I'm saying it's the path to effective results. Of course, the course is not always successfully completed. But trying to get there without a solid methodology is not remotely reliable.
Let me rewind the tape a sec. In response to me saying that ethics or (ethical behaviour) automatically gives rise to skilfull actions you said Methodology does. You can do that with or without ethics.
No you can’t. The skillful behaviour in question, at that conference, relates to the reduction of suffering, which is a motivation that arises from our deepest ethical impulses. This does not say that methodology is not important or that you can get anywhere without one, which seems to be a position you want to attribute to me. I won’t accept it so you can take that one back. When you brought it up before I said Sounds good, indicating agreement. I already agreed that ethics informs objectives and constraints. They are a necessary foundation, my only point. The people in that meeting, whatever it was about, shared a virtuous motivation. They brought their methodologies with them. Great.
Methodology can be employed to harmful or beneficial ends. Having an objective one is good. It’s a truism to say that we’re only aware of what we’re aware of, perhaps you have an inkling of how many methodologies that were once thought of as being objective, were later found to be lacking. Even in narrow situations of limited scope objectivity is not always that easy to discern. There has been any amount of money thrown at the worlds problems, yet they persist. This highlights the difference between the reduction of suffering temporarily and it’s permanent elimination. Granted, to achieve the latter, you do initially need sufficient food and a sufficient roof over your head. Physical obstacles can be a hindrance, hunger and exposure agitate the mind, and their removal is essential to furtherance on the path.
In extreme cases of mental focus, such hindrances can be transcended, such as when yogis engage on the practice of Tummo. They can also survive on almost no food for long periods of time, years in some cases. What they do seems impossible to us. In the frozen temperatures of the Himalaya they can sit outside take bedsheets wet from being dipped in freezing cold water, drape them over their shoulders and dry them in minutes, repeatedly, with the energy they generate from focused concentration. Of course drying sheets outside in winter is not the point of Tummo, which is a Tibetan word. We simply don’t have the vocabulary for even conceiving this kind of phenomenon in our universe, and in Tibetan Tummo much more stands for something like a mystical method or technique. The objective is to further spiritual progress by deepening one's experience or understanding of the nature of reality, hence the methodology is ethically underpinned. It works, so the method must have been objectively derived. You cannot do this without first having eliminated mental disturbance ie having a calm mind, one which can be effectively directed towards the objective in hand. What we call “heat” is not the aim of the practice, but simply a by-product of it. But it’s a product you can’t buy. It comes free if you have the discipline to pursue it, like much of clairvoyance, walking through walls and other neat impossibilities. The only reason to perform this trick is so that scientists can attest to it’s veracity. In their original context it is considered unethical to play show off with these powers because at the least they are considered a side show, a happenstance, the natural result of increased mental development. At the worst they are co-arisen agitations and can become an obstacle to skilfull action. They are distractions from the main event.
Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that you need ethics to focus. Focus takes clarity and discipline, IMO.
I did not say you need ethics to focus, I said that they provide the necessary foundation for beneficial action. Murderers can be very "focused" on what they’re doing, but a more precise description of a mind afflicted so, might be derangement, anger, jealousy etc, not focus. The extent to which we can focus depends on the extent to which we have developed this mental faculty. Ethical behavior yields calmness, the condition under which focusing can be optimized. This effect is proven in labs in Wisconsin. It increases the likelihood of skilled action. Not sure if our scientists have yet mapped the neural correlates of Ethics, a methodology yielding interesting information, but one which is of limited usefulness despite it's objectivity. I mean what does the man in the street do with that kind of information. Somehow their way of pointing out where it resides is supposed to explain where it comes from. To what extent does this help us to achieve liberation, or eliminate suffering permanently, but things are changing.
As far as believing things goes, you don't have to believe anything, just observe your own mind. Say you do something that you know is unethical, does this leave you feeing calm or agitated. I strongly suspect that you go for the peace of mind factor and prefer to live an ethical life. Contrast your ability to focus under the two scenarios. I would say that focus is the result of mental clarity and discipline. I would say that mental clarity is the result of a calm mind. That non-virtue creates mental disturbance, agitation or suffering, is not a belief, it’s an observable fact. Check yourself out, ask Eliot Spitzer.
I can imagine it just fine.
Sorry Karen I don't get your logic. I said can you imagine those guys meeting absent an ethical basis. You said you can. You must have a better imagination than me, but you can't have it both ways. Either ethics informs their objectives, like having the meeting in the first place, or they don't.
They need in common a commitment to collaborate in meeting the objective and enough maturity to play nicely in groups. And they need a good facilitator. <gg>
Indeed you make my point, so which is it.
Engaging in that sort of operations assumes that the parties may have very differing perspectives, perhaps differing ethical bases. You want a mix of people. Otherwise you'd save yourself the overhead and just make up the list yourself.
Of course you want a mix, one expects that experts will bring specialized knowledge to the table. Their differing ethical bases sit upon the one they have in common. Group-think and/or saving overhead, reductio ad absurdum.
As for "deciding on the worlds 10 biggest problems," that's not quite what they did.
I made a mistake, I had only scanned the headline The Top Ten Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems, had not read the whole article when I made my post. Have now done so and tip my hat to these guys. I admit to faulty recall, but my mischaracterization does nothing to contradict the point I was making.
They came up with a list of the most cost effective actions that could be taken to mitigate the problems. They had methodology, objective methodology. They used cost/benefit analysis as at least part of their analytical methodology and a consensus building methodology for operating jointly, to come up with the list.
I’m pretty confident that their methodology was sound given their credentials. I agree this kind of analysis is important and that more of it needs to be done. The thing is, the question posed was Where in the world can we do the most good? so the ethical foundation should be obvious from the get go, it precedes the methodology employed. Actually I'm not a huge fan of this linear approach. If ethics informs objectives, in general, then this is a common foundation. Beyond this, specialized ethical knowledge or a particular pov will inform the methodology chosen, so I prefer to say that ethics and methodology is interdependently originated.
Do you think you could put a bunch of people who shared an ethical base in a room but had no methodology and they would come up with something like that? They'd still be sitting there holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Which I suppose is better than sitting there yapping randomly at each other, but no closer to product.
Yes, you could get such people together in a room. No they wouldn't come up with something like that. Another reductio. Without a common objective they would have no reason to, so why do you leave that part out. I know you included it before but not here. If the objective is not specified then singing Kumbaya might be a reasonable choice. Expecting product in the absence of an objective is faulty logic, an enthymeme perhaps ? Granted, you can call this pedantic, so be it.
My apologies for the late response. My wife and I had an unscheduled visit to the hospital yesterday, her health was a priority. Under those conditions, focusing on SI would probably have been unethical. Even if I had responded my sense is that the mental disturbance or anxiety that I was experiencing would have affected my ability to focus and make a coherent response. I hope you catch my drift.
en.wikipedia.org |
