A new review of ‘The Wisdom of the Ego’ by George E. Vaillant: an inspiring book about the conditions for human maturation, based on substantial evidence and many human stories. Follow this link to read the review.
Monthly Archives: January 2014
The Current Confusion about Ethics
This enhanced audio, the first of a series about ethics recorded on last summer’s retreat, argues that although we are probably more ethical than we used to be on the whole, we are also confused about how to justify ethical beliefs. In the absence of metaphysics to 
justify ethics we haven’t found an experiential way of justifying it instead, but rather tend to substitute other ways of talking that cloak ethics using law, popular psychology, professionalism, political correctness etc. We might be much less confused if we started by facing up to ethics as such, and the need to justify it as ethics.
The later parts of the series will go on to explain how ethics can be justified in Middle Way terms without appealing to metaphysics.
Los Fusilamientos del Tres de Mayo, 1814. Francisco de Goya Lucientes.
Goya was born in a village in northern Spain in 1746, his family then moved to Saragossa. He went to Italy to study art, returning to Spain when thirty one years old where he married the daughter of a painter. He painted frescoes in the local cathedral and went on to paint designs for royal tapestries in Madrid in the rococo (ornate) style prevalent at the time. This was an important time in his development as an artist. He soon was to become influenced by neoclassicism and studied the paintings of Velasquez, this led him to use a more spontaneous painting technique. Soon he was asked to paint portraits of the Spanish aristocracy. Following a serious illness he became deaf when forty-six which had the effect of making him less sociable.
These were turbulent times in Spain, Napolean had invaded Spain, Madrid was occupied by the French and then between 1808 and 1814 there raged the Spanish War of Independence, the population rebelled against their occupiers, which is when this painting was commissioned. Goya was a Spanish liberal who disliked Charles IV’s authority and was at first not against the French, he in fact became the court painter for French royalty and took an oath of loyalty to Jospeh Bonaparte. He was forgiven by the French authorities. He expresses his horror of armed conflict in etchings and in a series of paintings, he experienced dark visions. One of his paintings, The Naked Maja landed him before the Spanish Inquisition. He went into voluntary exile in France in 1824 and died there in 1828 aged eighty two,
In this painting Goya has portrayed his impression of an historical event which took place in 1808 in Madrid, when the French retaliated against the Spanish rebels. He used oil on canvas to paint this dramatic scene that is so real and vivid. Kenneth Clark wrote ‘Goya was not simply a high speed camera,’ he drew from memory ‘it took shape in his minds eye as a pattern of lights and darks.’ This is a work of Goya’s imagination. The impression on viewing the scene is one of shock, the action takes place right in front of us, there is little space between us and the men. We see the background colour of the sky, using black, sombre greys and browns are used to paint the cathedral and other buildings, while the foreground is lit by a square lantern placed near the feet of the firing squad, this area is full of colour, light covers the figures on the left, creating a stark contrast. The colours here are glowing whites, gold and blood red. We see the terrified faces of the rebels, onlookers cover their eyes in horror, the faces of the soldiers, on the other hand, are hidden from us. The essence of the brutality of war is embedded in the whole work, Goya does not hold back from expressing his abhorrence. Shot men are sprawled on the ground, the man dressed in white and yellow looks at the firing squad, he is next, his eyes are wide open, arms raised in the air, he has no escape.
Fifty years later Edward Manet , who had seen this painting, painted The Execution of Emperor Maxilmillian in 1867, similar in composition, but perhaps without the same impact on the viewer.
Barry kindly suggested this painting.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia commons
Critical Thinking 2: Induction and deduction
There was a great response to my first post in this series, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that. For my second one I’ve decided to tackle an issue that’s quite crucial to how Critical Thinking relates to the Middle Way.
There are two types of argument, normally known as induction and deduction. Deductive argument is what is classically formulated as argument and abstracted into logic. Deductive argument begins with assumed claims known as premises, and draws a conclusion from those premises. Within the terms of interpretation and the beliefs it assumes, the logical link between the premises and conclusion in deductive argument is absolute. If the premises are correct, then the conclusion must be correct if the reasoning is valid (i.e. follows the laws of logic).
