person's good.

Hardly any term is as vague as "good".

People need to learn how to integrate philosophy with everyday life. It may not always be easy, but if philosophical reasoning and contemplation result in greater clarity of mind, power of discernment, better understanding of others, greater awareness of environmental issues, etc., then it can't be a bad thing.

By modern standards, what would Plato be, in terms of socioeconomic theory? Probably not a socialist, but a capitalist. Can we be reasonably sure that he wouldn't support Trump? Or Hitler? Remember, in ancient Greece, they practiced selective infanticide; unfit or unwanted babies were removed from society. And that was deemed good.

They are indices of socioeconomic success.
Why should wisdom and socioeconomic success be seen as necessarily mutually exclusive?

I think DK itself is subject to the DK effect and is cheerfully misapplied to many things. — Tom Storm

Too few people discussing DK have read the original study, or at least the Wiki article on it.

The title of the original study was:

"Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"

and this is the salient point of the DK effect. Lack of competence can lead to inflated self-assessments of one's competence.

That one cannot have expertise in every field is a given. But people differ in how they interpret and handle this lack of competence (in themselves and in others).

Note also that the DK effect is not universal across cultures, but that some cultures (ie. Muricans) are more prone to it than others.


We had a nice example of it a while back when a poster posted a thread about ad hominems, asking questions about it. Some posters suggested some literature on the topic, for the OP's questions are readily addressed in it. But the OP refused to read that literature, and claimed that suggesting that they read that was an ad hominem.

He tries to connect this emotion with "suffering and pain" instead of weakness. — javi2541997

If one suffers and one is in pain, one is weak. How could it be otherwise?

Buddhism isn't viable in this world. If the wiseness of a religion is to be measured by how well its adherents do socioeconomically, then Christianity is certainly wiser.

And the best philosopher is a dead philosopher, eh?

https://vaers.hhs.gov/ — Isaac

You're lucky to have at least that. Where I live, one is on one's own. It takes one doctor to diagnose covid by symptoms, or a covid death by symptoms (no test and no autopsy required), but a medical board must convene before they even consider that something could be the side effect of a covid vaccine. You could die from the damn thing, and it still wouldn't be counted among "serious negative side effects of the covid vaccine".

How can person A be giving an account of something that is true yet be a liar simultaneously? — Benj96

By 1. not knowing that it is true, and 2. by speaking with the intention to deceive.

It's the intention to deceive that makes something a lie.

An unusual position... — Isaac

Not at all. Issues of social psychology need to be taken into account. In times of crisis, people tend to give up critical thinking. It's not clear for how many people this applies, but some of those for whom it does apply are extremely vocal and influential. Resisting those people can result in short-term and long-term harm for the resisters.

There are also issues of the placebo effect, en masse: If enough people have enough faith in the covid vaccines, the covid vaccines can, in effect, be more safe and more effective than they would be without that faith.

Is it moral to refuse to participate in a mass social delusion, if said delusion can have at least short-term good effects for society at large and for the individual as well?

As has been a theme here, it's a very good public policy bet that mass vaccination will reduce transmission. This doesn't translate into a moral claim that one ought to get vaccinated because an individual has other options which (as current evidence stands) are equally efficacious given known factors of their personal circumstances. — Isaac

These other options are becoming increasingly obsolete, as there is an ever greater need for covid passes, so the trend is to make vaccination something one does in order to get a covid pass. Vaccination is becoming an administrative/bureocratic measure.

And I hate Trump and all who support him. — James Riley

You would be far more convicing if you wouldn't behave exactly like a Trumpista.

And you're just providing yet more evidence for God being a Trumpista.

So, since a person has options as to how they might meet their moral obligations other than by vaccination, I don't see any moral imperative to get vaccinated. I do see a moral imperative to do something to absolve both those duties, but it's not yet demonstrated that that something has to be vaccination. — Isaac

When there is a social stampede, it is one's moral obligation to run with it, even if one sees that the stampede is heading toward a cliff ...

Love, however, can justify hatred. — James Riley

Brilliant. You hate me out of love.

"I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People." Dr. Fauci

And I still won't defend things you merely imagine I said or defend stances you merely imagine I hold.

You don't even care enough to hate me for the things I said. You hate me for the things you imagine I said.
Now that's righteousness! That's what God loves!!!!!

No, no, I want to see it from your point of view. — TheMadFool

Then you'd need to give up anekantavada.

That's why I want to know what your assumptions are.

That anekantavada is a non-viable outlook on life, given that one who practices it will be crushed by other people.

And what is the place of women in all this?
— baker

That would depend on what you mean by that question. — Apollodorus

It's no secret that the Ancient Greeks held a dim view of women.

Personally, I resent the prospect of taking up the study of Platonism, only to discover later on that people like me are by default disqualified from any higher knowledge.

I think a key distinguishing factor would be that spiritual advancement is supposed to enhance your mental abilities. Plotinus, for example, is not considered as mentally deficient.

If it has the opposite effect, and it impairs you mental faculties, then it is not spiritual advancement. This is why Platonists like Plotinus learned Platonism from a teacher and had his own school. — Apollodorus

Think in terms of surviving in the modern economy and society at large. Here, critical thinking is mostly a hindrance, and goodness (as understood in humanism) is considered naive.
An argument can be made that a person is far better off in life if they think in superficial slogans, soundbites, black and white terms.

I think a key distinguishing factor would be that spiritual advancement is supposed to enhance your mental abilities. — Apollodorus

But enhance them in what way? You're getting into dangerous territory here, the land of "I do yoga in order to improve my business skills".

On this point, Early Buddhism says that all of one's practice is supposed to be done for the purpose of the complete cessation of suffering.

But in Platonism, the goal is what? Seeing God, the One? It seems rather intangible, in comparison to what Early Buddhism promises.

And, in fact, people do experience various degrees of happiness when they practice contemplation or meditation. This is an undeniable fact. So, I can see no reason why people should get attacked for practicing theoria, dhyana, or whatever you want to call it, if they choose to.

On what grounds should philosophy prohibit contemplation and declare it antithetical to philosophy?

It's not clear where this is coming from.