[Buddha-l] Non attached & mindful culinary triumphalism?

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 13, 2011, at 16:28 , Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> The argument *for* acknowledging malum in se (bad in itself) would run 
> something like: while some people certainly mess around (adultery, incest), 
> all societies ban illicit sexual relations.

That is trivially true. If a society bans any sexual practices, then they are illicit. But I suppose your point is that if every society bans a particular practice, then that practice must be naturally bad, or bad in itself. I just don't see how that follows. 

> Richard commits the same fallacy that undergrads make when first presented 
> with Mencius' theory usually expressed (in English) as "Human Nature is 
> originally good."

Again, I can't quite follow your claim. You'll have to spell it out for me. I agree with everything you have said about Mencius, including how some people misconstrue him. But I see no connection between the mistake that undergraduates make when they read Mencius and anything I have said.

> It is attractive to imagine that the human situation is a blank slate 
> capable of endless manipulation by choice

Attractive to whom? Does that idea appeal to you? It doesn't appeal to me.

Perhaps my notion of naturalness is too limited, but when I think of something being natural, I think in mechanical, chemical and biological terms. Arsenic is naturally bad for people's health. No human being who eats too much of it can survive. Nothing that I can think of in the moral realm is like that. It's no obvious to me that there are behaviors that undermine one's tendency to survive because they are morally bad; they may undermine one's tendency to survive because they are hazardous to one's physical health. Smoking tobacco, being sendentary, being obese and so forth may reduce one's chances of living to an advanced age, so they might be considered naturally bad for one's health, but I cannot see them as being naturally bad in a moral sense. The category of morality seems entirely superfluous.

Richard Hayes