ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
The Attention Economy and the Right to Attention: Some Lessons from Theravāda and Mahāyāna Thought
Mark Fortney
Dalhousie University
Much of the work in the rapidly growing field of computer ethics relies on the concepts and theories of Western philosophy. With this article my aim is to help stimulate conversations that draw on a wider range of ethical perspectives. I build on recent work on the sense in which the regular operations of the attention economy might violate our right to attention, and I do so through looking to a range of Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhist texts. As I argue, these texts should inspire us to realize that we have more than just the right to direct our attention as we will and the right to be free from distraction. This is because there is a third right to attention that the recent literature overlooks, namely the right to strengthen our ordinarily weak capacity to control our attention. Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
Engaged Buddhism in Finland—Too Cautious to Take Action
Mitra Härkönen and Johannes Cairns
University of Helsinki
Socially engaged Buddhism emerged in the 1960s with the participation of Buddhists in Asia and the West alike in the anti-war movement and war relief efforts. The movement rapidly expanded to encompass numerous social and environmental concerns and projects. Although many theoretical studies discuss doctrinal aspects concerning the relationship of Buddhism to social action, very few empirical studies have been conducted investigating how Buddhists relate to social action and which doctrinal aspects they emphasize in actual practice. Here, we address this knowledge gap by examining the stances of Finnish Buddhists on social engagement. The study respondents represent a wide set of Buddhist traditions and groups in Finland. We identify several attitudes—positive, positively indifferent, reserved, and critical—among the respondents. Intriguingly, even those with a positive or positively indifferent attitude frequently display high caution in taking social action, preferring to keep it as an individual affair outside of the activities of the Buddhist group. The cautionary stance is related to Buddhist teachings such as impartiality, a meditation practice-focused approach to Buddhism, and financial and personnel resource constraints of Finnish Buddhist groups. We also suggest the stance could be partly explained by social and geopolitical factors. We argue that because Buddhist teachings relate to social engagement in an ambiguous fashion, individual and social factors can outweigh their influence among Buddhists.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 32, 2025
Theravāda Buddhism, Finite Fine-grainedness, and the Repugnant Conclusion
Calvin Baker
Princeton University
According to Finite Fine-grainedness (roughly), there is a finite sequence of intuitively small differences between any two welfare levels. The assumption of Finite Fine-grainedness is essential to Gustaf Arrhenius’s favored sixth impossibility theorem in population axiology and plays an important role in the spectrum argument for the (Negative) Repugnant Conclusion. I argue that Theravāda Buddhists will deny Finite Fine-grainedness and consider the space that doing so opens up—and fails to open up—in population axiology. I conclude with a lesson for population axiology that generalizes beyond the Buddhist context: to plausibly deny Finite Fine-grainedness, we must locate a welfare good—such as the good of awakening (bodhi)—with some rather esoteric axiological properties. Read article
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