[Buddha-l] buddhism and brain studies

[Richard Hayes]

On Sat, 2008-11-15 at 13:50 -0500, Alberto Todeschini wrote:

> Unfortunately, the author is a scientist and even (gasp!) provides
> data. It's probably safer to leave matters such as these to arm-chair
> philosophers.

Well, there are questions that are best to philosophers. Unanswerable
and meaningless questions, for example. Questions that are well formed
and answerable by data collection are best left to data collectors.
Where confusion arises is when questions are so poorly formulated that
data are meaningless. Questions about happiness fall into that category.
The book you mention on Satisfaction sounds like an excellent example of
presenting meaningless data.

Contrary to popular belief, philosophers almost never discuss armchairs.
(I have quite a lot of data to prove that claim.)

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico