[Advaita-l] 'End' not 'Means'

[Aditya Varun Chadha]

On 4/28/06, S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What do you mean by "negative effects on society as a whole"? This is
> the crux of the issue. Whatever you mean by that term, it does not
> refer to a purely scientifically measurable quantity.
>
> Your example makes the assumption that:
>
> 1) All effects on humans are measurable.

At least some are.

> 2) There exists such things as "negative effects" on society that can
> be scientifically determined.

There has to be a pratyakSa basis to find out whether a certain moral
system is a "good one" or not. Most of the non-Muslim world today
calls the danD system as laid down by the Quran and Hadiths "bad".
Manusmriti is controversial because of pratyakSa doubt. Most of the
world does NOT perceive buddhist morality as "bad".

> 3) "First-person negative effects on humans or society" can be
> determined by third-person observations.

repeating my question: how did scriptural exposition on the morality
of the topic come into existence?

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Aditya Varun Chadha | http://www.adichad.com | +91 9840076411 (M)
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