Charles Goodman | Binghamton University (original) (raw)
Papers by Charles Goodman
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2004
Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'T... more Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'Treasury of Metaphysics'. This neglect is unjustified. The account of the nature of the physical world given in the 'Treasury' is a one-category ontology of dharmas, which are simple, momentary tropes. They include basic physical tropes, the most fundamental level of the physical world, as well as higher-level tropes, including sensible properties such as colours, which are known as derived form. I argue that the relationship between the basic physical tropes and derived form is one of supervenience. Vasubandhu's theory is a powerful and flexible one, which can be adapted so as to be consistent with modern science. 1 Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako´sa and Bhā. sya, ed. Swami Dvārikādās Śā strῑ (Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, ). The Treasury has been translated into French by Louis de la Vallée Poussin. That French translation was then translated into English as Vasubandhu, Abhidharma-ko´sabhā. syam, tr. Leo M. Pruden (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, ).
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2020
Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the nascent scientific literature on 'plant le... more Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the nascent scientific literature on 'plant learning' pose serious challenges to Buddhist philosophy of mind and to Buddhist practical ethics. These challenges are of two general types. First, the empirical results threaten to extend the reach of mind more broadly than premodern South Asian and Tibetan Buddhists were willing to allow, calling into question the rational defensibility of a range of Buddhist moral commitments. But the discovery of learning in non-animals also threatens to destabilize the crucial Buddhist distinction between 'sentient beings' and the 'receptacle world', and raises the possibility of a separation between intelligence and consciousness. The emergence of such a separation could require a basic rethinking of the traditional framework of the five aggregates. These developments should also sharpen our attention to AI safety by making the prospect of existential AI risk even more threatening than it would otherwise have been.
Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2011
Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alterat... more Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format, with the exception of a single copy for private study, requires the written permission of the author. author.
Philosophy East and West, 2007
Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common wit... more Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with Western forms of universalist consequentialism. Śāntideva, in particular, endorses a strong version of agent-neutrality, claims that compassionate agents should violate Buddhist moral commitments when doing so would produce good results, praises radical altruism, uses a critique of the self to support his ethical views, and even offers a reasonably clear general formulation of what we call act-consequentialism. Meanwhile, Asaṅga's discussions of the motivation behind rules of moral discipline and the permissible reasons for breaking those rules suggests an interesting and complex version of rule-consequentialism. Evidence for features of consequentialism can be found in several Mahāyāna sūtras as well. In reading these sources, inter
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2014
recently proposed a door die test for moral theories. If a moral theory does not acknowledge that... more recently proposed a door die test for moral theories. If a moral theory does not acknowledge that failure to address a pressing, anthropogenic, and tractable global threat is a serious criticism of it, he says, then that theory is "inadequate and must be rejected." (Gardiner 2011, 218) We might wonder what moral theory could possibly fail such a test. It is, after all, an awfully low hurdle. To pass the test, a theory doesn't need to successfully address the global threat: it merely needs to acknowledge that failing to successfully address it is a problem. And how could a serious moral theory simultaneously recognize that something is a significant moral problem, and then imply that doing nothing about it is just fine? According to some ethicists, though, this is just what act-consequentialism could do in response to anthropogenic climate change. In particular, they think that even if widespread, voluntary reductions in carbon emissions are both necessary and sufficient to avoid a climate catastrophe, act-consequentialism will counsel against making them. 1 Their first point is that, in consequentialist terms, anthropogenic climate change should be avoided: the world we are in for if nothing is done to avert (or at this late date, diminish) climate change is much worse than worlds we could bring about by choosing to emit less carbon into the atmosphere. Their second point is that act-consequentialism implies that the vast majority of us should not reduce our emissions. And this will be so, they say, even if such reductions are needed to avoid the awful consequences of climate change. Here is how one such critic, Ronald Sandler, makes the case for this second point: Almost any action performed by almost any agent will have a vanishingly small effect on [climate change]. Many of these same actions will have burdens for the agent and those close to her (i.e., family and friends), in terms of, for example, time, economic costs, social costs, and professional
The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters., 2022
A sample chapter from my recently published book, The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Me... more A sample chapter from my recently published book, The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters (OUP, 2022.) This is a translation (from Sanskrit and Tibetan) of the Mīmāṃsaka-parikalpita-ātma-parīkṣā, including the verses by Śāntarakṣita and the Pañjikā commentary by Kamalaśīla. One of the last major works of Indian Buddhist philosophy, this text offers a highly sophisticated rational defense of Buddhist teachings and serves as an important source for debates between South Asian Buddhists and their Hindu and Jain critics.
A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Stephen M. Emmanuel
This chapter offers theoretical reflections about the ways in which meditation practices may be a... more This chapter offers theoretical reflections about the ways in which meditation practices may be able to lead to beneficial results, and critically examines the question of whether, and in what sense, Buddhist meditation leads to knowledge. It includes detailed instructions for three basic Buddhist practices: breathing mindfulness meditation, walking meditation, and the meditation on lovingkindness.
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, ed. Jonardon Ganeri, 2017
This chapter examines several features of Śāntideva's ethics, including its similarities with uti... more This chapter examines several features of Śāntideva's ethics, including its similarities with utilitarianism. It includes a discussion of possible interpretations of his views about well-being and examines the role that lexical priority could be understood to play in those views. Other topics discussed include Śāntideva's views about emotions and about animals and the environment.
Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency, 2016
This paper discusses how seemingly incompatible Buddhist teachings related to what we now think o... more This paper discusses how seemingly incompatible Buddhist teachings related to what we now think of as "the problem of free will" can be understood in a graduated teaching framework, with a version of hard incompatibilism as the final Buddhist position. The paper also argues that hard incompatibilism, though undeniably revisionary, is far less radical and destructive than some philosophers have feared.
Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, by the Cowherds, 2016
An English translation by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman of the canonical commentary on the fa... more An English translation by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman of the canonical commentary on the famous "Śāntideva passage" from Bodhicaryāvatāra ch. VIII that lays out Śāntideva's main argument for altruism and the Ownerless Suffering Argument. Published as an appendix to Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness.
Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, by the Cowherds, 2016
Does the Buddhist teaching of emptiness make the project of ethical theory impossible? Not accor... more Does the Buddhist teaching of emptiness make the project of ethical theory impossible? Not according to Śāntideva, who was both a consequentialist ethical theorist and a member of the Madhyamaka tradition. This paper explores how Śāntideva's utilitarianism and his Ownerless Suffering Argument could make sense in the context of his non-realist metaphysics.
A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics, 2017
Buddhist modernists are developing an understanding of karma as a distinctive psychological proce... more Buddhist modernists are developing an understanding of karma as a distinctive psychological process that frequently leads harmful actions to evolve into experiences of suffering and helpful actions to evolve into experiences of happiness. If we shift to this kind of understanding of karma, the effect on Buddhist ethics will be quite significant. In this essay I explore the relations between the old and the new understandings of karma and between this issue and the broader question of the theoretical structure of Buddhist ethics.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Criminal Justice Ethics, 2017
The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of pun... more The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of punishment is that they could sometimes endorse punishing innocent people. Two-level consequentialists can resist this objection. Because of how deterrence works, a system of social protection would clearly need to be careful, most of the time, to pick out only the guilty for punishment. What about exceptional cases? Any institution empowered to secretly frame innocent people would pose a grave danger to democracy, a danger that could prove lethal under only moderately unusual conditions. Meanwhile, individual consequentialists working within the criminal justice system should fear that their own views could be distorted by confirmation bias and other cognitive errors. These officials should normally trust any moderately well-functioning adversarial trial process more than they trust their own judgment of who needs to be punished. They should use extralegal discretion only in cases where both their confidence and the stakes are extremely high; and in cases where the stakes are extremely high, the consequentialist answer is no longer counterintuitive.
Zygon®, 2014
Owen Flanagan's important book The Bodhisattva's Brain presents a naturalized interpretation of B... more Owen Flanagan's important book The Bodhisattva's Brain presents a naturalized interpretation of Buddhist philosophy. Although the overall approach of the book is very promising, certain aspects of its presentation could benefit from further reflection. Traditional teachings about reincarnation do not contradict the doctrine of no self, as Flanagan seems to suggest; however, they are empirically rather implausible. Flanagan's proposed "tame" interpretation of karma is too thin; we can do better at fitting karma into a scientific worldview. The relationship between eudaimonist and utilitarian strands in Buddhist ethics is more complex than the book suggests. Flanagan is right to criticize incautious and imprecise claims that Buddhism will make practitioners happy. We can make progress by distinguishing between happiness in the sense of a Buddhist version of eudaimonia, and happiness in the sense of attitudinal pleasure. Doing so might result in an interpretation of Buddhist views about happiness that was simultaneously philosophically interesting, historically credible, and psychologically testable.
