Goodness (was Re: [Advaita-l] 'End' not 'Means')

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- Ram Garib <garib_ram at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

> would like to take some of your arguments against
> utilitarian theory of ethics:
>  

I have not so much presented arguments against the utilitarian theory
as I have against the claim that the Vedic way of ethics can be
invalidated using that theory.

The original poster claimed to *disprove* the Vedic way using
pratyaksha, without realizing that even the utilitarian theory does
not come fully from pratyaksha, but is derived by **assuming** that
all good arises from pleasure and material well-being.

No doubt the Vedic way of ethics cannot be *validated*. Rather, the
Vedic way is assumed valid, unless there is the possibility of
invalidating it. Since the Vedic way cannot be disproved by
pratyaksha and anumAna, the Vedic way stands invalidated.

If it were possible to derive ethics purely from sense-experience and
inference, it would easily become a subject matter of science. But
unfortunately, ethics cannot be derived from these means of
cognition, and can only be studied outside of science (meta-science).

-Kartik

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