For example:
John is an engineer.
All engineers are human beings.
So John must be a human being.
This valid argument must be correct if John is indeed an engineer, and if indeed all engineers are human beings. But I might have false information about John, and robotic engineers may be under development right now in Japanese laboratories. My assumptions may be false, but if they happen to be true then the conclusion must also be true.
That’s what we’re traditionally told about deductive argument. However, if you take into account embodied meaning, then we are all also going to have slightly different meanings for ‘John’, ‘engineer’, ‘human being’ etc. experienced in different bodies. It’s only if we further assume that these meanings are sufficiently shared and stable that a deductive argument can be ‘valid’ in this way.
The other type of argument, however, is far more common and far more useful. Inductive argument is imperfect argument that begins with limited information and draws further conclusions from it. Sometimes such reasoning can sometimes be grossly over-stated and prejudiced. For example:
My neighbour was burgled by a man from Norfolk.
Norfolk people are all criminals.
This is a crude example of prejudiced reasoning. It takes just one example and draws a conclusion about a whole class of people that are extremely varied. It’s obviously not taking into account all the reasons why it might be wrong.
However, inductive reasoning is what we rely upon constantly. If we take into account its limitations it can be a justified way of reasoning. For example:
Tom has failed to fulfil his promises to his mother on ten successive occasions within a month.
His mother should not place any further reliance on Tom’s promises.
It’s still possible that Tom is trustworthy, and has just had ten unfortunate sets of events that stopped him fulfilling his promises, or that he was at fault in the past but has now completely reformed. However, it’s unlikely. We are usually obliged to trust the weight of our experience in cases like this. We could have confidence in the conclusion here as long as we also took into account the possibility that we could be wrong.
So, my argument here is that deductive argument, though perfect in theory, is not really different from inductive in the way we should treat it in practice. Deductive logic, though it may be perfect in the abstract, is in practice dependent both on the assumptions made and on the interpretation of the words of the argument to be applied in our lives. In practice, then deductive reasoning is just as fallible as inductive. If we use inductive reasoning with awareness of its limitations, though, it can provide us with justified beliefs. This kind of reasoning is justified because of its fallibility, not in spite of it.
Exercise
How well justified are the following (inductive or deductive) arguments?
1. The no. 37 bus that I take to work has been more than ten minutes late on three successive days. This is an unacceptable standard of punctuality, and it has made me late for work. I shall write to the bus company to complain.
2. If the UK economy continues to grow at the rate it managed during the last quarter of 2013 (a rate unmatched since the crash of 2008) then we can conclude that economic recovery is well under way.
3. Romanians in the UK are arrested at seven times the rate of Britons (Daily Mail), so if more Romanians come to the UK we can expect an increase in crime.
4. If God exists and God is good, he would not allow people to suffer without making the truth available to them. So he must have sent divinely-inspired prophets to guide people.
5. I’ve been practising this difficult piano piece for two months now, but I seem to be making no progress. I keep making the same mistakes. I should give up this piece and learn something else.
Picture: Engineer at work by Angelsman (Wikimedia Commons)
The MWS Podcast: Episode 9, John Bolwell
In this episode T’ai Chi instructor John Bolwell gives us an overview of this popular martial art: it’s origins, the benefits of doing it and how it relates to the Middle Way. If you would like to see a short video of John performing one of the more common T’ai Chi forms then click here.
MWS Podcast 9: John Bolwell as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_9_John_Bolwell
Previous podcasts:
Episode 8: Peter Goble on his career as a nurse and his work as a Buddhist Chaplain.
Episode 7: The author Stephen Batchelor on his work with photography and collage.
Episode 6: Iain McGilchrist, author of the Master and his Emissary.
Episode 5: Julian Adkins on introducing MWP to his meditation group in Edinburgh
Episode 4: Daren Dewitt on Nonviolent communiction.
Episode 3: Vidyamala Burch on her new book “Mindfulness for Health”.
Episode 2: Norma Smith on why she joined the society, art, agnosticism and metaphor.
Episode 1 : Robert M. Ellis on the skill of critical thinking.