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What is Philosophy and what is Religion? 

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What is Philosophy and what is Religion? 

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In many ways Philosophy and Religion form two distinct aspects of the course, however they are also deeply connected and interrelated concepts: We will study the 'philosophy' of religion (i.e. does God exist?) but we also study religions which contain philosophical teachings (e.g. the Buddhist understanding of 'emptiness').

This makes things complicated and there is not always a straightforward distinction between what we think of as 'philosophy' and what we think of as 'religion' ...

Watch the clip and draw up your own 'venn diagram' showing the differences and overlaps between Philosophy and Religion. Can you come up with your own definitions for each? Add your thoughts and comments using the comment button!

This is a topic we will return to at the beginning of the first term so have a think and come prepared with some ideas and arguments! ;)

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The issues of human rights is a core part of ethics that we will encounter throughout the course. Many philosophers see human rights as important absolutes that we must protect, others argue that the concept of human rights may interfere with making proper ethical judgements and decisions.

Read the different views on what constitutes 'human rights' and have a go at writing your own paragraph explaining your own perspective ...

Feel free to post your paragraph on the padlet page! :)

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Your complimentary articles

Question of the Month

Our readers give their thoughts, each winning the right to a random book.

I believe that human rights can be defined as those inalienable rights one should have on the basis of being a human, regardless of faith, ethnicity or political views. They include the right to life, freedom of the self and of speech, and the right to preserve personal space from external interference. Of course, human rights are not absolute; they are defined and redefined continuously. Yet those I've mentioned are universally agreed upon, at least among the member states of the United Nations.

Human rights stem essentially from what the Greek philosopher Thales (c.624 BC - c.546 BC) said about treating others as one expects to be treated. This principle is now known as the Golden Rule. Every human being must enjoy a certain set of rights for life to be tolerable. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) saw the state as based on a kind of concession people made, which he called the Social Contract, in which they ceded some of their rights to a government in exchange for it giving them safety and preserving their other rights. So, in a sense, Rousseau saw the Social Contract as an acknowledgement of human rights. I agree with him on that. Another source of credibility of the concept of human rights is the numerous international accords and declarations issued by governments, and international bodies such as the UN, from the Bill of Rights and Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in the eighteenth century, to the Declarations of the UN in the latter half of the twentieth century.

A. M. Fathallah, Alexandria, Egypt

Human rights are those rights we have simply by being human. Essential to the idea of human rights is that they command utmost respect and consideration for each person. Hopefully, universal recognition that all human beings have the same basic rights will reduce our oppression and killing of our own kind.

It is not clear if anyone grants us human rights. Who could grant them? Not every one who believes in human rights believes in a supreme being; and those who believe in one do not all believe in the same one. So it seems easier and more pragmatic to just agree that we have human rights, and then seek to agree on what they are. For example, the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9, 'No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile', seems derivable from the right to liberty.

Although praiseworthy, the UN Declaration goes beyond basic human rights. For sake of rigor, we need a consensus on the set of human rights regarded as basic. Basic human rights should be limited to those we would need within a mode of existence without the advantage of civilization. Our ancestors lived in a primitive condition for most of our species' existence: back then they could not have had a right to scientific health care or to a college education. Still, as humans, they had human rights.

I suggest the question determining a basic human right to be: What is required of an adult in society such that both the individual and the society are in a state of well-being? A fundamental good for humanity and society is survival. This requires adults. A society of children is unsustainable. And the adults must be self-directing and give more than they receive, the surplus of their energies going to the children and the adults in need. In a word, the adults must be autonomous. So they must have the rights required for autonomy. For starters, these rights would be the Lockean rights of life, liberty, and property, and the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness.

John Talley, Rutherfordton, North Carolina

We are social beings. When I decide to respond to other human beings, and they in turn respond to my behaviour, we facilitate the mutual development of our self-consciousnesses, enabling us to develop more nuanced consciousnesses of our selves. So a first right would be the right to choose what to do or how to respond. But, being conscious of others who are similar to me in essential aspects, I realise that I have to restrict the right to choose, because all people have a similar right to choose. Otherwise someone could choose to prevent me from choosing what I want to do, even to the extent of killing me; and, being similar to me, they must realise that I and others could prevent them from choosing what they want to do, even to the extent of killing them. Therefore, the right to choose is conditional on respecting the right of each to choose to the same extent as everyone else. Thus a second right would be the right of each person to be given such respect from others. This has the potential for stalemate, unless in small ways and usually for short periods of time I have some leeway to do things which curtail the freedom of others to choose. I must also accept a similar cost to myself. However, seeking such leeway requires that I and others negotiate how much leeway is permissible. This leads to a system of laws, which we agree, after reasonable discourse, to honour. A third right, consequently, is the right to equal treatment for all under the law. All subsequent rights will be derived from these three.

Alasdair Macdonald, Glasgow

The question of human rights is an aspect of the question of justice. If human rights matter, it's because justice matters.

In his superb book The Idea of Justice (1967), Otto Bird argues that theories of justice (and so of rights) fall into three categories: theories of 'positive law'; of the 'social good'; and of 'natural right'. 'Positive law' theories hold that justice exists only within the context of laws in a state; 'social good' theories hold that justice is whatever conduces to the overall good of a society; and 'natural right' theories hold that justice consists in ensuring that each person gets what's owed him. What is owed him arises, in the first place, from his nature as a human being. Natural right theory holds that in the name of justice we are all entitled to identical consideration in view of our shared human nature. We all have a fundamental duty not to infringe each other's human rights, and each of us has a just claim for redress if our rights have been violated. This claim is prior to any law or notion of public welfare. So 'natural right' theories see human rights as fundamental, and prior to either enacted laws or the supposed good of society. Natural right theories offer, in my view, the best account of justice, and therefore the strongest support for human rights.

What these rights specifically are is less clear. I disagree with those who favor a large number of them, hoping to achieve social justice goals under the guise of human rights. I don't believe there can be, for example, a human right to housing or to clothing, because this would amount to a right to other people's labor. I don't think there can even be a human right to food - only a right to being left free to seek it. For human rights are, at bottom, rights to certain freedoms: freedom from being harmed; freedom from being unjustly restricted in one's movements; freedom from deliberate injuries to one's dignity. They can't be rights to others' goods.

Paul Vitols, North Vancouver

Even where human rights conventions are incorporated into national law they're easily ignored by dictators or by short-sighted electorates exercising their rights to vote for parties which consider rights to have gone too far. So unfortunately, the fight for international standards of behaviour is far from over. As a consequence, we have to be very careful how we frame the justification for human rights law. We should not play into the hands of those opposing human rights by our pretending that these rights have some (easily ridiculed) justification arising from nature, human or otherwise. We should instead be very clear that the need for such rights is a pragmatic response to the wish to avoid seeing a revival of the horrors of our past.

Sir Hersch Lauterpacht QC, British lawyer and a leading figure in the drive to create a post-war charter of human rights, based human rights on 'natural law'. He wrote: "In a wider sense, the binding force... of international law... is based on the law of nature as expressive of the social nature of man." However, the appalling conduct in Nazi Germany, which had driven so many to want to codify a set of human rights, is arguably just as expressive of 'the social nature of man' - one feeding off resentment. So we cannot rely on 'natural law' as justification for human rights.

The Nazi party had altered the law to enable their horrors to be carried out lawfully. And so, after WWII there was a desire to say that complying with the law of a state could not be used to justify barbaric acts. State law itself had to be judged against an internationally recognised standard, which defined the limits on state actions to try to prevent any repeat of those dreadful things. Their genesis means, however, that human rights are not really any different in kind to the other laws we choose to accept, although we may like to think otherwise. They do not have a sacred source, but are the expression of a wish for self-protection.

