Probabilistic this-world karma

The fundamental issues are about karma, but they also encapsulate larger issues about Buddhist modernism. I say that the concept of karma is inherently eschatological-theodicean (I’ll say more about these Greek words below); Lele denies this, and says that the concept is inherently only eudaimonistic (another Greek word). Note that I don’t deny that the concept of karma has a eudaimonistic element. Rather, I say that this element by itself isn’t sufficient for what karma means, because the concept of karma necessarily includes eschatology and theodicy. So, the crucial issue is whether can you remove the eschatology-theodicy from the concept of karma and still legitimately claim to be talking about karma. Lele thinks you can, whereas I think you can’t.

What Lele does is to invent a new concept. He deletes the idea that karma operates across former and future lives. This immediately raises the problem of how karma can possibly work, given that many people act in good ways and experience bad results, and act in bad ways and experience
good results. Lele’s answer is that karma works probabilistically: good actions are more likely to produce experienced good results in this life, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results in this life. Karma is “probabilistic this-world karma.”

I’d call this shwarma, not karma.

If Lele were to say something like this, I’d have no objection (at least not yet). This is what philosophers do, in contrast to historians and philologists. He’d be owning up to cherry picking, and so wouldn’t be trying to have his cake and eat it too

(to mix metaphors). He’d be thinking as a Buddhist and as a cosmopolitanist (in
the philosophical sense of cosmopolitanism I advocate in Why I Am Not a
Buddhist). I’d say, “I sympathize with your situation, more power to you,
let’s see what you can do, and let’s see how others inside and outside the tradition respond.” For me, the proof would be in the pudding (to add another metaphor).

In the case at
hand, the pudding is “probabilistic this-world karma.” This is the conceptual
engineering we’re being offered. I don’t think it works.

“Probabilistic”
properly speaking applies to a scientific causal model. When we have a causal
model consisting of a set of variables, we can define a probability measure
over propositions about the variables and their values. But what is the model
in the case of eudaimonistic karma? What are the variables and parameters? Unless
we can specify these, we don’t really know what we’re talking about. Are we supposed
to use game theory and decision theory to answer these questions? But these
theories typically abstract away from individual moral virtue, which is the key
concept of eudaimonistic thought. These theories and the concept of karma don’t
seem to fit together very well.

I worry that we’re
dealing with the same kind of scientism that infects much of Buddhist
modernism. By “scientism” I mean using scientific concepts where they’re not
appropriate. “Eudaimonistic karma” is a normative concept. It refers to good
and bad individual mental intentions and actions. Normative concepts operate in
the logical space of reasons—the logical space of being able to justify what
you say in relation to norms and values. The concept of probability, however,
is a descriptive one that operates in the logical space of causes. When you say
“probabilistic karma” you just code switch between the normative and
descriptive languages without helping us to think about their relation.

There are other
problems. As I wrote before, ...

Evan Thompson

elisa freschi | August 11, 2020 at 2:17 pm | Tags: Gananath Obeyesekere, Stephen Harris | URL: https://wp.me/p486Wp-1b6

http://indianphilosophyblog.org/2020/08/11/losing-the-thread-a-response-to-lele-guest-post-by-evan-thompson/