They say that social scientists tell us that logic is culturally relative. I’m not sure if social scientists really do, because I know that we laypeople often get academia wrong. However, I’ve heard many laypeople tell me, with “great authority”, that they “know” that academics tell us this.
This is going to be a controversial subject, particularly because I’m not academically qualified to say much about it (but then neither are the laypeople who claim to know what academics say). Chalk it up to Jewish Chutzpah, which I inherited from my grandpa Emil, or good old Yankee Gumption, but I’m going to speak my layperson’s mind about what this.
As a non-Asian who was raised Buddhist in the west, I have an unusual perspective on the matter. I grew up steeped in eastern thought, but, at Reed, I was formally educated using (mostly) western reason. Coming from such liminality, my opinion is that logic is cross-cultural, but illogic is often culturally relative. Let me explain.
Buddhism is a very logical religion. Now that may seem like a very strange thing to say for a religion famed for things like koans that say that black is white and white is black in an attempt to still the mind, mystical practices, and which is steeped in symbolism. Buddhism is certainly all of that and some teachings are articles of faith. However, early Buddhist sutras, such as the one that argues for the Four Noble Truths, are every bit as logical as their Greco-Roman contemporaries. The sutra about the Four Noble Truths doesn’t just say that they’re true, it lays out a logical argument that they are. (I believe this is from the Pali Canon, specifically the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta.)
If you doubt that Buddhism is logical, here’s a spiritual expert from the culture of India, from which Buddhism originated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MenZfO3tAQ. Here, the guru tells his student that Buddhism is logical, even though he commends the Shiva path that is similar to it as a non-logical, but faster path to Awakening (what we in the west refer to as enlightenment). I’m not claiming that every bit of Buddhism is logical, any more than every bit of Roman Catholicism is. I’m merely saying that there is logical thought that underlies it, which I’d liken to great Catholic thinkers like Thomas Aquinas.
However, I’m often baffled at how westerners fail to see the logic of Buddhism. Owen Flanagan admits his bafflement, on this video from the Royal Institute of Philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E1Baf8pctY&t=3894s. He asked the Dali Lama three questions. It’s 1939. You meet Adolf Hitler. There’s a loaded pistol in your pocket. (1) Do you kill him? Yes. (2) Would you be angry? No. (3) Would you have compassion for him? Yes.
“Why?” asks Flanagan. His Holiness explains that Hitler generated so much bad karma that the bad karma of killing him would be greatly overwhelmed by the elimination of the bad karma Hitler would generate if you do not. His Holiness would not be angry, because he believes that anger would lead to bad karma, that anger can be eliminated from the mind, and that he, the Dali Lama, has done so. His Holiness would feel compassion, because he believes that ignorance is the root of all evil and suffering. Therefore, Hitler, in being so evil, must have been terribly ignorant. His ignorance must have caused the tyrant great suffering. So, His Holiness would feel compassion for Hitler.
Flanagan expresses bafflement at this, all the while admitting that it is western perspective, rather than a fault in His Holiness’s logic, that prevents him from understanding this. Wouldn’t the will to kill come from righteous anger? How can anyone feel compassion for someone they kill? Here, Flanagan exemplifies the Royal Institute’s motto: “question everything”, and I hope to do the same, in this post.
I commend Flanagan for his honesty about his bafflement, but I am not so baffled. His Holiness explained it clearly to him. All logic is based on assumptions. If we accept the Dali Lama’s assumptions that we should not feel anger, that we are capable of ridding our minds of anger with sufficient practice using Buddhist techniques, and that ignorance is the root of both evil to others and suffering within ourselves, all of his conclusions make perfect sense.
There is no contradiction in killing a tyrant without anger. The will comes from logic, not emotion. There is also no contradiction in feeling compassion while doing so. The emotion comes from contemplating the evil of the tyrant you’re killing, and makes perfect sense if evil arises out of ignorance and ignorance creates suffering inside of one. While Flanagan may worry that we aught not feel compassion for an evil person, His Holiness may feel that he not only aught to but he, in fact, does.
I think that Flanagan’s bafflement does not come from culture differences in logic. Both men are extremely well educated and are both being logical. Rather, his bafflement comes from blind spots in western thought that prevent him from seeing the Dali Lama’s logic.
When we read, in the Gospels, that Jesus overturned the tables of the money lenders in righteous anger (or know it through cultural osmosis), we, in the west, assume that there is such a thing as righteous anger. It is easy, then, to assume that killing a tyrant arises out of righteous anger and to be baffled by it coming from no anger at all, or if someone from another culture denies the existence of righteous anger, as the Dali Lama seems to.
Maybe anger is always bad. So, it is logical to question everything and, thus, conclude that we don’t know whether righteous anger is required for necessary violence. Flanagan comes to see this with great aplomb, and should be commended for being a good philosopher in doing so.
Why westerners have trouble understanding how someone could be both compassionate and violent toward the same person is a little more confusing to me. Jesus also teaches, in the Gospels, that we should love our enemies (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:28). It seems to me that His Holiness has been led to a similar conclusion through Buddhist practice and thought. Perhaps it’s the de-emphasis that the west has put on this teaching that is to blame. I doubt it was convenient for the Christianized Roman Empire, so perhaps much of Christianity, post-Constantine, has de-emphasized this. Nevertheless, the Dali Lama’s logic seems clear enough.
So, it is not a flaw in logic that has flummoxed Flanagan. It is western blind spots that have caused him to fail to see the statements of a spiritual leader from another culture as perfectly logical. There is no difference in the logic of Buddhism and the logic of the west. As I’ve said, early Buddhist sutras were about as logical as their Greco-Roman contemporaries, and the logic is pretty much the same.
I don’t know what real social scientist think about whether logic is culturally relative. I do know that a lot of my fellow laypeople think that they do. There are two problems with that concept, though: (1) how could anybody know if logic were culturally relative without using logic? (2) on the other hand, if you used logic to conclude that logic is culturally relative, how can your logic be universally valid, if it’s culturally relative? It seems to this layman that there’s some sort of paradox here.
Fortunately, I’m not convinced that social scientists are really saying this. I suspect that what these laypeople misunderstand is a subtlety of academia. I suspect it’s more like: all cultures have flawed logic, because all cultures mix their logic with unanalyzed cultural assumptions. The basics of logic are universal, but each culture puts its own spin on exactly what logic involves. Each civilization develops its own methodology regarding logic. So, comparing logic across cultures is tricky business.
Here’s what I think: it is not logic that is culturally relative. It is illogic. (I mean, since when has any culture been terribly logical anyway? Certainly western thought is just as full of illogic as that of any other culture.) Our cultural assumptions blind us from seeing the validity of the logic of other cultures and their cultural assumptions blind them from seeing the validity of ours. In both cases, the logic is cross-cultural and universally valid. How could it be otherwise? We can’t explain how we get at the truth in any way that others can adjudicate without logic. Logic is universal. Cultural illogic relative.