Importance of Development of Mental Quality

This underscores how important mental development or development of one s own quality as an ethical person is in developing a workable set of norms that can be effective in preventing excessive surveillance, or in developing situations where such use of surveillance systems is not necessary. Here, Buddhist ethics finds resonance with virtue ethics in the West; both emphasize the role of qualities of persons and the need for development of such persons in ethical deliberation. All the scholars mentioned here, however, do not appear to pay enough attention to it. Lyon s proposal, for example, resonates quite harmoniously with the Buddhist view with his emphasis on ethics of care and his critique of universal and impartial rules. However, what is missing from his account is the emphasis on the role that mental quality and its development play in an attempt to formulate a set of norms that should be workable, at least in the cultures of the Buddhist East. Development of mental quality is important precisely because it is a way toward realizing the ideal ethical situation where one exactly knows what to do in a particular, concrete situation.

The scholars inattention to development of mental quality is understandable, since their aims are to provide ethical justification of surveillance or limits to it based on reasonings and empirical findings, and on the presupposition that there is no dynamism regarding a person s mental development. Rules have to be there, these philosophers argue; otherwise , how could employers be restrained from utilizing far-reaching surveillance technologies that would render the lives of their employees unbearable? Privacy rights have to be in place and enforced; otherwise, what could protect the employees personal and private data from being exposed to the public s view?

These questions presuppose that people are suspicious of one another, and coercive rules need to be there to keep them in check. However, this shows that the people in question are still at the lower stage of development of mental quality. As I have previously said, the ethically ideal situation in Buddhism is one where the is and the ought ” the descriptive and the normative aspects of reality ” merge into one, and that the task is to find a path that leads to that situation. Even though the end result realistically cannot be fully achieved, one can certainly conceive of means by which one progresses toward it.