Paul Buckingham, Annecy, France

Many people assert that rights are fictions. What follows from this view? That the UN Declaration of Rights is imperialism; that Martin Luther King, Jr. was mistaken for believing rights are grounded in something higher than positive law; and that Jews in Nazi Germany did not actually have a right to life. If rights don't exist, how can they be violated? If rights don't exist, it seems only personal preferences and power struggles remain.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights states that 'a faith and respect for rights is necessary to prevent barbarism.' If so, perhaps the most important thing a philosopher can do is strengthen an understanding of rights.

First, rights are ultimately moral, not legal. If rights were only legal then governments could take yours away, because they gave them to you in the first place. Rights must be grounded in something deeper than legislation. They are what we use to judge legislation. Nor can rights be grounded in self-interest, for self-interest sometimes supports violating the rights of the weak. So we do not derive rights from self-interest either, but instead use our concept of rights to judge self-interested acts as permissible or wrong.

Natural law is more inspirational. Rights are somehow grounded in nature, or the God of nature, and so there is a higher law by which we can judge any positive law. Unfortunately, this idea presents metaphysical problems. We can see acorns in Nature, so why not rights? Are rights metaphysical things attached to humans? Must God ground rights?

A clearer way to understand rights is as the axioms that arise from a loving way of being. Just as objectively better and worse moves arise in chess when people agree to rules, so the deepest understanding of rights arises when loving people describe their fundamental ways of being. Simply put, rights flow from a community who wish the good of others. So rights are not so much a fiction as they are a loving way of being and seeing. When push comes to shove, your appeal to 'rights' will best work for people running on the moral software that enables them to love or intrinsically value other persons. That community of people is the deepest source of rights.

Paul Stearns, Blinn College, Texas

Although such analyses have their place, I do not want to explain human rights in terms of mutual obligations, legal or social contracts, or what distinguishes humans from nonhumans. This would be like defining colour conceptually - in terms of wavelength or reflectance - without pointing to the blue of the sky. The latter definition is more primal, and pertains to the essence of colour.

Unlike colour, we do not find the presence of human rights in the world. Yet it is my contention that human rights are presented to us precisely when they are absent. If that sounds like doublespeak, here's my meaning: when I stop my debating and theorising about the existence, foundation, or justification of human rights, go out into society in India, and chance upon a man scavenging for his survival, or encounter a child lying beaten up and struggling for life, there's an almost perceptible cry of alarm in the air - something feels deeply wrong in this state of affairs: not just wrong, but degrading, dehumanising.

There may appear to be a conflict between rationally philosophising about human rights and my attempts to stir your empathy by picturing these scenes. However, I believe that our 'moral sentiments', as David Hume might describe them, are a reality. Irrational, perhaps, but unmistakably real. And Richard Rorty would say that philosophy's job is 'to summarise our culturally influenced intuitions', that is, our sentiments.

I also propose that it is wrong to speak of 'depriving a person of their rights'. This conceives of rights as distinct from people, rather than as intrinsic to their being, as they are. You cannot deprive someone of their rights, then; but you can fail to recognise their humanity, and so fail to implement their rights. According to Rorty, the perpetrators of human rights violations, nay, human violations, are simply insecure and lacking in sympathy. How can sympathy be cultivated in a person? By telling them stories and stirring their sentiments, as Uncle Tom's Cabin did for American whites.

So why are human rights? Because people have the ability to imagine, empathise, and share stories, and, in doing so, we encounter all the ways we are alike. Our feelings are at the heart of our aspiration for human rights.

Swithin Thomas, Bengaluru, India

The most basic human right is the right not to be murdered. This is a so-called negative right - a protection against harm. Rights may also be positive. They include the right to vote, given to certain people.

Rights are tied to laws, both moral and civil. In the United States, American citizens who are at least eighteen years old have the right to vote, which is granted by law. Before 1920, women in American did not have the legal right to vote. However, before women got the legal right to vote they already possessed the moral right to vote. Thus, the law needed to be squared with the extant objective moral reality that women should join the franchise.

But why are human rights real?

When teaching an ethics class at a state college, I asked my class if female genital mutilation was wrong. They all agreed that it was. I then asked, "What if the majority of the population where it occurred supported it, it was legal, and even the women who experienced it supported it? Would it then be right?" They all still said, "No." I continued, "What then makes it wrong?" Silence filled the room. I let them stew a bit; as I will you. If a culture agrees with a practice and it is encoded in the laws of a nation, what is it that makes that practice morally wrong?

True statements need truth-makers. The statement 'trees exist' is true if and only if there are trees. Female genital mutilation is practically wrong because it benefits no one - it's certainly not medically necessary - and is not conducive to human thriving. It also denies woman a fundamental negative right not to be mutilated.

But what makes the statement, 'Female genital mutilation is morally wrong' true? In a word, God. God's character is the only basis for universal, objective, and absolute human rights. That is, without an objective personal moral absolute, human rights dissolve into relative and contingent arrangements which cannot support objective human value.

Douglas Groothuis, Denver Seminary, Colorado

'Rights' has become the most overused and misunderstood word in political discourse. Consider this familiar statement (capitalizations in the original): "WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..." As much as I revere Thomas Jefferson, his statement confronts me with a couple of troubling obstacles not easily ignored.

First, my rejection of the concept of a Creator yanks the foundation from under the statement and leaves it insecurely resting on an opinion - a venerable opinion to be sure, but still an opinion. If Nature replaces Creator, then when and by what means were our rights secured? Does the terminal cancer victim have a right to life and happiness? Who or what will guarantee it? Do animals have natural - that is, Nature-endowed - rights? Does the lion respect the impala's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Does the neighbor's cat respect the rights of the birds that come and go in my back yard?

And are we not animals? Humans evolved from a remote ancestor we share with other great apes, unarguably animals. When during the six million years or however long since that creature lived did our ancestors acquire human rights? From whom? By what means? The short answer is: they didn't. We have no inalienable rights endowed by any entity or thing other than ourselves; and that's a very unreliable endower.

"Ah!" declares the collectivist: "We give rights to ourselves through the democratic process."

Oh really? We can't seem to agree on what these rights might be, and they proliferate like mosquitos. Voters have proven capable of rationalizing their rights to the treasury, to compensate themselves for the burdens and expenses of life. The democratic process elected Hitler and Hugo Chavez, which brought catastrophe to Germany and Venezuela respectively. In the US, the democratic process elects Republicans that the lefties hate (Trump a notable exception), and elects Democrats the righties hate. Lenin and Castro were not elected at all, but rose to power on huge waves of savior worship in two variants of the democratic process. The great majority seems to love democracy until they don't like the results it brings.

Michael H. Davison, Denver, Colorado, Author of America's Suicide

From the ashes of war
Rose a bird with gold wings,
A declaration of words
The phoenix sings:
Articles, promises,
Concepts of honour and hope;
Mere gestures on paper
For men to emote
Because politics eternally overrides
The good, the just, the reasoned right.
And it's true that power curtails
That beautiful bird in exalted flight.
For there is nothing on earth -
No law, no moral, no measure -
To control man's will
Beyond power and pleasure.
There is only this: the arbitrary,
And the acts that determine history.
No rights, no reasons, no words in stone
Like 'dignity', 'liberty', 'equality' -
Just a bird of gold, a phoenix, that sings alone
Testament to the tyranny of being free.

Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon

Next Question of the Month

The next question is: How Do We Understand Each Other? Please give and justify your answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be marked 'Question of the Month', and must be received by 8th June 2020. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Submission is permission to reproduce your answer.

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Your complimentary articles Question of the Month I believe that human rights can be defined as those inalienable rights one should have on the basis of being a human, regardless of faith, ethnicity or political views. They include the right to life, freedom of the self and of speech, and the right to preserve personal space from external interference.

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Buddhism is the main religion we focus on for the 'religion' aspect of the course. It is a religion which some of you may be familiar with, but many of you will have never studied it in depth before.

Have a read through the summary here and draw up a list of features of Buddhism that you think are shared with other religions and a list of features which you think are unique to Buddhism. There are some video clips attached as well which may be useful! Again feel free to share your thoughts! :)

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Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices thought by by most to be a religion and is formed upon the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, known as "The Buddha" (the Awakened One), who was born in the country that is today Nepal He taught in the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent and died around 400 BC.

Buddhists recognize him as an enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end their suffering by understanding the nature of phenomena, thereby escaping suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving Nirvana. The number of Buddhists in the world is between 230 million and 500 million, resulting in Buddhism being the 4th most popular world religion.

Concepts of Buddhists

Life and the World

Karma, the energy which drives Saṃsāra, is the cycle of suffering and rebirth for each being. Good, skillful and bad, unskillful actions bear "seeds" in the mind which come to fruition in this life or in a rebirth to follow. The avoidance of unwholesome actions and the doing of positive actions is called Śīla

In Buddhism, Karma refers to those actions that spring from mental intent and bring about a consequence or result. Each time a person acts there is some quality of intention at the base of the mind and it is that quality that determines its effect.

Rebirth

Rebirth refers to a process in which beings go through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, each running from conception to death. Each rebirth happens within one of five realms, according to Theravadins, or six according to other schools. These are subdivided into 31 planes of existence.

Learn how Buddhist beliefs compare to christian beliefs of rebirth, by taking a bible quiz.

1. Naraka beings: those that live in one of many Narakas (Hells)

2. Animals: sharing space with humans, but considered another type of life.

3. Preta: Sometimes sharing space with humans, but invisible to most people; an important variety is the hungry ghost

4. Human beings: one of the realms of rebirth that attaining Nirvana is possible

5. Asuras: variously translated as lowly deities, demons, antigods; not recognized by Theravada (Mahavihara) tradition as a separate realm.

6. Devas including Brahmas: translated as gods, deities, spirits, angels, or left untranslated.

Rebirths in the higher heavens, known as the Śuddhāvāsa Worlds (Pure Abodes), can only be attained by anāgāmis (non-returners). Rebirths in the arupa-dhatu (formless realms) can be attained only by people who can meditate on the arupa-jhānas.

According to East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism, there is an intermediate state in between one life and the next, but Theravada rejects this.

The Cycle of Samsara

Sentient beings crave pleasure and are averse to pain from birth to death. In being controlled by these attitudes, they perpetuate the cycle of conditioned existence and suffering (Samsara), and produce the causes and conditions of the next rebirth after death. Each rebirth repeats this process in an involuntary cycle, which Buddhists strive to end by eradicating these causes and conditions, applying the methods laid out by the Buddha.

Suffering

According to the Pali Tipitaka, the Four Noble Truths were the first teaching of Gautama Buddha after attaining Nirvana. They are sometimes considered as containing the essence of the Buddha's teachings and are presented in the manner of a medical diagnosis and remedial prescription - a style common at that time:

1. Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering/uneasiness (dukkha) in one way or another.

2. Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.

3. Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment (bodhi);

4. Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path laid out by the Buddha.

Middle Way

An important guiding principle of Buddhist practice is the Middle Way, which is said to have been discovered by Gautama Buddha prior to his enlightenment. The Middle Way or Middle Path has several definitions:

1. The practice of non-extremism: a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification

2. The middle ground between certain metaphysical views (e.g., that things ultimately either do or do not exist)

3. An explanation of Nirvana (perfect enlightenment), a state wherein it becomes clear that all dualities apparent in the world are delusory (see Seongcheol)

4. Another term for emptiness, the ultimate nature of all phenomena, lack of inherent existence, which avoids the extremes of permanence and nihilism or inherent existence and nothingness

Emptiness

Mahāyāna Buddhism received significant theoretical grounding from Nāgārjuna (perhaps c.150-250 CE), arguably the most influential scholar within the Mahāyāna tradition. Some of the writings attributed to him made explicit references to Mahāyāna texts, but his philosophy was argued within the parameters set out by the agamas. Nāgārjuna asserted that the nature of the dharmas (hence the enlightenment) to be śūnya (void or empty), bringing together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anātman (no-self) and pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination). His school of thought is known as the Madhyamaka. He may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of the Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the Canon. In the eyes of Nagarjuna the Buddha was not merely a forerunner, but the very founder of the Madhyamaka system.

Sarvāstivāda teaching, which was criticized by Nāgārjuna, was reformulated by scholars such as Vasubandhu and Asanga and were adapted into the Yogācāra (Sanskrit: yoga practice) school. While the Madhyamaka school held that asserting the existence or non-existence of any ultimately real thing was inappropriate, some exponents of Yogācāra asserted that the mind and only the mind is ultimately real. Not all Yogācārins asserted that mind was truly existent, Vasubandhu and Asanga in particular did not. These two schools of thought, in opposition or synthesis, form the basis of subsequent Mahāyāna metaphysics in the Indo-Tibetan tradition.

In the Mahayana school, emphasis is also often placed on the notions of Emptiness (shunyata), perfected spiritual insight (prajnaparamita) and Buddha-nature (the deathless tathagatagarbha, or Buddha womb, inherent in all beings and creatures). In the tathagatagarbha sutras the Buddha is portrayed proclaiming that the teaching of the tathagatagarbha constitutes the "absolutely final culmination" of his Dharma-the highest presentation of Truth (other sūtras make similar statements about other teachings). This has traditionally been regarded as the highest teaching in East Asian Buddhism. However, in modern China all doctrines are regarded as equally valid. The Mahayana can also on occasion communicate a vision of the Buddha or Dharma which amounts to mysticism and gives expression to a form of mentalist panentheism.

Nirvana

Nirvana means "cessation", "extinction" (of craving and ignorance and therefore suffering and the cycle of involuntary rebirths Samsara), "extinguished", "quieted", "calmed"; it's also known as "Awakening" or "Enlightenment" in the West. Buddhists believe that anybody who has achieved nirvana is in fact a Buddha.

Bodhi is a term applied to the experience of Awakening of arahants. Bodhi literally means "awakening", but is more commonly referred to as "enlightenment". In Early Buddhism, bodhi carried a meaning synonymous to nirvana, using only some different metaphors to describe the experience, which implies the extinction of raga (greed, craving), dosa (hate, aversion) and moha (delusion). In the later school of Mahayana Buddhism, the status of nirvana was downgraded in some scriptures, coming to only refer to the extinction of greed and hate, implying that delusion was still present in one who attained nirvana, and that one needed to attain bodhi to eradicate delusion:

"An important development in the Mahayana [was] that it came to separate nirvana from bodhi ('awakening' to the truth, Enlightenment), and to put a lower value on the former (Gombrich, 1992d). Originally nirvana and bodhi refer to the same thing; they merely use different metaphors for the experience. But the Mahayana tradition separated them and considered that nirvana referred only to the extinction of craving (passion and hatred), with the resultant escape from the cycle of rebirth. This interpretation ignores the third fire, delusion: the extinction of delusion is of course in the early texts identical with what can be positively expressed as gnosis, Enlightenment." -Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began

Therefore, according to Mahayana Buddhism, the arahant has attained only nirvana, thus still being subject to delusion, while the bodhisattva not only achieves nirvana but full liberation from delusion as well. He thus attains bodhi and becomes a buddha. In Theravada Buddhism, bodhi and nirvana carry the same meaning, that of being freed from greed, hate and delusion.

