PHIL 003 Pasadena City College Buddhism and Butler Quiz Questions You do not need to do external research to answer these (although you may need to use a d

PHIL 003 Pasadena City College Buddhism and Butler Quiz Questions You do not need to do external research to answer these (although you may need to use a dictionary). Use handouts to answer the questions. I expect your final answers for the entire quiz to take between 2 or 3 pages, single spaced. Do not write a book! (although a book could be written about some of these issues). The goal is for you to show me that you understand the issues and the implications of these theories (I am not asking how you feel about these, I am not asking for your personal opinion or personal reaction to these issues).

(1) According to our chapter on Buddhist ethics, the ethical theory of Buddhism is grounded in the key concept of pratityasamutpada.
(a) Translate and explain the Sanskrit term pratityasamutpada.
(b) Explain how pratityasamutpada is related to Buddhist morality. (20 points)

(2) Explain how the three items in the morality section of the Fourth Noble Truth (three items in the Noble Eightfold Path, Right Speech, etc.) are related to the Five Precepts which householders are to use as guides to morality. Are they the same, different, or does one of them add something the other one is missing? (20 points)

(3) Consider the question, “Why be moral?” Did early Buddhists follow moral rules because they were afraid of the punishment of the Buddha in the next life? Did early Buddhists follow moral rules because they expected the rewards of divine glory in the next life? Explain the early Buddhist response to the question, “Why be moral?” (20 points)

(4) Joseph Butler was a Bishop in the Protestant Church of England. What role does the Christian God play in the ethical theory of Butler? (10 points)

(5) Suppose Student A says to Joseph Butler, “You argue that acting morally is merely following one’s own nature. Well, aren’t you just saying that I should do what ever feels good? Don’t you mean that I should follow my whims, my desires of the moment, or unrestrained gratification of my impulses? Aren’t those the same thing as following one’s nature?
If this is correct, then Butler’s ethical theory is equivalent to “If it feels good, do it!” How can Butler say that “following your nature” is the foundation for ethics? Pretend you are Joseph Butler: can you make clear how Butler would respond to Student A? (15 points)