Philosophy East and West, 2005
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2004
Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'T... more Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'Treasury of Metaphysics'. This neglect is unjustified. The account of the nature of the physical world given in the 'Treasury' is a one-category ontology of dharmas, which are simple, momentary tropes. They include basic physical tropes, the most fundamental level of the physical world, as well as higher-level tropes, including sensible properties such as colours, which are known as derived form. I argue that the relationship between the basic physical tropes and derived form is one of supervenience. Vasubandhu's theory is a powerful and flexible one, which can be adapted so as to be consistent with modern science. 1 Vasubandhu, Abhidharmako´sa and Bhā. sya, ed. Swami Dvārikādās Śā strῑ (Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, ). The Treasury has been translated into French by Louis de la Vallée Poussin. That French translation was then translated into English as Vasubandhu, Abhidharma-ko´sabhā. syam, tr. Leo M. Pruden (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, ).
Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2020
Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the nascent scientific literature on 'plant le... more Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the nascent scientific literature on 'plant learning' pose serious challenges to Buddhist philosophy of mind and to Buddhist practical ethics. These challenges are of two general types. First, the empirical results threaten to extend the reach of mind more broadly than premodern South Asian and Tibetan Buddhists were willing to allow, calling into question the rational defensibility of a range of Buddhist moral commitments. But the discovery of learning in non-animals also threatens to destabilize the crucial Buddhist distinction between 'sentient beings' and the 'receptacle world', and raises the possibility of a separation between intelligence and consciousness. The emergence of such a separation could require a basic rethinking of the traditional framework of the five aggregates. These developments should also sharpen our attention to AI safety by making the prospect of existential AI risk even more threatening than it would otherwise have been.
Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2011
Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alterat... more Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format, with the exception of a single copy for private study, requires the written permission of the author. author.
Philosophy East and West, 2007
Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common wit... more Several Indian Mahāyāna texts express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with Western forms of universalist consequentialism. Śāntideva, in particular, endorses a strong version of agent-neutrality, claims that compassionate agents should violate Buddhist moral commitments when doing so would produce good results, praises radical altruism, uses a critique of the self to support his ethical views, and even offers a reasonably clear general formulation of what we call act-consequentialism. Meanwhile, Asaṅga's discussions of the motivation behind rules of moral discipline and the permissible reasons for breaking those rules suggests an interesting and complex version of rule-consequentialism. Evidence for features of consequentialism can be found in several Mahāyāna sūtras as well. In reading these sources, inter
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2014
recently proposed a door die test for moral theories. If a moral theory does not acknowledge that... more recently proposed a door die test for moral theories. If a moral theory does not acknowledge that failure to address a pressing, anthropogenic, and tractable global threat is a serious criticism of it, he says, then that theory is "inadequate and must be rejected." (Gardiner 2011, 218) We might wonder what moral theory could possibly fail such a test. It is, after all, an awfully low hurdle. To pass the test, a theory doesn't need to successfully address the global threat: it merely needs to acknowledge that failing to successfully address it is a problem. And how could a serious moral theory simultaneously recognize that something is a significant moral problem, and then imply that doing nothing about it is just fine? According to some ethicists, though, this is just what act-consequentialism could do in response to anthropogenic climate change. In particular, they think that even if widespread, voluntary reductions in carbon emissions are both necessary and sufficient to avoid a climate catastrophe, act-consequentialism will counsel against making them. 1 Their first point is that, in consequentialist terms, anthropogenic climate change should be avoided: the world we are in for if nothing is done to avert (or at this late date, diminish) climate change is much worse than worlds we could bring about by choosing to emit less carbon into the atmosphere. Their second point is that act-consequentialism implies that the vast majority of us should not reduce our emissions. And this will be so, they say, even if such reductions are needed to avoid the awful consequences of climate change. Here is how one such critic, Ronald Sandler, makes the case for this second point: Almost any action performed by almost any agent will have a vanishingly small effect on [climate change]. Many of these same actions will have burdens for the agent and those close to her (i.e., family and friends), in terms of, for example, time, economic costs, social costs, and professional
The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters., 2022
A sample chapter from my recently published book, The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Me... more A sample chapter from my recently published book, The Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters (OUP, 2022.) This is a translation (from Sanskrit and Tibetan) of the Mīmāṃsaka-parikalpita-ātma-parīkṣā, including the verses by Śāntarakṣita and the Pañjikā commentary by Kamalaśīla. One of the last major works of Indian Buddhist philosophy, this text offers a highly sophisticated rational defense of Buddhist teachings and serves as an important source for debates between South Asian Buddhists and their Hindu and Jain critics.
A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Stephen M. Emmanuel
This chapter offers theoretical reflections about the ways in which meditation practices may be a... more This chapter offers theoretical reflections about the ways in which meditation practices may be able to lead to beneficial results, and critically examines the question of whether, and in what sense, Buddhist meditation leads to knowledge. It includes detailed instructions for three basic Buddhist practices: breathing mindfulness meditation, walking meditation, and the meditation on lovingkindness.
