Though I don't have serious Buddhist leanings myself, I nonetheless have a lot of respect for some of the ideas that come out of the tradition (in so far as I've been exposed to them). Also, I dislike conflations of correlation and causality as much as the next person. That said, let me articulate two essentially political arguments, in the spirit of civilized debate:

1. The argument from privilege: The suggestion that all is relative is a strong negation of a position which many in our society are only now beginning to achieve. I.e., why is it that the moment in history when the non-western, non-white, not necessarily male "Other" has, for the first time, a legitimate moral and political claim on "selfhood" is precisely the moment when it becomes fashionable in the modern West to claim the self isn't important, perhaps even doesn't really exist?

2. The argument from life: Physical suffering is not abstract; physical pain (for the person experiencing it) is a minus, no question about it. It might lead to something good later on and thus be worth enduring, but pain is the body's incontrovertable signal that something is interfering with your survival. Isn't there something deeply dangerous and, indeed, presumptuous in the idea that everything can be "thought otherwise" -- doesn't it place life far too much in the domain of the mind and out of the provenance of the body? Surely this is not the psychological move necessary for a species so dissociated from the physical that it is in danger of destroying the earth entirely? Surely western society's fundamental inability to listen to the voice of the body is inherently tied up with its own self destructiveness and, indeed, with its destruction of the earth?

I'm not really sure about your first argument. I'm not saying that everything is relative. I'm not saying that the self doesn't exist or isn't important. What I thought I was inquiring into was, "Does anything have inherent value, + or - ?" As far as I can tell, the value that something has comes from within, from a historical context.

The second argument: Pain does not equal suffering. I could also point you to all kinds of sites where physical pain is not considered a minus. Pain is nerve impulses firing and your brain interpreting them. The good/bad evaluation of pain depends on you and your history. You can ignore the messages that your body is sending you. You can ignore the messages that your intellect is sending you. You can ignore the messages that your emotions are sending you. Or not.

You can be free to assign value as you see fit.

From quite a few perspectives, destroying the planet is a value negative act.

"Western society's fundamental inability to listen to the voice of the body"? I understand that is one interpretation of what is happening. I have no idea how to even go about determining how "true" it is.

I don't doubt that your interpretations live large in your consciousness.

Thanks for the reply. There seems to have been a spectacular miscommunication, and I'm not really sure I'm articulate enough to correct it. I am aware that I'm trying to push a misty cloud of feeling at you across these wires and it's all dispersing. This may or may not work, but I'll say something again. Keep in mind that I'm really trying to get at a deep existential issue common to most of the discussions I've had featuring the word "objective." It's something subtle, which is the problem.

First, a small point, there is the question "is there anything which inherently has value," and the question "is there anything whose inherent value is always the same (or always determined as good or bad)," which are distinct, i.e. you might argue that the self goes into the first box while still maintaining that the particular value which is assigned varies from culture to culture. Functions which are nonzero need not be constant, to put it a bit reductively.

Pain is deep and complex. Maybe that's a quagmire for now. I agree that pain is mediated in many ways by the mind, but I do feel that there are signals in the body which can be felt and reacted to and given value -- there are physiological processes which we are aware of but not really free to intellectually mediate -- the urge to vomit, the pain of stubbing a toe, the need to sneeze, etc. We're incarnate and this has an effect.

My point in saying this was simply that statements like "any of our experiences of any emotional state is not dependent on the external" imply a degree of freedom from physical reality, whatever that means, which sounds liberating but can also be problematic. Not *determined* by the external is one thing. Do you really mean not dependent?

I have no doubt that my interpretations loom large. I'm less certain that they are under my control, in however large of a sense you want to cast this. If you want to sail upon rather than drown in the sea of fate, you have to consider yourself separate from the water. In order to understand "moving the pieces inside," one has to presume that they move -- that there's a certain break between interior and exterior and a degree of freedom which can be clearly exercised.

Of course there is -- I've gone through the mirror stage, my body is not a tree whatever connection I feel to the forest. Obviously. But at the same time there's an undercurrent in the arguments you give which, in my experience, often leads to a strange sort of disconnection. Would you really argue that the average person in the west sitting at home eating junk food is anywhere near as connected to "the physical world" and to movement as someone who has a developed kinetic or physical intelligence? I have visions of everyone sitting in darkness watching 3D movies in the future. That's rearranging the stuff inside for sure. But it's not a world I find interesting or, for that matter, real.

I think there is more interesting liberty in interconnectedness than in separateness, in plunging into reality rather than loosening its chains (even if this amounts to something similar -- it's not the same). I'd say it's crucial that any philosophical theory of liberation respond to and reflect that.