Devotion

Devotion is an important part of the practice of most Buddhists. Devotional practices include bowing, offerings, pilgrimage, chanting. In Pure Land Buddhism, devotion to the Buddha Amitabha is the main practice. In Nichiren Buddhism, devotion to the Lotus Sutra is the main practice.

Refuge in the Three Jewels

Footprint of the Buddha with Dharmachakra and triratna, 1st century CE, Gandhāra. Traditionally, the first step in most Buddhist schools requires taking refuge in the Three Jewels as the foundation of one's religious practice. The practice of taking refuge on behalf of young or even unborn children is mentioned in the Majjhima Nikaya, recognized by most scholars as an early text (cf. Infant baptism). Tibetan Buddhism sometimes adds a fourth refuge, in the lama. In Mahayana, the person who chooses the bodhisattva path makes a vow or pledge, considered the ultimate expression of compassion. The Three Jewels are:

The Buddha. This is a title for those who have attained Nirvana. See also the Tathāgata and Gautama Buddha. The Buddha could also be represented as a concept instead of a specific person: the perfect wisdom that understands Dharma and sees reality in its true form.

The Dharma. The teachings or law of nature as expounded by the Gautama Buddha. It can also, especially in Mahayana, connote the ultimate and sustaining Reality which is inseparable from the Buddha.

The Sangha. Those who have attained to any of the Four stages of enlightenment, or simply the congregation of monastic practitioners.

According to the scriptures, Gautama Buddha presented himself as a model. The Dharma offers a refuge by providing guidelines for the alleviation of suffering and the attainment of Nirvana. The Sangha is considered to provide a refuge by preserving the authentic teachings of the Buddha and providing further examples that the truth of the Buddha's teachings is attainable.

Buddhist Ethics

Buddhists generally undertake to live by the five precepts, which are common to all Buddhist schools. If they wish, they can choose to undertake the eight precepts, which add basic asceticism.

The five precepts are training rules in order to live a better life in which one is happy, without worries, and can meditate well:

1. To refrain from taking life (non-violence towards sentient life forms)

2. To refrain from taking that which is not given (not committing theft)

3. To refrain from sensual (including sexual) misconduct

4. To refrain from lying (speaking truth always)

5. To refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness (specifically, drugs and alcohol)

The precepts are not formulated as imperatives, but as training rules that laypeople undertake voluntarily to facilitate practice. In Buddhist thought, the cultivation of dana and ethical conduct will themselves refine consciousness to such a level that rebirth in one of the lower heavens is likely, even if there is no further Buddhist practice. There is nothing improper or un-Buddhist about limiting one's aims to this level of attainment.

In the eight precepts, the third precept on sexual misconduct is made more strict, and becomes a precept of celibacy. The three additional precepts are:

1. To refrain from eating at the wrong time (only eat from sunrise to noon)

2. To refrain from dancing and playing music, wearing jewelry and cosmetics, attending shows and other performances

3. To refrain from using high or luxurious seats and bedding

Meditation

Buddhist meditation is fundamentally concerned with two themes: transforming the mind and using it to explore itself and other phenomena. According to Theravada Buddhism the Buddha taught two types of meditation, samatha meditation (Sanskrit: śamatha) and vipassanā meditation (Sanskrit: vipaśyanā). In Chinese Buddhism, these exist (translated chih kuan), but Chan (Zen) meditation is more popular. According to Peter Harvey, whenever Buddhism has been healthy, not only monks, nuns, and married lamas, but also more committed lay people have practiced meditation. According to Routledge's Encyclopedia of Buddhism, in contrast, throughout most of Buddhist history before modern times, serious meditation by lay people has been unusual. The evidence of the early texts suggests that at the time of the Buddha, many male and female lay practitioners did practice meditation, some even to the point of proficiency in all eight jhānas.

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Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices thought by by most to be a religion and is formed upon the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, known as "The Buddha" (the Awakened One), who was born in the country that is today Nepal He taught in the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent and died around 400 BC.

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This gives you an introduction into one of the first philosophy topics we cover in year one - Soul, mind and body. Have a read through and answer the questions. Feel free to share your thoughts through the comment button! :)

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As you may have guessed, Philosophy, Religion and Ethics has three main components (Philosophy, Religion and Ethics!). These are in many ways three distinct subject areas but there are plenty of links between them too.

To the right you will find three additional tasks reflecting these three distinct areas. Many of these directly relate to some of the topics we will be covering in the first term of A Level, including the origins of Buddhism and the nature of the soul.

Again feel free to add your thoughts and comments and post your own findings!

If you have any questions about the course generally or anything you would like to ask me directly please feel free to email me at sam.brown@sparsholt.ac.uk :)

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Its a long article but is very interesting about international palm oil consumption!

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nce upon a time in a land far, far away, there grew a magical fruit. This fruit could be squeezed to produce a very special kind of oil that made cookies more healthy, soap more bubbly and crisps more crispy. The oil could even make lipstick smoother and keep ice-cream from melting. Because of these wondrous qualities, people came from around the world to buy the fruit and its oil.

In the places where the fruit came from, people burned down the forest so they could plant more trees that grew the fruit - making lots of nasty smoke and sending all of the creatures of the forest scurrying away. When the trees were burned, they emitted a gas that heated up the air. Then everybody was upset, because they loved the forest's creatures and thought the temperature was warm enough already. A few people decided they shouldn't use the oil any more, but mostly things went on as before, and the forest kept burning.

This is a true story. Except that it is not magic. The fruit of the oil palm tree ( Elaeis guineensis), which grows in tropical climates, contains the world's most versatile vegetable oil. It can handle frying without spoiling, and blends well with other oils. Its combination of different types of fats and its consistency after refining make it a popular ingredient in packaged baked goods. Its low production costs make it cheaper than frying oils such as cottonseed or sunflower. It provides the foaming agent in virtually every shampoo, liquid soap or detergent. Cosmetics manufacturers prefer it to animal tallow for its ease of application and low price. It is increasingly used as a cheap raw material for biofuels, especially in the European Union. It functions as a natural preservative in processed foods, and actually does raise the melting point of ice-cream. Palm oil can be used as an adhesive that binds together the particles in fibreboard. Oil palm trunks and fronds can be made into everything from plywood to the composite body of Malaysia's national automobile.

Worldwide production of palm oil has been climbing steadily for five decades. Between 1995 and 2015, annual production quadrupled, from 15.2m tonnes to 62.6m tonnes. By 2050, it is expected to quadruple again, reaching 240m tonnes. The footprint of palm oil production is astounding: plantations to produce it account for 10% of permanent global cropland. Today, 3 billion people in 150 countries use products containing palm oil. Globally, we each consume an average of 8kg of palm oil a year.

Of this, 85% comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, where worldwide demand for palm oil has lifted incomes, especially in rural areas - but at the cost of tremendous environmental devastation and often with attendant labour and human rights abuses. Fires set to clear forests and create land for more palm plantations are the top source of greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia, a country of 261 million people. The financial incentive to produce more palm oil is helping to warm the planet, while destroying the only habitat of Sumatran tigers, Sumatran rhinos and orangutans - driving them towards extinction.