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, ed. Jonardon Ganeri, 2017
This chapter examines several features of Śāntideva's ethics, including its similarities with uti... more This chapter examines several features of Śāntideva's ethics, including its similarities with utilitarianism. It includes a discussion of possible interpretations of his views about well-being and examines the role that lexical priority could be understood to play in those views. Other topics discussed include Śāntideva's views about emotions and about animals and the environment.
Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency, 2016
This paper discusses how seemingly incompatible Buddhist teachings related to what we now think o... more This paper discusses how seemingly incompatible Buddhist teachings related to what we now think of as "the problem of free will" can be understood in a graduated teaching framework, with a version of hard incompatibilism as the final Buddhist position. The paper also argues that hard incompatibilism, though undeniably revisionary, is far less radical and destructive than some philosophers have feared.
Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, by the Cowherds, 2016
An English translation by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman of the canonical commentary on the fa... more An English translation by Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman of the canonical commentary on the famous "Śāntideva passage" from Bodhicaryāvatāra ch. VIII that lays out Śāntideva's main argument for altruism and the Ownerless Suffering Argument. Published as an appendix to Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness.
Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness, by the Cowherds, 2016
Does the Buddhist teaching of emptiness make the project of ethical theory impossible? Not accor... more Does the Buddhist teaching of emptiness make the project of ethical theory impossible? Not according to Śāntideva, who was both a consequentialist ethical theorist and a member of the Madhyamaka tradition. This paper explores how Śāntideva's utilitarianism and his Ownerless Suffering Argument could make sense in the context of his non-realist metaphysics.
A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics, 2017
Buddhist modernists are developing an understanding of karma as a distinctive psychological proce... more Buddhist modernists are developing an understanding of karma as a distinctive psychological process that frequently leads harmful actions to evolve into experiences of suffering and helpful actions to evolve into experiences of happiness. If we shift to this kind of understanding of karma, the effect on Buddhist ethics will be quite significant. In this essay I explore the relations between the old and the new understandings of karma and between this issue and the broader question of the theoretical structure of Buddhist ethics.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Criminal Justice Ethics, 2017
The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of pun... more The most commonly encountered and most serious objection against consequentialist theories of punishment is that they could sometimes endorse punishing innocent people. Two-level consequentialists can resist this objection. Because of how deterrence works, a system of social protection would clearly need to be careful, most of the time, to pick out only the guilty for punishment. What about exceptional cases? Any institution empowered to secretly frame innocent people would pose a grave danger to democracy, a danger that could prove lethal under only moderately unusual conditions. Meanwhile, individual consequentialists working within the criminal justice system should fear that their own views could be distorted by confirmation bias and other cognitive errors. These officials should normally trust any moderately well-functioning adversarial trial process more than they trust their own judgment of who needs to be punished. They should use extralegal discretion only in cases where both their confidence and the stakes are extremely high; and in cases where the stakes are extremely high, the consequentialist answer is no longer counterintuitive.
Zygon®, 2014
Owen Flanagan's important book The Bodhisattva's Brain presents a naturalized interpretation of B... more Owen Flanagan's important book The Bodhisattva's Brain presents a naturalized interpretation of Buddhist philosophy. Although the overall approach of the book is very promising, certain aspects of its presentation could benefit from further reflection. Traditional teachings about reincarnation do not contradict the doctrine of no self, as Flanagan seems to suggest; however, they are empirically rather implausible. Flanagan's proposed "tame" interpretation of karma is too thin; we can do better at fitting karma into a scientific worldview. The relationship between eudaimonist and utilitarian strands in Buddhist ethics is more complex than the book suggests. Flanagan is right to criticize incautious and imprecise claims that Buddhism will make practitioners happy. We can make progress by distinguishing between happiness in the sense of a Buddhist version of eudaimonia, and happiness in the sense of attitudinal pleasure. Doing so might result in an interpretation of Buddhist views about happiness that was simultaneously philosophically interesting, historically credible, and psychologically testable.
Philosophy East and West, 2005
A translation from Sanskrit, intended for classroom use, of the "Chapter on Collections" (Samudāy... more A translation from Sanskrit, intended for classroom use, of the "Chapter on Collections" (Samudāya-adhikaraṇam) of Ācārya Śaṅkara's Commentary on the Brahma Sūtras (II.2.18-27.) This passage contains the best-known and most influential Hindu critique of the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhist reductionist realism. This is a draft; comments are welcome.