(6) We discussed several objections or critical responses to Bishop Butler’s theory that conscience is the foundation of Christian morality. Pick any one of the critical remarks in our outline (also discussed in the video lecture), and imagine that you are Bishop Butler; what would Bishop Butler be likely to say to defend his position against that particular objection? (15 points) Dr. Zeuschner
Philosophy 3: Ethics
JOSEPH BUTLER: CONSCIENCE IN MORALITY
I.
Thanks to Augustine, during the Middle Ages priests taught followers that life on earth was merely a
wretched and pain-filled testing ground for divine salvation in the next life.
A. In the 1600s we have the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the ENLIGHTENMENT.
B. Reformation — end of religious unity; Christian groups criticize one another, each group show
errors in reasoning, errors in translation, errors in interpretation of the sacred scriptures,
and the public becomes aware of how little the various Christian authorities actually know,
and how much of what the priests taught was merely cultural and traditional, and not in the Bible,
and even some clergy seeking power and influence and wealth (and sensual gratification).
1.
With the invention of the printing press, people began to read their sacred scriptures and began
to realize that many of the claims of their own religious leaders were simply not found in the
Bible; induced doubts about old unquestioned beliefs and values.
2.
Religious authority was breaking down following Church scandals, exhausting religious wars,
and bitter disputes for political power between Catholics and Protestants, and bitter disputes
among Protestant groups for dominance.
3.
A humanistic view began to develop among the educated: life in this world was an exciting
meaningful place to enjoy, not merely a wretched and pain-filled testing ground for divine
salvation.
C. In the period called the ENLIGHTENMENT, the dominant question became: HOW DO WE KNOW
THINGS? Answer: sense experience and reasoning about our sense experience.
1.
The empirical methods of science were seriously beginning to flower, and came to be
perceived as the only way to gain accurate knowledge of the material world (rather than simply
reading Aristotle and other ancient thinkers).
D. However, for most of the scientists, reason and empirical knowledge could co-exist with religion.
1.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) discovered GRAVITY;
showing that God could operate on matter without needing to move anything physically, and
Newton did it with mathematics and equations (Gravitational attraction is the product of the
masses divided by the square of the distance, times the gravitational constant: G=(m1m2)/d2).
2.
Planets moved effortlessly through empty space with nothing holding them up, so the entire
universe can function effortlessly, directed by God who started it all up and now the stars and
planets revolve effortlessly without God’s involvement.
E. PROBLEM: the God who directed the universe effortlessly was NOT the God of the Bible!
1.
God becomes a distant architect, not a personal God who looks after us, checks up on us,
rewards us, punishes us, answers prayers — God has become a “bloodless abstraction.”
2.
God is a force that keeps the universe in order.
3.
God operates on a universe from a discreet distance, revealing Himself in the motion of the
stars and planets, and in the laws of nature.
4.
Traditional Christian religion was undermined, and deism becomes more important.
5.
God was the supreme mathematician who designed the universe with the beautiful equations
that Newton and Kepler had discovered.
6.
God did his work, God did it well, a long time ago — God is no longer needed to operate the
machinery of the universe.
F. What was the point of going to Church on Sunday? On praying? On looking for answers to prayers?
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What about Heaven and Hell?
1.
Science can answer all of the questions that religion used to answer: earthquakes, eclipse of
sun and moon; disease; flooding; lightning and thunder; bubonic and pneumonic plagues;
COVID-19; evolution and genetic inheritance.
2.
Everything was simply cause and effect: No meaning to our lives provided by an outside deity,
no guidance, no rewards or punishments.
3.
Christianity, as a religion which claimed to explain everything, was in danger of becoming a
thing of the past, no longer a vital and significant option, in the same way that the Greek gods
were no longer used as explanations by Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle (and were treated as myths
which had lost their power to explain).
II.
Although most scientists were comfortable with an abstract God of physics and Nature, the Christianity of
the people were not, and new forms of devout evangelical Christianity began to appear.
A. Some more conservative Christians thought that the only way to save the usefulness of established
churches in Europe would be to reject science, reject logic, critical thinking, philosophy, and
reason (both appeared to undermine traditional religion), and instead seek a more personal and
emotional experience with the divine (Kierkegaard “Fear and Trembling”).
1.
They sought a religion of emotion, of the “heart.”
2.
Because scientists were coming up with a God that did not match the God of the bible and
popular religion, many took that as a sign that human reason was too limited in the face of a
system that was so vast as to be truly incomprehensible.
III.
The result was a tension between those Christian thinkers (and deist free thinkers) who believed that
science brought them closer to God’s divine plan,
and those who thought that all science was the enemy, and reason was useless (therefore we must believe
blindly everything in the sacred Bible, even if it contradicted our senses and our reason).
IV. Can science teach us about human nature?
A. The historical period of the Enlightenment (18th century) involved the belief that science could give
us knowledge of human beings, but also give us the ability to improve the human condition IN THIS
WORLD (Humanism).
B. Scientific method will lead to PROGRESS.
C. If we rely on reasoning, can we understand human nature and ethics?
D. Bishop Butler belonged to the group of traditional (non-evangelical) theologians who answered “yes,
science will support and lead us to traditional Christian ethics.”
E. Butler was caught between
(1) Well-educated Christians [Church of England=Anglican] leaning towards deism, and deists, for
whom the God explained by science was NOT the god of the bible, and
(2) intensely devotional Christians who rejected the possibility that empirical observations were
relevant to Christianity.
1.
For the devotional, faith is what is important, so we should discard reason; if Christian
doctrines are self-contradictory, give up reason and rationality and accept Christian