Yet consumers are often unaware they are even using the stuff. Palm Oil Investigations, which dubs itself "the palm oil watchdog", lists more than 200 common ingredients in food and home and personal care products containing palm oil, only about 10% of which include the telltale word "palm".

How did palm oil insinuate itself into every corner of our lives? No single innovation caused palm oil consumption to soar. Instead, it was the perfect commodity at the right moment for industry after industry, each of which adopted it to replace ingredients and never turned back. At the same time, producing nations view palm oil as a poverty-reduction scheme, while international finance organisations view it as a growth engine for developing economies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has pushed Malaysia and Indonesia to produce more.

As the palm industry expanded, conservationists and environmental organisations such as Greenpeace started to raise the alarm about its devastating effects on carbon emissions and wildlife habitat. (However, it is not impossible to produce palm oil sustainably, and several organisations certify sustainable producers.) In response, a backlash against palm oil has developed: last April, the supermarket Iceland pledged that it would cut palm oil from all its own-brand foods by the end of 2018. In December, Norway banned imports for biofuel production.

But by the time awareness of palm oil's impact had spread, it was so deeply embedded in the consumer economy that it now may be too late to remove it. (Tellingly, Iceland found it impossible to fulfill its 2018 pledge. Instead, the company ended up removing its branding from foods containing palm oil rather than removing palm oil from all of its branded foods.)

Determining which products contain palm oil, let alone how sustainably it has been sourced, requires an almost supernatural level of consumer consciousness. In any case, greater consumer awareness in the west will not have much impact, given that Europe and the US account for less than 14% of global demand. More than half of global demand comes from Asia.

It was a good 20 years after the first alarms about deforestation in Brazil that consumer action slowed - not stopped - the destruction. With palm oil, "the reality is that the western part of world is [a small share] of palm oil consumption, and the rest of the world doesn't give a shit", said Neil Blomquist, managing director of Colorado-based Natural Habitats, which produces palm oil in Ecuador and Sierra Leone to the highest level of sustainability certification. "So there's not much incentive to change."

alm oil's world domination is the result of five factors: first, it has replaced less healthy fats in foods in the west. Second, producers have pushed to keep its price low. Third, it has replaced more expensive oils in home and personal care products. Fourth, again because it is cheap, it has been widely adopted as cooking oil in Asian countries. Finally, as those Asian countries have grown richer, they have begun to consume more fat, much of it in the form of palm oil.

Widespread adoption of palm oil began with processed foods. In the 1960s, scientists began to warn that butter's high saturated fat content may increase the risk of heart disease. Food manufacturers, including the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, began to replace it with margarine, made with vegetable oils low in saturated fat. By the early 1990s, though, it became clear that the process by which the oils in margarine were made, known as partial hydrogenation, actually created a different kind of fat - trans fat - that was even unhealthier than saturated fat. The Unilever board of directors saw a scientific consensus forming against trans fat and decided to get rid of it. "Unilever was always very conscious of the health interests of consumers of its products," said James W Kinnear, a Unilever board member at the time.

The switchover happened suddenly. In 1994, a Unilever refineries manager named Gerrit van Duijn received a call from his bosses in Rotterdam. Twenty Unilever plants in 15 countries needed to remove partially hydrogenated oils from 600 fat blends and replace them with trans-fat free components.

A fire at an oil palm plantation in Pekanbaru, Sumatra, due to intensive farming methods and the dry season. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The project, for reasons Van Duijn can't explain, was called "Paddington". First, he needed to figure out what could replace trans fat while maintaining its favourable properties, such as remaining solid at room temperature - a necessity for inexpensive butter substitutes as well as manufactured goods such as cookies. In the end, there was only one choice: oil from the oil palm tree - either palm oil (extracted from the fruit) or palm kernel oil (from the seed). No other oil could be refined to the consistency needed for Unilever's various margarine blends and baked goods without producing trans fat. It was the only alternative to partially hydrogenated oils, Van Duijn told me. Palm oil and palm kernel oil were also lower in saturated fat than butter.

The switch at each plant had to occur simultaneously - the production lines couldn't handle a mixture of the old oils and the new. "On a certain day, all these tanks had to be emptied of trans-containing components and refilled with trans-free components," Van Duijn said. "Logistically, that was quite a nightmare." (Purchasing additional tanks would have been too expensive.)

As Unilever had sometimes used palm oil previously, a supply chain was already up and running. But it took six weeks for the raw material to be shipped from Malaysia to Europe, and Van Duijn had three months to make the switch. He started to buy more and more palm and palm kernel oils, arranging for the shipments to be trucked in to the various plants on schedule. Then one day in 1995, with trucks queued up outside Unilever plants across Europe, it was done.

It was a moment that changed the processed food industry forever. Unilever was the trailblazer; after Van Duijn organised the company's switch to palm oil, virtually every other food manufacturer followed. In 2001, the American Heart Association issued a statement declaring that "the optimal diet for reducing risk of chronic diseases is one in which saturated fatty acids are reduced and trans fatty acids from manufactured fats are virtually eliminated". Today, more than two-thirds of palm oil goes into food. Consumption in the EU more than tripled between Project Paddington and 2015. That same year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave food manufacturers three years to get rid of all trans fats from every margarine, cookie, cake, pie, popcorn, frozen pizza, doughnut and biscuit sold in the US. Virtually all of it has now been replaced with palm oil.

or all the palm oil that now goes into food in Europe and the US, Asia uses far more: India, China, and Indonesia account for nearly 40% of all palm oil consumed worldwide. Where they once cooked with soya oil, palm oil has replaced it. Growth has been fastest in India, where an accelerating economy has been another factor in palm oil's newfound popularity.

One of the commonalities of economic development, across the globe and throughout history, is that a population's consumption of fat grows in lockstep with its income, and the subcontinent has been no exception. Between 1993 and 2013, Indian per capita GDP expanded from $298 to $1,452. Over the same period, fat consumption in rural areas grew by 35% and in urban areas by 25%, and palm oil has been a major ingredient in this escalation. Government-subsidised "fair price shops", a food distribution network for the poor, started selling imported palm oil in 1978, mainly for cooking; two years later the 290,000 shops were unloading 273,500 tonnes. By 1995, Indian imports of palm oil had climbed to nearly 1m tonnes, reaching more than 9m tonnes by 2015. In those years, the poverty rate fell by half while the population climbed by 36%.

But palm oil is no longer just used for home cooking in India - today it is a big part of the country's growing junk food industry. India's fast food market grew 83% just between 2011 and 2016. Between them, Domino's Pizza, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts - all of which use palm oil - now have 2,784 stores in the country, according to reporting by the Nation. Packaged-food sales spiked 138% over roughly the same period; for pennies, you can buy dozens of packaged snacks containing palm oil.

Palm oil's versatility is not limited to food. Unlike other oils, it can be easily and inexpensively "fractionated" - separated into oils of different consistencies - which disposes it to multiple uses. "It has a tremendous advantage because of its versatility," said Carl Bek-Nielsen, chief executive director of United Plantations Berhad, a Malaysia-based palm oil producer.

Not long after the processed food business discovered the magical properties of palm oil, industries as diverse as personal care products and transport fuel would also begin using it to replace other oils. But just as trans fats were chosen for perceived benefits, only to turn out to be worse than what they had replaced, palm oil was initially adopted in large part for its perceived environmental friendliness.

As palm oil became more widely used in food the world over, it was also replacing animal products in cleaning products and personal care items such as soap, shampoo, lotion and makeup. Today, 70% of personal care items contain one or more palm oil derivatives.

