For the purposes of this discussion, what is your definition of morality?

Buddhism is a sidenote here. My criticism is aimed at eclecticism and at disregarding the complex systemic context of claims.

I often get accused at these forums for arguing ad personam. But this is my point: the things being said are said by someone, by a person, they don't just impersonally appear somehow. One cannot just gloss over this, thinking that a philosophical problem could, should be solved with an impersonal syllogism. Thinking that such a solution exists or should exist already axiomatically presupposes some things that are not self-evidently true or non-controversial (such as that people don't really matter).

you're trying to do with words even things that can only be done with deeds
— baker

I don’t really accept that. This is a philosophy forum, and the medium of discourse is writing. — Wayfarer

But you hold that the things said, and said here, have an application beyond this forum, do you not?


More about trying to do with words even things that can only be done with deeds: The very act of joining a lineage, of accepting someone as one's teacher (with all the vows taken, all the bows, prostrations, money given, time spent, the other people witnessing it) has a real cognitive/epistemic effect on and for the person.
This effect can not be replicated merely by thinking about such sumbmission to a teacher, or reading about it.

It's like the difference between actually going to the bank and taking out a loan, signing documents and becoming subject to all the legal and criminal ramifications of having done so, vs. merely thinking about taking out a loan. Or the difference between actually eating an apple and merely thinking about doing so.

It seems that you're trying to get the benefits from Buddhism without really signing up for it. (If you really signed up for it, you wouldn't post here anymore, among other things.)

I don't see how it applies. The form of idealist philosophy that I'm advocating does not say that 'the world only exists in your mind'. — Wayfarer

Sure.

I'm referring to the mind - yours, mine, the mind that we as a species and culture share.

Yet there is *my* mind, *your* mind, and some minds are superior to other minds. This is my focus.

The mind is not an objective reality, it's not a material thing - yet we can't plausibly deny it! That's the elephant in the room, the fly in the ointment, for naturalism.

I would describe myself as an idealist, but with a concern for the practical everyday implications of idealism.

Besides, I don't think that Buddhist philosophy has a problem with solipsism, because the basis of solipsism is that 'consciousness is mine alone'. What Buddhist would say that?

I was asking how Buddhism overcomes the problem of solipsism. Every epistemic theory worth its salt has to overcome the problem of solipsism somehow, otherwise it falls into it.

I contend that it is not possible to make a case this way
— baker

Like I said, you want to uphold the taboo! Push it behind the curtain, declare it out of bounds.

No. I'm saying that you're trying to do too much with words, that you're trying to do with words even things that can only be done with deeds. (I'll keep bringing this up for a concise formulation.)

Look at the quote in the next post - that more or less re-states everything the essay says. (By the way, thankyou Josh, that passage really hits the nail on the head.)

Sure. But there is still "my lived experience" vs. "your lived experience" and the question of which is the right one, or at least superior.
We somehow need to account for epistemic individuality as well as epistemic commonality and epistemic normativity.

As I said, we inhabit a pluralistic secular culture which ought not to make such arbitrary exclusions,

And I contend that you're trying to do with words what can only be accomplished with physical actions.

and I believe the Buddhist perspective (which is really not a perspective!)

How is it not a perspective? (Because of your commitment to to it?)

Trump sitting at the right hand of Jesus? This isn't funny. The moral implications of Trump being considered righteous are immense.

A third and very common temptation is captured by Aaron Burr’s line in Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, “Talk less, smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.” Whether it is silence, sheepishness, or dissimulation, this is rooted in the fear of being criticized or being wrong. All of these temptations are aided by arguments which are opaque and difficult to discern. Transparency is a useful remedy. — Leontiskos

Surely that line wasn't meant in the context of a private (!) philosophy forum, was it?

In any interaction, it is vital to discern what type of interaction it (potentially) is. Is it a philosophical discussion? Is it a conversation behind closed doors in the boss' office? Is it an inquiry by the police? Is it something the priest is saying in a church? A teacher at school? And so on.

For every type of interaction, different rules about transparency apply. Not in the least because one feared being wrong, but because what one says or fails to say can have tangible adverse consequences, depending on the context of the interaction.