impossibilities!
2.
Butler opposed much of what he called “Christian superstition.”
3.
Butler was confident in the power of reason, that individuals could run their own lives and
determine moral principles based on their own rational understanding.
4.
Butler was certain those moral principles which we can discover with reason would be
identical with traditional Christian morality.
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V.
THE TIMES OF JOSEPH BUTLER (1692–1752).
A.
B.
VI.
Approximately the life of J. S. Bach (1685–1750).
1.
When Butler was 29 years old, Bach wrote the Brandenburg Concertos in 1721, Handel and
Telemann active.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was 50 years old when Butler was born, and was writing on optics and
elected President of the Royal Society (1703), Newton discovering or inventing Calculus (along with
Leibniz); Newton died 1727.
Berkeley writing on Knowledge in 1710,
Leibniz at work inventing Calculus notation,
David Hume born 1711 when Butler was 19 years old.
LIFE OF JOSEPH BUTLER (1692–1752).
A. Trained for the Presbyterian Protestant Dissenter ministry, but finally decided that the relatively
liberal doctrines of the Protestant Dissenters were inferior to the conservative theology of the Church
of England (Anglican and Episcopalean), and so converted to the Church of England at
approximately age 22 (approximately 1714).
B. Attended Oxford, and became a priest after graduation in 1718 (age 26), and was appointed a
preacher to the Rolls Chapel in London.
C. In 1736, he was 44 years old and was court chaplain and served Queen Caroline and then George II.
VII. BUTLER’S PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM (Classical Ethics p. 200).
A. Defending THEISM (God is transcendent, and is personally interested in human affairs, and
interferes occasionally — miracles)
against DEISM (God is transcendent but has no concern with human affairs or influence over
humans).
1.
Butler was not arguing against the atheist (atheists were still being burned alive in this period),
because Butler’s argument assumes that we agree that the world shows evidence of divine
benevolent design (and atheists do not accept this assumption).
2.
However, he intended his arguments to work for the Deist who accepts the idea that the
universe is the work of a benevolent designer.
3.
Thus, he wants to convince the Deist that the main theistic claims of Christianity are
reasonable (you can reject all of traditional Christianity including the Bible, and Butler was
sure that reason will lead you to all the doctrines of Christianity and Christian morality).
B. Butler’s mission: defend the faith of Church of England over the age of religious skepticism, and
“freethinking” in this “Age of Reason.”
1.
He was a part of the seventeenth and eighteenth century effort to find a foundation for morals
in something other than the commands of God.
2.
He also was very partial to Aristotle, and much of Aristotle’s theory of human virtue finds its
way into Butler’s writings.
VIII.
BUTLER’S ETHICS (Classical Ethics p. 200).
A. Butler avoided basing his arguments on supernatural authority, even though he was a devout
Christian priest in the Church of England (died a Bishop), because he is trying to convince deists
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who do not accept the god of Christianity or the bible or the stories in the bible.
1.
He believed that reason would support Christian claims and dogma, but did not try to justify
his conclusions by referring to claims and dogma.
2.
He is trying to prove that revealed truths are rational, and you can’t do that by quoting
revelation to prove that revelation is correct (Butler too smart to argue in a circle).
3.
Butler argues: Pure reason can prove Christian dogma rational; and insofar as each of us has a
mind and the ability to reason clearly and carefully, then each of us can come to the same
conclusion which Butler comes to, even deists.
4.
Butler believed that being philosophical and critical will SUPPORT Christian claims, not
contradict them.
5.
He thought that nature was a product of divine design, and therefore by studying nature, one
can find support and confirmation for the revealed doctrines of Christianity.
6.
Revelation and nature complement each other, and thus he thought he could find a support for
morality in the study of natural phenomenon, in science and critical thinking.
IX. The basic insight of Butler’s ethics: EVERYONE (theist or deist) MAY FIND WITHIN HIMSELF OR
HERSELF KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS RIGHT, AND OBLIGATIONS TO FOLLOW WHAT IS
RIGHT.
A. Note that this is the influence of Aristotle and Aquinas.
B. He is disagreeing with Augustine who sees morality as coming from the external commands of a
divine being.
X.
ETHICS IS BASED IN HUMAN NATURE (Classical Ethics p. 202).
A. Butler’s ethics is based upon a teleological concept of human nature, and thus we have to know about
how human nature was designed and what is the intent of the designer? Since deists accepted an
uncaused first cause which puts things in order, that uncaused first cause must have designed human
nature for some reason, some plan.
B. Butler is quite certain that we can discover that human beings were made with some purpose or plan
or goal {telos} [provided by God] — the influence of the Greeks seen here.
C. Butler accepts this: Immoral behavior (“vice”) is a violation, or breaking in upon our own intrinsic
fundamental human nature, and this conclusion is reached by investigating fundamental human
nature.
1.
When you know what the basic human nature is, then virtue is determined by that which
is in accord with human nature.
2.
Vice is whatever deviates from human nature.
3.
Analyze the nature of man in order to figure out what sort of moral life is appropriate for the
nature of man.
D. Human nature is seen to be a system composed of several different parts which interact in a complex
manner.
E. We must know each part separately, and then see how all the parts function together as a system.
1.
Butler uses the example of a watch.
2.
With all the parts spread out on a table, even an intelligent person would have trouble figuring
out what they were supposed to work together to accomplish.
3.
But, seeing how the parts interact, he or she can figure out what it is doing.
XI.
THE PURPOSE OF HUMAN NATURE (Classical Ethics p. 203).
A. What was human nature, appetites, passions designed for?
B. Butler feels that we can discover that human beings were made for two purposes — made [1] FOR
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C.
society and to do good to our fellow creatures, and
made [2] to take care of our own life and health and private good.
To pursue this idea, we realize that human beings are a complex collection of affections, not just two
— but two of them are especially important for ethics.
