Re: Buddhism, again

“Why isn't avoiding suffering an objective value?” To answer this question, let us make one or two points clear. First, pain and pleasure are objectively real. Painful experiences are experiences we avoid and pleasant experiences are experiences we seek. These are all natural facts, and don't yet bring us into the realm of values in the ethical sense. Now, insofar as the Buddha found a path to eliminating painful experience for himself he was not yet operating on the ethical plane. Avoidance of pain for oneself is not the same as a desire to eliminate pain for other living beings. However, as we know, having found this path, he decided to share it with others. He could have remained in the forest and enjoyed the bliss of nirvana, but instead he chose to show others the way to the elimination of suffering. Why? Surely, it was because he was motivated by compassion. And the compassion he felt is not itself the result of “reason”. I agree fundamentally with Hume, that reason can tell us which means can attain a given end, but it cannot tell us which ends are to be pursued. Not everyone experiences compassion, and not everyone who does experience it finds it motivationally sufficient for action. Compassion is a matter of upbringing, experience, personality, not something shared by all, not something “objective”. If I were asked to supply a motivationally compelling reason to someone who experienced no compassion whatever to seek the elimination of suffering for all living beings, then I would find myself at a complete loss. There is, therefore, a personal element in the Buddha's values. To be clear, pain and pleasure are objective, natural facts; that the first is shunned and the second is sought are natural facts. But that pain should be eliminated for all living beings, not just oneself, is not a fact, but a value, in which a personal element is involved. With this in mind, let us analyse your reasoning: “Humans cannot but desire, and desire cannot but be frustrated. From this the rest of Buddhism … follows logically. If suffering can be avoided, it should be avoided.” There is an ambiguity here. By suffering, do you mean one's own suffering, or suffering generally? If the former, the reasoning is sound, but does not get us beyond natural facts. The path of avoiding suffering is simply a matter of prudence. If the latter, we are on the ethical plane, but an ethical premise is presupposed, namely, that the suffering of all living beings, not just one's own suffering, is to be eliminated. That, at least, would be my argument. “Nothing immaterial is implied by the Buddha's values” This is correct insofar as the Buddha's values are accepted as personal. But if the Buddha's values are construed as “objective”, then Dworkin at least would argue that we would then be introducing into the cosmos a property that is not studied by the natural sciences, and thus a non-natural property, in contradiction to philosophical naturalism. As for the ethics itself, I find it quite uncongenial, because it seems to completely ignore pleasant experiences, or to consider the possibility that, for most of us, the pleasant experiences greatly outweigh the painful ones. In such cases, non-existence does not seem a rational goal at all, and I have no wish to pursue it. In other words, it does not coincide with my values, which is itself a further instance of their personal nature. Thank you for your post. I had never really considered this issue in relation to Buddhist ethics before.