@Wayfarer
Paticcasamuppada explains what you're getting at in this topic, including @180 Proof's objections and the problem of solipsism. It's just that going with paticcasamuppada makes you a member of a Buddhist epistemic community, at the exclusion of memberships in other epistemic communities.

First you don't know that I don't recognize a guru. — Wayfarer

Well, you don't start off your posts by paying humble obeisances to a guru. :wink:

My reference to following a guru is about bringing to the forefront one's membership in a particular epistemic community, as opposed to assuming one can be beyond such membership and somehow talk about things "as they really are", as if from a view from nowhere; or as if one's view/perspective would be only one's own, idiosyncratic, solipsistic even.

I would like to make a case that stands on its own merits, in philosophical terms.

I contend that it is not possible to make a case this way. Because perspective and membership in an epistemic community are inevitable.

//oh, and I’ll say something else. One of the books that had foundational influence on me was Alan Watts The Book: On the Taboo against Knowing Who you Are, when I was aged about 20. I don’t know how well it reads now - but I think his intuition of the kind of knowledge he was speaking of being ‘taboo’ is right on the mark.

I once googled "how to be a genuine fake". That was how I formulated my inquiry! And Google gave me Watts' book! I was quite disappointed by it, though.

And I wonder if in saying what you’re saying, you’d rather see it observed.

*tsk tsk*

'The world' is really shorthand for the sum total of sensory experience, apperception, feeling, knowing and so forth — Wayfarer

Then how do you overcome the problem of solipsism?

How does Buddhism overcome the problem of solipsism?

At a deeper more optimistic level, I think it is quite enough to arrive at a point where you are aware that potentially all of your assumptions and values, your world are constructed and not an immutable, transcendent reality. It might well help us to be less dogmatic in our thinking and actions. — Tom Storm

I think it depends on one's particular starting point. For me, it's the default to think of perception as an active, volitional process, my default is perspectivism*. I take for granted that my opinions are constructed and subject to change. But these defaults are actually hindrances in daily life, and I wish I could be (more) dogmatic.

(*This probably comes from having to function in several languages from an early age and from having to function as a mediator between people. It's not based on a study of philosophy.)

This quote does resonate.

To me, it's self-evident.

Here, we could bring up the difference between an introvert and an extrovert. Not everyone feels equally bound to other people

For an extrovert, the experience of waking up in a foreign place or time could be more disorienting than for an introvert.

It's not clear where you're going with this. Obviously, I can't recognize something as the Amazon without having heard other people talk about it.

From some point on, though, what I have learned from other people is enough for me to develop a sense of self-sufficieny and independence. (This is easy and tempting to confuse for terminal self-sufficieny and independence.)

Suppose you went to sleep and when you woke up it was 1923 or 1823. Would you realize that this is not the same world it was when you sent to sleep? Or suppose when you woke up you were in some remote fishing village or with in tripe in the Amazon.

Would it be apparent that this is not this is not the same place you fell asleep in? — Fooloso4

Why wouldn't it?

Philosophy doesn't have to be about what one can prove empirically. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, but in order to philosophize, one needs axioms. Otherwise one is just manifesting mental-verbal diarrhoea.

At each point the proper remonstrance from his colleagues could have been, “Richard, stop stooping down to their level! Your zeal for science is only harming it.” — Leontiskos

But nomen est omen!

And clearly, people apparently want and need this type of discourse, otherwise there wouldn't be such things as scientism.
— baker

Want certainly. Need? I find that questionable.

In what sense do you mean "need"? — wonderer1

People have the uncanny ability to make a religion out of pretty much anything. Some people go about it systematically and explicitly, so there are the traditional religionists, and those who "created their own religion". Fans of celebrities, fashionistas, scientism, foodism, etc. etc. All these have in common a characteristic dogmatism that is of existential importance to the members, a community of devotees, a place of worship, the lives of those devotees revolving around certain persons, characters, objects, or ideas, and the willingness to defend them even by endangering their own existence.

