Christopher Gowans

Buddhist thought flourished in India for well over a thousand years after the life of the Buddha around the fifth century BCE. During this time there were many diverse developments, but for the purpose of the overview in this chapter, two central traditions will be featured. The first centers on the original teaching of the Buddha as represented in a set of texts written in Pāli called the “Three Baskets”. The second tradition is rooted in a set of texts written in Sanskrit called the “Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras” that began to emerge a few centuries later, around the beginning of the new millennium. These texts constitute the historical heart of Mahāyāna Buddhism. This chapter demonstrates that in both traditions Buddhist thought in India was fundamentally concerned with ethical values.

It is often observed that there is little or no moral philosophy in classical Indian Buddhist thought. This is sometimes believed to be surprising since obviously there is an ethical teaching in Buddhism and clearly there are other forms of Buddhist philosophy. In my view, there is something that can plausibly be called moral philosophy in Indian Buddhism, but it is not quite what many people have expected because they have approached the issue from a specific understanding of philosophy that is too limited. I propose to defend this interpretation by reshaping Mark Siderits’ concept of fusion philosophy. The fusion I will propose reveals a form of moral philosophy that may be called self-cultivation philosophy. I will argue that this was a common activity in ancient Chinese, Greek and Indian cultures—including especially early Buddhist thought and practice.

"The book defends the thesis that the concept of self-cultivation philosophy is an informative interpretive framework for comprehending and reflecting on several philosophical outlooks in India, the Greco-Roman world and China. On the basis of an understanding of human nature and the place of human beings in the world, self-cultivation philosophies maintain that our lives can and should be substantially transformed from what is judged to be a problematic, untutored condition of human beings, our existential starting-point, into what is put forward as an ideal state of being. We are to do this by undertaking a set of therapeutic or spiritual exercises guided by some philosophical analysis. The self-cultivation philosophies in India are expressed in: the Bhagavad Gītā; the Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophies of Īśvarakṛṣṇa and Patañjali; and teaching of the Buddha and his followers Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva. The philosophies originating in Greece, with subsequent development in the Roman period, are the most prominent Hellenistic approaches: the Epicureanism of Epicurus, Lucretius and Philodemus; the Stoicism of Chrysippus, Epictetus and Seneca; and Pyrrho and the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus. The self-cultivation philosophies from China are the early Confucian outlooks of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi; the classical Daoist perspectives of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi; and the Chan tradition of Bodhidharma, Huineng and Linji"--

I argue that persons are unlikely to have moral knowledge insofar as they lack certain moral virtues; that persons are commonly deficient in these virtues, and hence that they are regularly unlikely to have adequate moral knowledge. I propose a version of this argument that employs a broad conception of self-worth, a virtue found in a wide range of moral traditions that suppose a person would have an appropriate sense of self-worth in the face of tendencies both to overestimate and underestimate the value of one’s self. I begin by noting some distinctive features of this argument that distinguish it from more common arguments for moral skepticism. This is followed by an elucidation of the virtue of self-worth. I then consider some connections between self-worth and moral knowledge and, more briefly, the extent of self-worth among persons. Finally, I respond to the objection that the argument is incoherent because it presupposes moral knowledge that it later undermines.

Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people's intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David Velleman and David B. Wong. The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them.

Can moral disagreements be rationally resolved? Can universal human rights be defended in face of moral disagreements? The problem of moral disagreement is one of the central problems in moral thinking. It also provides a stimulating stepping-stone to some of the perennial problems of philosophy, such as relativism, scepticism, and objectivity. _Moral Disagreements_ is the first anthology to bring together classic and contemporary readings on this key topic. Clearly divided into five parts; The Historical Debate; Voices from Anthropology; Challenges to Moral Objectivity; Defenses of Moral Objectivity; and New Directions, the anthology presents readings from the following key thinkers: * Sextus, Empiricus, Chagnon, Wong, MacIntyre * Aquinas, Shweder, Brink, Rawls * Montaigne, Turner, Nussbaum, Narayan * Hume, Mackie, Gewirth * Nietzsche, Williams, Berlin. A distinctive feature of the anthology is that it brings philosophers into dialogue with well-known anthropologists. Also included is a comprehensive introduction by Christopher Gowans, introducing the problem of moral disagreement to those coming to the topic for the first time

