Buddhist moral psychology represents a distinctive contribution to
contemporary moral discourses. Most Western ethicists neglect to
problematize perception at all, and few suggest that ethical
engagement begins with perception. But this is a central idea in
Buddhist moral theory. Human perception is always perception-as. We
see someone as a friend or as an enemy; as a stranger or as an
acquaintance. We see objects as desirable or as repulsive. We see
ourselves as helpers or as competitors, and our cognitive and
action sets follow in train.
We can explain or express this in the Buddhist language
of sparsa (contact), vedanā (hedonic
tone), samjña (ascertainment), chanda (action
selection) and cetanā (intention).
Every perceptual episode, while it might begin with sensory
contact, has some hedonic tone. We experience the object with which
we have contact on a continuum from pleasurable to distasteful.
Perception involves ascertainment–the representation of the object
perceived as of a kind. This ascertainment and hedonic tone lead us
to ready action appropriate to the object and its affective
valence, and as we do so, we form an intention to act, perhaps
before we even become aware that we do so. Perception is always
part of a contact-cognition-action cycle in which there is no bare
awareness of an object disjoint from our interests or
affect.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that perception itself is
morally charged. If I see women as tools, or Latinos as fools, the
damage is done. That perception involves the formation of
intentions that are morally problematic on their face, and that
lead to harms of all kinds. Perceiving in that way makes me a
morally reduced person. If, on the other hand, I perceive people as
opportunities to cooperate, or to provide benefit, I perceive in a
way that involves the construction of morally salutary intentions,
good on their face, and productive of human goods. For this reason,
much Buddhist ethical discourse eschews the articulation of duties,
rules or virtues, and aims at the transformation of our mode of
perceptual engagement with the world. Moral cultivation, on this
view, is the cultivation of a way of seeing, not in the first a
instance a way of acting.
The importance of moral perception is well-illustrated by the
phenomenon of implicit bias. Since Greenawald et al. (1998) a raft
of evidence has demonstrated both the omnipresence and the
pernicious effects of implicit bias. Implicit bias—the subliminal
association of negative traits with members of groups that are the
victims of bias and positive traits with dominant goups—is evident
in the implicit bias association task, in experiments asking
professionals to evaluate resumés with stereotypical names, in
salary decisions regarding candidates of opposite genders, in tasks
asking participants to identify objects carried by individuals in
rapid presentation, in medical decisionmaking, etc. It is far too
widespread, and far too robust a finding to be dismissed. While it
is possible to reduce the effect of implicit bias through training,
that training must be regular, and must be regularly repeated if
the effects are to be significant or lasting, and the most
effective methods in reducing implicit bias are affective, not
cognitive. Changing people’s explicit beliefs or attitudes, and
even making them aware of their own implicit bias has no real
effect. Only training that involves changing the immediate
affective valence of the perception of others has any lasting
effect.
Implicit bias demonstrates that the roots of virtue and vice, or
of good and evil lie not in what we do, but in how we see. The fact
that in the moment we have no control over our implicit bias may
excuse us from culpability of that bias in the moment, but it does
not excuse us from responsibility to transform ourselves so as to
eliminate that bias. Involuntariness, that is, may excuse the act,
but it does not absolve us of moral blameworthiness. The same
goes, mutatis
mutandis, for morally salutary perceptual sets. We have an
obligation, once we recognize our implicit biases, to remediate
them. We cannot reflectively endorse being the kind of person who
perceives the world in this way.
Implicit bias is only the tip of the moral iceberg of our
perceptual lives. The very processes that are salient when we
investigate racial or gender bias in these disturbing studies are
ubiquitous in our psychology. It is not only racial stereotyping
that is problematic; the representation of Maseratis as desirable,
or of insect protein as undesirable may be just as morally charged,
and just as deeply implicated in perceptual processes. And the
powerful effects not merely of implicit social pressures at work in
the cases of racial stereotyping, but also the deliberate efforts
of advertisers, demagogues, preachers and moral philosophers to
distort our perception must be morally scrutinized, for just as
implicit bias demonstrably distorts our explicit reasoning and
judgments in invidious ways, the panoply of subliminal processes to
which it is kin have the same effect across the domains in which
agency is manifest.
A Buddhist moral psychology shows us just how and why our moral
lives begin with perception, and Buddhist meditative practices
provide an avenue to eradicate the vices of perception and to
encourage more virtuous ways of seeing the world.
Jay L.
Garfield is Kwan Im Thong
Hood Cho Professor of Humanities and Head of Studies in Philosophy
at Yale-NUS College, Professor of Philosophy at the National
University of Singapore, Recurrent Visiting Professor of Philosophy
at Yale University, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and
Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, Professor of Philosophy
at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the
Central University of Tibetan Studies. He is the author
of Engaging
Buddhism.