Many people are not that systematic and explicit, but they still have that need for prevailing, for being right in what is of existential importance to a them and also having at least some other people on one's side, which is characteristic for religiosity.

IOW, what I mean here by "religious discourse" is a type of discourse that is characteristically dogmatic, of existential importance, and bound to a particular community. People generally do seem to exhibit this as a matter of a need (which, when unmet, manifests as narcissism/egotism).

I'm saying how do you justify social entities like community outside of individual perceptions of what the community is, means, etc. — schopenhauer1

You don't justify them, you take them for granted, axiomatically.

Everyone puts down their flag somewhere I guess. — schopenhauer1

And it helps to acknowledge that, otherwise we're stuck on a wild goose chase.

If there is such a thing as "moral facts", then there is nothing to discuss, no room for philosophy, only for pedagogy, dogma, and proselytizing.

Further, moral realism in its crudest form is the principle "might makes right". This means that what is right depends on whoever happens to have the upper hand, at any given time. This is a type of situational morality, transient and unpredictable. Philosophy is useless for such things.

You, too operate with axioms just not necessarily the same ones as other people's.

Hinge propositions can’t just stop theorizing as that hinge needs to be grounded further. — schopenhauer1

No. Hinge propositions are axioms, that's the point.

Of course. We need to navigate between the extremes of solipsism and non-individualism.

Other people is a reification of an idea. — schopenhauer1

That's solipsistic.

It’s just a jab at McCain which you construed as a jab at those who were captured. Why should anyone care? — NOS4A2

There is no society, right, there are only individuals doing their jobs, trying to survive.

"I like people who weren’t captured."

That's not a statement about only John McCain. It's not a leap. It's his words. — flannel jesus

Textbook example of doublethink on part of the Trumpistas.
But doublethink isn't hypocrisy, though.

A community is not made up of individual perceptions but of shared beliefs, practices, and language. A common form of life. — Fooloso4

But what exactly does this "shared" mean?

Is it an active and deliberate sharing, like when you offer someone an apple if you have two?

Or is it a kind of sharing we're simply born into, which is imposed on us, without having any say in it?

Why does the limit have to be how we use language and not how it is grounded in the world or our minds? — schopenhauer1

What else do we have to express ourselves but language? And who else can we communicate with if not other people?

Just as religions must conflict if each claims to be the only correct ideology, science and religion must conflict when their domains overlap if either wants to be seen as legitimate. — finarfin

It seems that in the minds of most people, religion and science are not equals to begin with, by default, one is given more legitimacy than the other.

On the other hand, many old-world religions constantly encroach on science's legitimate territory, promoting preposterous and destructive claims.

For one, religion was there before science, so it can claim primacy.

When this occurs, science has a responsibility to disprove religion and put it in its place. That is the only way for the two to coexist.

Such disproving would be possible only if science and religion were equals. But they're not.

And if they cannot, science will inevitably win, because it is adaptive and produces tangible results that benefit all of society.

There is more to "tangible results that benefit all of society" than just technological advancement through science. Offering answers to the meaning of life question is one such other tangible result.

That's why I think religious liberalism is weak compared to religious fundamentalism. — praxis

The way I understand the qualifier "weakness" here is that it refers to what can also be called "minimal or minimalist theism". Such minimal/ist theism requires only "a belief in God or gods". This, however, is so minimal that no actual theistic religion veritably fits it, because it is such a gross oversimplification.

Holding "a belief in God or gods" doesn't make one an actual theist, such as a Catholic or a Muslim or a Vaishnavite or a Mahayani.

The god that many vocal atheists deny or are skeptical about is believed in in none of the major theistic religions. As such, the arguments of those atheists don't address the God that believers in the major theistic religions actually believe in. Those atheists aren't arguing against a strawman, they are arguing against what is a non-typical representative.

Do you think that the degree to which religion stunts people's ability to engage in critical thinking is not something to be concerned with? — wonderer1

Religious discourse is a special type of discourse. It's meant to instruct the people in religious themes, praise the religious doctrine and the religious figures, proselytize to outsiders. It's not meant to encourage critical thinking as critical thinking is understood in secular academia.