The topic of the dissertation is C. I. Lewis' theory of empirical knowledge in Chapters VII and VIII of An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. I begin by discussing Lewis' purpose in developing this theory. I argue, positively, that his principal aim was to explain the role of sense-experience in our knowledge of the physical world, and negatively, that his aim was not primarily either to clarify the meaning of our epistemic concepts or to refute skepticism . ;Lewis' theory is plainly foundationalist in orientation, and it is clear that his argument for foundationalism is based upon regress considerations. But there are two interpretations of Lewis' regress argument. They were first suggested by Reichenbach and Goodman respectively. I argue that Goodman's interpretation is the more adequate of the two. I then formalize Lewis' argument. This makes it clear that the argument is valid, and that its soundness depends upon only two questionable premises: that a non-inferentially warranted belief must be certain, and that the series of warranting grounds for a belief must come to an end. I then consider the reasons Lewis had, or might have had, for accepting these premises. ;Lewis' regress argument establishes that the warrant for an inferentially warranted belief must include a belief that is non-inferentially warranted and certain. Lewis' foundationalism is essentially an attempt to apply this conclusion to our warranted beliefs about physical objects. His defense of foundationalism has two parts. ;The first part is the doctrine of "the given." After clarifying ambiguities in this doctrine, I argue that what is essential to it is the claim that there are beliefs about how things appear--what I call sensory beliefs--and that these beliefs may be non-inferentially warranted and certain. I then consider the central objections to this claim. I begin with an objection based upon the idea that sensory beliefs are "comparative." Though I argue against this idea, I grant that sensory beliefs cannot be non-inferentially warranted because in various ways they presuppose inferential knowledge about the physical world, and second, to the effect that sensory beliefs cannot be certain because, for a variety of reasons, they can always be mistaken. I argue that all of these objections are inconclusive at best. ;The second part of Lewis' defense of foundationalism is his account of how sensory beliefs confirm physical object beliefs. Lewis believed this is possible only if physical object propositions can be "translated" into complex sensory propositions. But his account both of the nature of the relationship between physical object propositions and sensory propositions, and of how this relationship makes it possible for the latter to confirm the former, is extremely ambiguous and problematic. I thus propose a reconstruction of Lewis' position which I call statical phenomenalism. This reconstructed position seems to accomplish what Lewis was trying to do, and it seems to circumvent Chisholm's objection to phenomenalism based upon the facts of perceptual relativity. But I suggest that statistical phenomenalism nonetheless suffers from an apparently fatal defect. I conclude by arguing that Lewis did not need to defend phenomenalism in order to defend his foundationalism

Philosophy of the Buddha is a philosophical introduction to the teaching of the Buddha. It carefully guides readers through the basic ideas and practices of the Buddha, including kamma , rebirth, the not-self doctrine, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, ethics, meditation, non-attachment, and Nibbâna . The book includes an account of the life of the Buddha as well as comparisons of his teaching with practical and theoretical aspects of some Western philosophical outlooks, both ancient and modern. Most distinctively, Philosophy of the Buddha explores how Buddhist enlightenment could enable us to overcome suffering in our lives and reach our full potential for compassion and tranquillity. This is one of the first books to introduce the philosophy of the Buddha to students of Western philosophy. Christopher W. Gowans' style is exceptionally clear and appropriate for anyone looking for a comprehensive introduction to this growing area of interest

Our lives are such that moral wrongdoing is sometimes inescapable for us. We have moral responsibilities to persons which may conflict and which it is wrong to violate even when they do conflict. Christopher W. Gowans argues that we must accept this conclusion if we are to make sense of our moral experience and the way in which persons are valuable to us. In defending this position, he critically examines the recent moral dilemmas debate. He maintains that what is important in this debate is not whether there are irresolvable moral conflicts, but whether there are moral conflicts in which wrongdoing is unavoidable. Though it would be incoherent to conclude moral deliberation by deciding to perform incompatible actions, he argues that there is nothing incoherent in supposing that we have conflicting moral responsibilities. In this way, he shows that it is possible to capture the intuitions of those who have defended the idea of moral dilemmas while meeting the objections of those who have rejected this idea. Gowans carefully evaluates utilitarian and Kantian analyses of moral dilemmas. He argues that these approaches eliminate genuine moral conflict only by displacing persons as direct objects of moral concern. As an alternative, he develops a more concrete account in which moral responsibilities to persons are central. The book also includes discussions of Melville's Billy Budd, methodology in moral philosophy, moral pluralism, moral tragedy, and "dirty hands" in politics.

I argue that the Buddha did not discuss the free will and determinism problem because he only considered issues relating to overcoming suffering and his teaching about this did not raise the problem. As represented in the Nikāyas, the heart of his teaching was an empirically based account of the causes of suffering and how to modify these to end suffering. It was primarily a practical teaching about how to achieve this goal, more a craft knowledge than a philosophical theory of causality. Similarly, the no-self teaching was more about living selflessly than about developing a theoretical analysis of agency.