CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON BUDDHIST ETHICS

OCTOBER 5TH-7TH, 2011
LOW LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

cONFERENCE ABSTRACT

Buddhism addresses a wide variety of issues that fall within the traditional philosophical categories of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. Buddhist ethics, a burgeoning field within Buddhist studies, aims to identify the different ethical and metaethical positions advanced in Buddhist texts, and evaluate them in light of contemporary discourse. Researchers in the mainstream of philosophy and psychology have begun to appreciate the promise of Buddhist ethical discourse—from Buddhist metaphysical accounts of the nature of the person and freedom, to their psychological accounts of attention training and emotional regulation.

Moreover, with the occidental surge of popular interest in Buddhism, Western teachers and practitioners have recently started to refine their understanding of Buddhist ethics in light of current philosophical and empirical approaches to morality. This conference, entitled “Contemporary Perspectives on Buddhist Ethics,” aims to advance both of these projects throughconstructive transdisciplinary dialogue.

This event comes out of an ongoing series of groundbreaking dialogues, in the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy, which initially began with a multidisciplinary conference on human consciousness entitled “Mind & Reality.” It features two days of panel discussions that will be convened in the historic rotunda within Low Library on the campus of Columbia University. Panel topics address provocative questions concerning the naturalization of Buddhist ethics, the nature of Buddhist ethical theory, the function of Buddhist narrative literature, the application of Buddhist ethics to social issues, the moral psychology of Buddhism, and free-will. The keynote speakers are Karl H. Potter, Damien Keown, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

Conference Participants

Plenary Address: Karl H. Potter (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington)

Keynote Address: Damien Keown (Professor of Buddhist Ethics at Goldsmith College, University of London, UK)

Keynote Address: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University)

Presenters:

Naomi Appleton, University of Oxford, UK

Willoughby Britton, Brown University

Christian Coseru, College of Charleston

Georges Dreyfus, Williams College

Jonathan Gold, Princeton University

Christopher Gowans, Fordham University

Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School

Andrew Olendzki, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies

David Pizarro, Cornell University

Graham Priest, CUNY Graduate Center

Christopher Queen, Harvard University

Mark Siderits, Seoul National University, KR

Evan Thompson, University of Toronto, CA

Robert Thurman, Columbia University

Sara McClintock, Emory University

Jan Westerhoff, University of Durham, UK

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Duke University Barbra Clayton, Mount Allison University, CA Daniel Cozort, Dickinson College Owen Flanagan, Duke University Charles Goodman, SUNY Binghamton William Grassie, Metanexus Institute Damien Keown, University of London, UK Jin Y. Park, American University Karl H. Potter, University of Washington Jesse Prinz, CUNY Graduate Center Riccardo Repetti, Kingsborough College Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore College Lynne Tirrell, University of Massachusetts Karma Lekshe Tsomo, University of San Diego

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