And clearly, people apparently want and need this type of discourse, otherwise there wouldn't be such things as scientism.

I think Wayfarer's idea of extended naturalism does offer potential insights into how we co-create the reality we experience and how it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions. — Tom Storm

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms?

For many people, "realizing the tentative nature of many of one's positions" amounts to plain old self-doubt and lack of confidence. Which are, of course, generally, bad and undesirable.

Look, I'm not disagreeing, I'm the first to point out the complex nature of what is called "experience." It's just that in day-to-day terms, such insights appear to be more burdensome than they are useful.

In Theravada Buddhism, they even say that the existence of an enlightened being (that is, one who, among other things, "sees how things really are") is too weak to support itself (ie. too weak to earn a living etc.), and that if a lay person attains enlightenment, they have to ordain as a monastic or die within days.

But the problem is, how do you distinguish the model from the world?
How can you, on the one hand, look at 'the model', and, on the other 'the real world'?
That already assumes a perspective outside the model - that you're able to compare one with the other.
But if your experience-of-the-world IS the model, and you're inside it, then how do you step outside it to compare it with the world itself? — Wayfarer

You don't, you follow your guru.

And I don't mean to be uselessly confrontational. It's that you're introducing conceptualizations from a philosophical-spiritual tradition in which formally joining a lineage of teachers and submitting to one in particular is essential. You're trying to do on your own, individualistically what was never intended to be done that way (even as it is often advertised as such). The condition for the "Eastern" way of "knowing things for yourself" is to submit to a lineage.

How does one perceive without logic? — L'éléphant

With the proverbial "heart". It seems to be perfectly possible to live a good life without any self-reflection or philosophical contemplation. You just "follow your heart".

What I’m calling attention to is the tendency to take for granted the reality of the world as it appears to us, without taking into account the role the mind plays in its constitution. — Wayfarer

Of course. And where would we be without such taking for granted?
Can you imagine yourself functioning as a human without such taking for granted?

Thank you, but I'll do what I think appropriate, regardless. Why, indeed, shouldn't I? De gustibus non est disputandum. — Ciceronianus

The question is, how well does this outlook hold under the pressure of life's difficulties.

If you were put in a concentration camp, or even just the daily grind taking a toll on you, would you still be confident in yourself, still sure that you know what is appropriate and what isn't?

However, I have begun to be suspicious of the benefits of moral realism—to the point of outright claiming it is useless to the normative discussion even if it is true. — Bob Ross

From the perspective of moral realism, the very discussion of morality (and philosophy in its entirety) is useless. By its nature, moral realism is opposed to a reflexive, meta-view of morality.

Too much sugar coating and the fact you needed medicine is too easily forgotten. — DingoJones

All those self-appointed doctors!

The pressure of debate brings out the weasel in people, and civility is often the means by which they avoid accountability. — DingoJones

There can be no accountability among equals to begin with.

Note here how it’s commonalities of discourses that defined the orientation under which the theory was interpreted and integrated into personal contructs. The directionality of travel had already been established by the prevailing (sub)cultural context in a way the various groups of intellectuals were clearly not aware of;

otherwise, they would have had the means to challenge their assumptions! — Baden

Or else: It's unthinkable to them that what they make could be mere assumptions (and as such subject to revision); but rather, they believe that what they claim about another person is the ultimate truth about that person.
It's not about having the means to challenge one's assumptions; it's about allowing for the possibility that what one has might in fact be merely assumptions.

Yes. I very much prefer polite, abuse free discourse. I have rarely seen disrespect serve the interests of an argument. Sound reasoning is unaided by calling someone a moron or grotesquely impugning motivations. That said, people come from different worldviews, cultures and sensitivities, what may be intended as a conversation in good faith may be perceived as unreasonable. Sometimes people become enraged by phrases or approaches which for them hold special resonance (in a bad way). And sometimes we are rude without intending to be. This can then provoke reactions and you know the rest... — Tom Storm

It all goes back to what one hopes to accomplish through talking.
I think talking is mostly overrated anyway.