D.
One important affection: human beings are concerned about their own welfare, their own health,
their own private good
sometimes even self-centered, selfish, egoistic — Butler calls this Self-Love.
1.
We are naturally self-regarding, taking care of our own life and health and private good.
2.
Self-love has as its object not only the self, but also to get things which are pleasing to the self.
3.
Thus we take care of our own health, and try to do things which are pleasurable.
E.
A second important affection:
Butler argues that there are equally natural tendencies which are for the benefit of one’s fellow
humans and human society (benevolence).
1.
We are also naturally benevolent, other-regarding, taking care of others, dispositions to
friendship, compassion, family affections, altruism.
F.
Self-love is a natural principle; but BENEVOLENCE is equally natural.
1.
The two complement each other so well (“their mutual coinciding”) that we must conclude that
“we were made for both”
2.
Just because something is good for us does not mean that it cannot be good for others as well.
No natural and innate conflict between self-love and benevolence.
1.
Butler argues that altruism (or benevolence, promoting the good of others) need not be in
opposition to our own personal self-interest or self-love.
2.
Obviously, just because an action promotes the good of others doesn’t mean that it cannot
promote our own good as well; to help another’s happiness does automatically mean that it
must hinder our own happiness.
G.
XII. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) who focused on political philosophy and the need for a
strong central authoritarian ruler, argued that when we analyze human nature, we find that all people are
Egoistic Hedonists and only egoistic hedonists; we self-centeredly gratify our desires, and that’s what is
behind every choice we make. Butler argues against this claim.
A. Butler: NOT ALL IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION IS SELF-INTEREST
B. There is nothing egoistic about self-preservation; it makes perfect sense to want to assure your own
well-being.
C. We may legitimately be interested in self-preservation without necessarily being egoistic hedonists.
XIII. Butler provides what he considers a clear analysis of “human nature”.
A. We have passions and appetites to fuel all human actions; these are essential to “human nature.”
1.
But, by introspecting, we realize that these passions and appetites can be regulated by some
guiding principles which are also another aspect of our self: self-love, benevolence,
conscience — these three regulate our passions, desires, appetites.
2.
We have drives and appetites, and we have the desire to satisfy those drives and appetites —
drives, appetites, desires are ethically neutral.
3.
Morality arises from the question of how to satisfy those desires, or whether to satisfy those
desires.
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a.
b.
B.
Thus, morality comes not from the passions and appetites, but from the regulation/
controlling aspects.
Morality involves the proper choosing, regulation, and limitation of the desires to be
satisfied.
Three regulating principles which generate morality:
self-love,
benevolence,
conscience.
1.
SELF-LOVE regulates individual desires in order to promote an individual’s own best interests.
2.
BENEVOLENCE refers to controlling desires and appetites in order to further the public good.
3.
Often these two complement and reinforce each other, but not always.
4.
Sometimes there are conflicts between these two, between personal interests and benefits, and
public interests and benefits, and this is where conscience is relevant.
XIV. IS “SELF-LOVE” MERELY THE UNRESTRAINED GRATIFICATION OF OUR IMPULSES, AS
HOBBES HAD ARGUED? (Classical Ethics p. 205).
A. Humans also have short-term, short-sighted desires for immediate gratification, and they can lead us
to conflict with our concern for others, and even lead us against our own self-interest.
1.
SELF-LOVE is not UNRESTRAINED GRATIFICATION OF IMPULSES.
B. Clearly, every person wants his or her own happiness, and we also want other external things.
C. What is the object of self-love?
The object is ourselves;
it is INTERNAL — we want to achieve a lifetime of happiness.
D. What is the object of a particular impulse or desire?
It is some specific particular external object.
1.
If the self love and unrestrained gratification of desires were the same, then their objects would
be the same, what they desired would be the same.
2.
Long-term Object of self-love is
general and internal to ourselves,
and the goal is to achieve a lifetime of happiness, satisfaction, enjoyment.
3.
Object of an impulse is
specific and external to ourselves, it is for food, or some other object — it is NOT for
satisfaction or pleasure inside ourselves.
4.
The object of self-love is NEVER an external thing; instead it is an internal state.
E. Thus, since their objects are different, self-love and gratification of impulses, must also be different.
F. With this, Butler has shown that Thomas Hobbes was wrong when he asserted that all of us only
seek immediate gratification of our desires, or self-love.
XV. CONSCIENCE: THE SUPREME GOVERNING PRINCIPLE (Classical Ethics p. 206).
A. Human beings possess a faculty which is capable of judging the affections, judging both self-love
and benevolence, and judging the actions which flow from these instincts.
1.
If you see something you want, and you recognize that in obtaining it, your life will be
destroyed — it is natural to want to get the thing, BUT for a human being, the action is rash
and unnatural, and something inside us resists grabbing what we want.
2.
To deny a present desire (appetite), because you can see that acting on it will be a disaster, is
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B.
natural for a human being —
the particular impulse or desire is overridden by a governing principle (which can judge
between self-love, self-preservation).
CONSCIENCE is the highest regulative principle, the rational arbiter of conflicting interests
of self-love and public benevolence.
1.
Conscience is NOT looking at consequences of our choices [not teleological]; conscience is (a)
the author of our moral obligations, and (b) the authority for our moral obligations.
2.
The authority of conscience is SELF-EVIDENT, and there is no higher principle.
3.
There is no higher moral principle which could override the judgment of conscience.
4.
Conscience itself prompts us to do our duty;
we are unconditionally obligated to follow the dictates of our conscience.
5.
Butler says that conscience approves of whatever contributes to the good life of the whole
person and condemns whatever disproportionately favors some part of the whole.
6.
This is how conscience regulates our lives: by appr…
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