noosphere

we are too close
to the end of these sad bad times
to stop moving


what lives here:
microfiction, science, philosophy
poetry, autobiography, ethos, time

a little night, and daytime, music

Buddhist Ethics and Moral Modularity

The Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
Welcomes OWEN FLANAGAN (with responses from WAYNE PROUDFOOT)
Please join us Friday (OCT 24 @ 5:30) for his lecture entitled:
“BUDDHIST ETHICS AND MORAL MODULARITY”

ABSTRACT
Modularity has proved a profitable way of thinking about the perceptual system. The five senses comprise fast-acting, cognitively impenetrable, special-purpose information processing systems. In VARIETIES OF MORAL PERSONALITY: ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM (Harvard, 1991), I suggested that the modularity of morals was worth serious consideration since it seemed to me that morality – as exemplified in virtue theories – involves multifarious special purpose competencies, viz.: the virtues. There is now a serious empirically informed proposal that moral competence and moral performance are best explained in terms of (something like) moral modules.

Jonathan Haidt originally posited four universal intuitive domains that socio-moral life typically engages or activates: suffering/compassion, fairness/reciprocity, purity/sanctity, and hierarchy/respect. Haidt and Joseph (2007) add a fifth special purpose intuitive mechanism: ingroup/loyalty. These mechanisms underwrite intuitions that originally arose to meet specific adaptive challenges and serve still as the foundation(s) of morality, or something in the vicinity. Each module engages different emotions. Moral modularity makes an empirical prediction: we ought to see all four or five modules represented prominently in every ethical tradition (then and now, as it were).

I ask: Does Buddhist ethics bare out the prediction? I think the answer is yes for Aristotle (Plato) and Mencius (Confucius). But I am not sure whether Buddhism conforms to/and/or supports modularity. A entirely separate – or so I say – question is this: even if there are intuitive modules upon which morality is/can be built ought we to do so (Mencius famously says growing his four sprouts is like growing one’s four limbs). I will try to have some interesting (if not fully intelligent or intelligible) things to say on the matter (mostly the first one).

== SPEAKER BIO ==http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Philosophy/faculty/ojf
== WHEN ==Friday - Oct 24th, 20085:30 -7:30
== WHERE ==Rm. 101, 80 Claremont AvenueDepartment of Religion, Columbia University
== DIRECTIONS ==Click link below for a Google map with directionshttp://maps.google.com/maps?q=80+Claremont+Ave,+New+York,+NY+10027
== ADMISSION ==Admission is free, but seating is limited. We recommendthat you arrive early to ensure a place.
== DINNER ==All are welcome to attend dinner with the speaker.Dinner guests are responsible for the cost of theirown meals. If you wish to join us, please RSVP tothe following address: cdk2001@columbia.edu
== PODCASTS ==Please visit our website to download free audiopodcasts of past speakers and to find out aboutupcoming events: The Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy

SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE?If you would like to receive—or stop receiving—emailfrom the CSCP, please send a email with the words”subscribe” or “unsubscribe” (no quotes) to:comp-philo-seminar-request@columbia.edu

i am of five minds and two dimensions today

as i wait for my laundry to dry

eat oatmeal for breakfast

and prepare to venture outside

in the intermittent rain

i’m not sure what just happened, but i’m further down the path so it must’ve been a good thing.

i feel old (in a good way) and worn out (in a good way) and ready to move on to this life which will suddenly not be my own anymore; i mean, it never really was but it was more then than it will be soon…

i just need to see it done. and it will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us
as we forgive those
who have trespassed against us

and what about that valley of the shadow of death?
it really should say
let us die peacefully in our beds of old age
keep us from harm

i don’t know how it will all end,  the details that is, all i know is i sense the roiling turmoil, the pent up misery, have since i was three and it wrecked my life but it needed to be done because i am here now with everything i’ve lived and known
allowing me to see what must be done, and supplied with the skills with which to do the smallest part which brings the whole thing down, this house of misery we’ve built on this shiny blue-green world, spiraling through
the cosmos

and in it’s place, what’s always been there but has become begrimed by greed and sensely inhumanity; order, light, dialogue, conversation, detente, that day will come when we trade in peace not in misery.

— x.jane
signing out
from new york city

amen
god and goddess bless

may the lie be put to the test and be burnt in the fire, found wanting, found guilty of evil deeds and crimes against humanity.  staticity means death, don’t these people know? they seek to conserve but all they do is halt progress in motion.

and what would be the truth without the lie?  i don’t know the answer to that one, but hopefully, we’ll get the chance to find out.

if

one loves someone, one sets them free

as a sort of buddhist in informal training, i have been attempting to release this self from the perils of ownership.

the hardest part, emotionally and especially intellectually, is, of course, in matters of the heart.  but i find as i’ve gotten older that this becomes less of an exercise and more of an automatic response.

i don’t wish to free myself from all attachment; i am human and i wish to be what i am, as the universe created me.  i just know that if i need this world to be at peace, i must create that peace within my own being first.

i own myself and at the same time, i do not.  paradox makes the world go ‘round and is the basis for any real truth.

why we are here & why we are going to make it out of the galaxy

home

last chance (at least in the u.s.) to catch some great art

the museum of modern arthur will be closing its doors.  free closing reception + performance tonight at 25 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 8 pm to 11 pm.

i’ll be on my way soon but will be not be there long.  if it weren’t for the fact that i must pay my respects to an old friend, i would be going straight home. i am tired, on the verge of a nervous breakdown (not really) and likely to get caught by a cold.