[Buddha-l] belief and metaphysics

[Robert Ellis]

Dear Jayarava (and others who have responded to me last post),

The arguments are proliferating, and responding to them all?fully is becoming impractical. There have been several misunderstandings of what I wrote, and a lot of pouncing on minor points which are not actually that significant. In several places my?arguments appear to have been completely stood on their head so that?I am made to say the opposite of what I actually wrote (as in Jayarava's bizarre comparison of my views to Shinran, which can only be based on a complete misunderstanding). 

Let me try to summarise what I see as some of the main points in response.

1. I am referring to educated Westerners only in order to address what is relevant to most of the readers of this list and the culture they typify. This is not in any way a racial description, but one of a globalised shared set of intellectual attitudes typified by liberal democracy, scientific method etc. I think such relevance is important because it allows us to use Buddhists insights to address our lives as they are. I also think Western liberal democracy is already practising the Middle Way far more effectively than most traditional Buddhism ever did, evidenced by the conditions addressed by Western science, technology, medicine, human rights, democracy, and university education?that traditional Buddhist cultures never addressed. It is therefore important to identify what we in Western civilisation are doing right, rather than opposing it to a romanticised traditional Buddhism and overplaying our weaknesses. The complexity of modernity is also not a good reason for not !
 attempting discussion of it, or for killing discussion of it with death by a thousand qualifications.

2. Jayarava is right to point out that by my own lights?I should not be describing karma as a falsehood. However, the context of what I was saying was that of him proposing that karma should be promoted for its alleged usefulness, whether it can be related to experience or not. My somewhat lax use of the word "falsehood" was intended to convey the dishonesty and short-termism of this approach, which for many people will not have the desired effect, and, where it does have the desired effect, will still be in danger of being discovered as a convenient fiction. Should we really be in the position of promoting doctrines we don't really believe in ourselves so as to keep the masses happy, offering a "noble lie" like that in Plato's Republic or the pages of Pravda? What makes it a "lie" in every functional sense is the fact that we don't believe it ourselves, not the possibility of proving it false.

3. Jayarava wrote <<You do seem to have adopted a belief that metaphysics = false. If we are simply being critical of unthinking dogma as opposed to provisional beliefs then I don't see what the big deal is.<<
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Metaphysics is not provably false, but it is wrong. It is not metaphysics itself, but the extent to which people use it as a source of metaphysical justification for their beliefs, that is the problem. The big deal is how much of that is going on, including in the Buddhist tradition.

4. Jayarava wrote <<My view is that if believing something leads to ethical behaviour and an investigation of the processes of consciousness, then it doesn't matter if that belief involves metaphysics (or outright falsehood for that matter) or not.<<

And my view is that if a belief leads to ethical behaviour and an investigation of the processes of consciousness, then it cannot possibly be metaphysical; basically because ethical behaviour and the processes of consciousness lie within our experience, and metaphysics does not.

5. Jayarava wrote <<you propose a causal relation between metaphysical beliefs and dogmatism. But causality is a metaphysical concept! So you cannot employ it in your argument without contradiction. If you do away with metaphysics then one thing cannot lead to another! Hume's dilemma.>>

Concepts of causality are not by definition metaphysical, and Hume was the first Western philosopher to try to use them in a way which refers only to patterns in our experience. However, he neglected the role of the mind in creating concepts of cause, and I am more inclined to agree with Kant that ideas of causation?depend on?a conceptual scheme as well as on experience. Kant's view of causality is also not metaphysical, but merely considers the requisite conditions for experience. Causal claims can avoid dogmatism of any kind if they are made with provisionality.

6. Finally, it is not correct that the Buddha has nothing to say in opposition to metaphysics. Look at the 14 "inexpressibles" (avyakata)?in the Potthapada Sutta, the Middle Way as?symbolised in the Buddha's life story before his enlightenment, the Kalama Sutta, and the parable of the raft in the Alagadupama Sutta. His reported?acceptance of some forms of metaphysics, such as karma and rebirth,?is indeed inconsistent with this. This is where one needs to choose between the Buddha's central insights and the?tradition which has transmitted them.

With?best wishes to all,
Robert



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