Historically, soap often came from animal tallow, and shampoo, which originated on the Indian subcontinent, was first made with plant-based surfactants (a substance that acts as a detergent, emulsifier or foaming agent). Later, synthetic ingredients came into favour, with animal tallow joining them in the 20th century. In the 1980s, the personal care industry started to notice a consumer preference for "natural" ingredients, which "a lot of consumers figured was synonymous with plant-based rather than animal-based", said Chris Sayner, vice-president for corporate sustainability at Croda, a chemical company. Croda's customers started asking if it could come up with plant-based surfactant formulations without tallow.

Just as Van Duijn had discovered at Unilever, the composition of palm oil and palm kernel oil made them the perfect substitute. Manufacturers looking for alternatives found that palm and palm kernel oils contain the same set of fat types as tallow. No other alternative could provide the same advantages across such a wide range of products. "Alternate sources [to tallow] were looked at," Sayner recalled. "Palm and palm kernel oil dropped in as the replacement."

A deforested palm oil concession in Papua, Indonesia.
Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace

Sayner believes that the BSE outbreak of the early 1990s, when a brain disease among cattle spread to some people who ate beef, triggered a larger shift in consumption habits. "Public opinion, brand equity and marketing all came together to move away from animal-based products in more fashion-oriented industries like personal care." Companies across Europe and the US that Croda supplied started to make the switch.

The change from animal-based fats to palm oil came with a certain irony. In the past, when tallow was used in products such as soaps, a byproduct of the meat industry - animal fat - was put to good use. Now, in response to consumers' desire for ingredients perceived as more "natural," the makers of soaps, detergents and cosmetics have replaced a local waste product with one that must be transported thousands of miles and that causes environmental destruction in the countries where it is produced. (Although, of course, the meat industry comes with its own environmental harm.) "What's better environmentally than using a byproduct that exists on your doorstep?" Sayner asked.

A similar thing happened with biofuels - the intent to reduce environmental harm had unintended consequences. In 1997, a European commission report called for increasing the percentage of total energy consumption from renewable sources. Three years later it cited the environmental benefits of biofuels for transport, and in 2009 adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which included a 10% target for the share of transport fuels coming from biofuels by 2020.

Unlike in food and home and personal care products, where palm's chemical makeup makes it the perfect alternative, when it comes to biofuel, palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oils all perform equally well. But palm has one big advantage over these rival oils: price.

The EU policies "created an unprecedented market for the uptake of palm oil," said Kalyana Sundram, CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, a trade group. Legislative attempts in the west to curb the environmental harm of fossil fuels - the US adopted its own biofuel mandate in 2007 - had severe environmental consequences in less developed countries, contributing significantly to global warming.

EU palm oil imports shot up 15% the year after the RED, reaching an all-time high, and 19% the year after that, as biofuel use tripled in the EU between 2011 and 2014; palm oil's share of biofuel raw material leapt fivefold in that period. Half of the EU's palm oil now goes to biofuel, double the share prior to the RED. Sustainability criteria were later added - although Oxfam and others have criticised their effectiveness - and earlier this month European commissioners proposed new limits on biofuel crops tied to deforestation. But the damage had already been done.

he oil palm is blessed with many attributes that have helped it on its path to dominance. It is perennial and evergreen, enabling year-round production. It is exceptionally efficient at photosynthesis for a perennial tree, and requires less preparation of the soil than other sources of vegetable oils, reducing costs. It can succeed in soils that can't sustain other crops. Most importantly, it gives the highest yield per acre of any oilseed crop - almost five times as much oil per acre as rapeseed, almost six times as much as sunflower and more than eight times as much as soybeans. Boycotts of palm oil will only lead to its replacement by other crops needing far more farmland and likely more deforestation.

"The cost of production is far less than any compared [comparable] vegetable or animal fat," said Sundram, of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. "Industry is simply palming off the benefits to the consumer."

For decades, palm's production advantage went unrealised, until a Scot named Leslie Davidson instigated perhaps the most significant innovation in the industry's history. Davidson had come to British Malaya in 1951 at the age of 20 to work on a Unilever plantation. Four years later, the company transferred him to Cameroon. The oil palm originated in west Africa, and had been introduced from there to Malaysia in 1875. In Cameroon, Davidson noticed that insects resembling rice weevils surrounded palm fruits. In Malaya, the plantations were employing hundreds of people to hand-pollinate the flowers, yet pollination occurred more efficiently in Cameroon.

When Unilever sent Davidson back to Malaya (now Malaysia) in 1960, he told his bosses he thought the Malaysian industry was going about pollination all wrong, and that insects were the natural pollinators of oil palm. "They told him to mind your own business and don't get involved," said Carl Bek-Nielsen, who knew Davidson.

In 1974, Davidson became vice-chair of Unilever International Plantations Group. He recruited three entomologists, led by the Pakistani scientist Rahman Syed, who travelled to Cameroon to investigate. Eventually Syed determined that Davidson's hunch was correct: a particular species of weevil was pollinating the oil palm trees, and Davidson received permission from the Malaysian government to import some.

On 21 February, 1981, 2,000 Elaeidobius kamerunicus were released at Unilever's Mamor estate in Johor. Results were seen immediately, with no adverse effects, and the pollinating weevils were distributed across Malaysia. The following year, the country saw an increase in yield of 400,000 tonnes of palm oil and 300,000 tonnes of palm kernels.

The new pollination technique was a key factor in palm oil's growth. As yields climbed, and the cost of labour to manually pollinate the trees was more efficiently deployed for picking the fruit, there was an explosion in the volume of land devoted to oil-palm plantations. Davidson had radically changed the future of Malaysia and Indonesia.

A worker with palm oil fruits at a plantation in Mamuju, Indonesia. Photograph: Antara Foto Agency/Reuters

But the changes wouldn't have occurred without pushes from policymakers in both countries. "We've seen a lot of effort from both governments into supporting the sector because it's an easy way to develop the economy," said Raquel Moreno-Peñaranda, research fellow at United Nations University's Institute of Advanced Studies in Tokyo, who studies agricultural systems and advises governments. Malaysia's minister of primary industries, Teresa Kok, told the European Palm Oil Conference in Madrid in October: "Palm oil is synonymous with poverty eradication." Malaysia began its programme to boost palm exports as a means of poverty reduction in 1961, four years after independence from Britain. Rubber had been a key crop, but with prices falling, the government initiated a programme to replace rubber plantations with oil palm. In 1968, Malaysia provided palm oil producers with a series of tax breaks. Industry subsequently invested heavily in milling technology to extract the oil from the fruit. In the early 1970s, fractionation was developed, expanding the applications of palm oil for both food and other uses.

More recently, plantation owners have found profitable uses for waste such as empty fruit bunches, palm fronds, palm fruit peels, and palm kernel shells. Mill effluent that was once dumped into nearby streams now produces electricity. These new revenue streams reduce planters' risk by providing income even when palm oil prices are down (such as right now), and have helped them face headwinds such as the increasing costs of labour and fertiliser.

But the push for increased palm oil production has not only come from inside Malaysia and Indonesia. World Bank policies in the 1970s encouraged the Indonesian government to expand palm among small farmers. The 1998 economic crisis in Asia shattered exports of manufactured goods from the region, but commodity exports, which were sold in dollars, "came in like a life vest in rough choppy seas," Bek-Nielsen recalled. The IMF's bailout package for Indonesia required that it generate revenue by cultivating natural resources and erase export taxes the government had imposed to keep prices low at home. The measures further incentivised expansion of palm plantations. Alongside the IMF, private finance has helped boost production: Dutch banks alone provided more than $12bn in loans to Indonesian palm producers in the years 1995-99.

he short-term benefits to plantation owners and labourers, producer-nations' governments and financiers have come with enormous long-term costs to the global climate. Forests destroyed for oil palm plantations are among the most carbon-rich in the world. When they are burned, that carbon is released.

Palm oil now accounts for 13.7% of Malaysia's gross national income and is Indonesia's top export. In October, at the European Palm Oil Association meeting in Madrid, government officials from the two countries trumpeted the successes in poverty reduction they had achieved thanks to palm oil (though growers in Indonesia, at least, have disputed these claims, calling on government and industry to do more for farmers independent of the big plantations). Officials further insisted that deforestation was being halted and sustainability achieved, even as another speaker told the attendees deforestation had actually increased in some areas over the previous decade. (In September, Indonesia's president signed a three-year moratorium on new palm-plantation development.)

Commodity-producing countries need only answer to their buyers, though, while those buyers must respond to consumers. In 2004, the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth UK released a report detailing deforestation rates from palm-oil production. As the outcry spread, and concern rose among producers that the continued deforestation would become a risk to their reputations, the World Wildlife Federation that year convinced a small number of palm growers, manufacturers and retailers to establish the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. A decade later, most of the major users of palm oil had committed to production the RSPO deemed "sustainable" and 19% of global product was certified as such by the organisation. But the Environmental Investigation Agency, an offshoot of Greenpeace, three years ago found RSPO to be "woefully substandard" and "in some cases ... colluding ... to disguise violations". (RSPO responded in a statement that it "takes very seriously the claims contained in the EIA report, and welcomes it as an opportunity for intensifying this dialogue, and further [improving] its certification system.")

It is extraordinarily difficult to make sure that palm oil is being sustainably produced. A single palm oil mill - there are hundreds in Malaysia alone - can buy fruit from a multitude of suppliers, and with all its formulations and derivatives, palm oil has one of the most complicated supply chains of any ingredient. Even when the sustainability certification system is working as it is supposed to, environmentalists have criticised such programmes. For instance, a product can earn a "certified sustainable" label even if 99% of the palm oil it includes came from freshly deforested land. The RSPO says having less strict certification criteria encourages participation, the hope being that manufacturers of retail products will ramp up to higher levels once they see they can sell certified palm oil for a higher price.

Before the European Palm Oil Association meeting, RSPO's head of European operations, Inke van der Sluijs, admitted that "very few companies do [the highest level of sustainability certification] because of the complexity and length of the supply chain". RSPO is widely viewed by environmentalists as the most robust of several certification systems and encourages manufacturers to use RSPO-certified oil. Nevertheless, half of certified-sustainable palm oil isn't sold as sustainable: until a sufficient number of consumers are willing to pay the higher price for certified palm oil, little will change.

Moreover, the vast majority of palm oil is traced only as far as the mill where it's processed, not to the field where it's produced. Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of Indonesian NGOs that includes the WWF - the same organisation that spurred palm oil certification - said in a 2016 report that "mill traceability [on its own] wastes time and money without offering a solution to the issues of illegal product entering the supply chains". There is now a growing effort to deploy technology to trace each bunch of fruit to a field and farmer, which would finally ensure new deforestation isn't occurring to produce palm oil.

The other hope for halting deforestation for palm is increasing yields, the idea being that if more oil can come from existing plantations it will obviate the need to expand the planting area into biodiverse forest. Rajinder Singh, leader of the genomics group at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, a government agency, has been identifying genetic signatures associated with certain traits so high-yielding palms can be selected and land isn't wasted on trees that don't produce much. The best plantations currently yield around six or seven tonnes of oil per hectare, but Singh said, "we've seen individual palms that can give almost double" the amount of oil compared to common strains. As trees reach the end of their productive life of 25-30 years, they could be replaced by more prolific strains.

But even doubling yields won't meet the near-quadrupling of demand expected by 2050. There is no easy solution. Replacing palm with other oils will only accelerate deforestation, since none of its competitors boast anywhere near its yield per unit of land: palm accounts for 6.6% of cultivated land for oils and fats, while delivering 38.7% of the output, according to the European Palm Oil Alliance, an industry group. Colombia is aggressively pursuing palm oil development in areas formerly devoted to illegal crops such as coca, but it has a lot of catching up to match Asia's output.

Palm oil has become ubiquitous because it is the perfect ingredient for a number of growing industries, the perfect export for developing economies, and the perfect commodity for the globalised economy that links them. Wealthy consumers are capitalising on the cheap labour and valuable rainforest that developing nations have in abundance and are willing to part with at a discount to accelerate their economic growth.

But that model isn't sustainable. If things continue, the forests and their creatures will be gone, and the cost of labour will increase as some workers move up the economic ladder and realise there are better things they could be doing than picking fruit. Palm oil producers and consumers will be left with nothing.

Products that are sustainable are those produced and consumed locally; when buyers are able to witness the production process, they will demand that it occur in line with their values. When it's out of sight, it's difficult to get enough of them to care. Changing that may require more than a little magic.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

This piece has been edited to correct the attribution of a report, to "Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of Indonesian NGOs that includes the WWF", rather than to the WWF alone.

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nce upon a time in a land far, far away, there grew a magical fruit. This fruit could be squeezed to produce a very special kind of oil that made cookies more healthy, soap more bubbly and crisps more crispy. The oil could even make lipstick smoother and keep ice-cream from melting.

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Following on, I think if someone believes animals should have the best possible quality of life, they should consider boycotting products that do not support an animals well-being.
For example, palm oil is used in lots of vegan and non-vegan products and has had a detrimental affect on the number of orangutans living in the wild. The production of palm oil results in an orangutans habitat being destroyed, consequently leaving them with a poor quality of life. I think a moral person should also protect animals that are alive, but may not be eaten and ensure they have a good quality of life, in their natural habitat.
Heather

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As we know from  'The Conversation' article , factory farming has a very negative effect on the environment and biodiversity. However vegans tend to use substitutes such as almond milk, and this is not sustainable either because it requires 6098 litres of water just to produce one litre of almond milk.
So I believe that we have a difficult decision to make in  order to be a 'moral person' because are we moral to the animals or to the planet?
Heather

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In food and drink, we all want to do the right thing. We want to shop and eat sustainably. But, sometimes, it is easier said than done. Our willingness to jump on the latest eco-trends and unquestioningly accept reassuring labelling can lead to unintended consequences. If we are serious about eating green, we need to read beyond the headlines and think rigorously about how we apply ethical advice in our own lives. By way of inspiration, here are some of the ways we get it wrong on ingredients, storage and recycling - and a few surprisingly easy solutions.

Is almond milk really the nuts?

Influenced by clean eating and agri-exposés such as Cowspiracy (whichpointed to methane emissions from cattle as crucial in global warming), many are ditching cows' milk in favour of non-dairy alternatives, which, according to Euromonitor, now make-up 12% of global milk sales.

That sounds positive. Pre-shipping, the carbon created by a litre of semi-skimmed (1.67kg) is far higher than that of almond milk (360g). "But what people don't know is the environmental damage almond plantations are doing in California, and the water cost. It takes a bonkers 1,611 US gallons (6,098 litres) to produce 1 litre of almond milk," says the Sustainable Restaurant Association's Pete Hemingway.

Over 80% of the world's almonds are grown in California, which has been in severe drought for most of this decade. Hemingway describes a situation in which farmers are ripping up relatively biodiverse citrus groves to feed rocketing demand for almonds, creating a monoculture fed by increasingly deep water wells that threaten statewide subsidence issues. That leaves rather a bad taste in the mouth.
Solution: of the dairy alternatives, oat milk is the most sustainable option, according Solution: get (certified) cod back on your menu. to Hemingway.
Thank cod! The fish we can eat again
Solution: want to eat green on the go? Carry cutlery in your bag.

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Atlantic cod: back on the menu.

When campaigning organisations hit the panic button, the message - in this case: cod is endangered, don't eat it - can stick, long after it is relevant. Fish stocks are dynamic, points out the Marine Stewardship Council's George Clark. Advice changes and responsible consumers need to stay abreast of that: "There's a lot of confusion about cod, but there are plentiful supplies of MSC-certified cod in the north-east Atlantic. About 91% of Norway's catch is certified."
Solution: buy more Tupperware.
Bioplastic is not fantastic

Many street food vendors have switched to bioplastic - which sounds like an ethical choice. But, while it may make street food feel virtuous, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace challenge its green rep. It is resource intensive and less than 40% of bio plastic is designed to be biodegradable. In many ways, it is just another polluting plastic.
Solution: let consumers choose.
Cling to your clingfilm

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Clingfilm: not all bad, but think about longer-term food storage. Photograph: Getty/iStockphoto

Post-Blue Planet II, professional kitchens are all # chefsagainstplastic. London's Spring restaurant, for instance, was using 3,600km of clingfilm a year. Now it uses beeswax wrapping. But harassed home cooks need to take a more nuanced view. Within reason (wrapping half a lime is daft), not wasting food should be your environmental priority. "Clingfilm can play an important role in that," says Hemingway.
Solution: keys, phone, purse/wallet, water bottle - make it part of your daily routine
Put equality at the heart of ecology
Solution: stick to fish objectively certified as sustainable
The rush to ban plastic straws and the resulting outcry from disability campaigners (who, for various medical and practical reasons need plastic straws), crystallised how the social impact of green initiatives needs greater consideration. The next battleground, predicts Sue Bott, deputy chief executive of Disability Rights UK, will be food and drink venues banning bottled water and replacing it with water fountains: "Reducing plastic use is laudable, but our lives become more restrictive if changes are introduced overnight."

Don't bottle it
Solution: keep your use of outlandishly designed bottles to a minimum.

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Buy a reusable water bottle and use it.

According to Crystal Market Research, the US reusable water bottle market will be worth $9.62bn by 2023, up $3bn in a decade. A recent Keep Britain Tidy/Brita survey found that 55% of us own a refillable bottle, but only 36% of us carry it regularly. Ideally, buy one made from recycled materials (eg Eco-Bottles), and use it.

Local ≠ sustainable
Solution: at lunch, rather than a takeaway from the works canteen or a local caf e, sit in and eat off a plate using metal cutlery. It is far greener. "Until the waste infrastructure is in place, telling people packaging is 100% compostable is, at best, problematic and, at worst, greenwash," says the Carbon Trust's Jamie Plotnek.
With fish, terms such as "local", "day-boat" and "line-caught" are now seen by many consumers as a guarantee of sustainability. They are not, says Clark, who points to overfishing of sea bass as an example of what happens when fishing is not rigorously scrutinised by a third party, such as MSC: "Sustainability has to encompass fish stocks, their management and environmental impact."
Solution: choose tofu brands (eg Taifun) that Solution: do your due diligence before swerving a product. "We fully support One Water," says Alexander Clark, an environmental co ordinator at the university. One Water founder Duncan Goose says year-on-year growth continues but admits: "Concern over single-use plastics is having an impact on our industry."source super low-carbon European or US soy.
Take a clear view on plastic bottles

Manufacturers can label any bottle that can feasibly be recycled as recyclable. In reality, says Friends of the Earth's Emma Priestland, weirdly designed or coloured bottles are likely to be sifted out at recycling sites and will end up in landfill: "Robinson's Fruit Shoot bottles are made of easily recycled Pet, but because [one version] is solid purple, it's difficult to recycle. If separated, opaque colours can be recycled by chemical recycling, but that increases the cost, effort and energy required," she says. The European P et Bottle Platform, which advises the bottling industry on design, recommends the use of clear Pet if possible.

"All of our Pet plastic packaging, including Fruit Shoot, is fully recyclable in the UK recycling system," says Robinson's parent company, Britvic, a founding signatory of the new UK Plastics Pact. It adds: "We moved to a more translucent [Fruit Shoot] bottle in February."

The breakdown on compostable packaging

Naively, you might think that the compostable-plastic takeaway tub you ate your lunch from is easily compostable and that, if you dropped it into a food waste bin, in a few months some keen gardener will be scattering it on their allotment. That is highly unlikely. These plant-based, PLA-plastic products need to be industrially composted in specific units that are so scarce in Britain, most compostable packaging is burned or goes to landfill.

In fact, put that compostable salad tub in a food waste bin and you actually create a problem. Food waste is composted by anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and fertiliser, but, first, any packaging has to be removed. "Compostable products have no gas value," says a spokesperson for waste recycler ReFood. "Drivers check customers' bins when they collect. If there is a lot of packaging, then they won't be able to accept the waste, but this doesn't happen very often."

In its initial production, compostable packaging is more eco-friendly than traditional plastic packaging, but, at the moment, it is no silver bullet.

Switch to sustainable tofu

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Avoid Brazilian tofu.

In South America, soy farming (mostly for animal feed), is driving deforestation and the destruction of Brazil's Cerrado grasslands. "Both release huge amounts of carbon dioxide and are a biodiversity disaster," says Dr John Kazer, footprint certification manager at the Carbon Trust. Usually 90% less, tofu originating from deforested Brazilian pastures has a carbon footprint twice that of chicken.

One bottled water you can drink guilt-free

Sales of bottled One Water were down 30,000 in the first half of this year at the University of Manchester. Fantastic, you may think. But One Water is no ordinary bottled water: the company is carbon neutral and its profits fund clean-water projects in the developing world (£17.4m so far). As for the plastic waste, there is a robust market in recycled Pet bottles. Where those bottles are segregated in bins from glass, paper and other waste, as they are at the university, you can be confident they will be recycled.

Sometimes the easy option is the right one

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Ditch the almond milk: why everything you know about sustainable eating is probably wrong

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In food and drink, we all want to do the right thing. We want to shop and eat sustainably. But, sometimes, it is easier said than done. Our willingness to jump on the latest eco-trends and unquestioningly accept reassuring labelling can lead to unintended consequences.

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A mockumentary set in 2067 when the UK's population has become Vegan.

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Comedy doc, set in 2067, where Simon Amstell looks back at Britain's animal eating past.

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Part 2 ...

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Part 1 ...

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What Philosophers have to say about eating meat ... 

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What Philosophers have to say about eating meat ... 

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WeWork, a co-working and office space company, made a company policy last year not to serve or reimburse meals that include meat.

WeWork's co-founder and chief culture officer, Miguel McKelvey, said in an email that it was the company's attempt at reducing its carbon footprint. His moral arguments are based on the devastating environmental effects of meat consumption. Research has shown that meat and dairy production are among the worst culprits when it comes to the production of greenhouse gases and the loss of biodiversity. WeWork estimates the policy will save 445.1 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions by 2023, 16.6 billion gallons of water and 15,507,103 animals.

Indeed, for centuries philosophers have argued against consuming animals.

Why hurting animals is immoral

Ancient Greek philosophers made their arguments based on the moral status of animals themselves. Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras made the case against eating animals on grounds of their having souls like humans.

Philosopher Plato, in Book 2 of the "The Republic," thought of meat as a luxury that would lead to an unsustainable society, filled with strife and inequality, requiring more land and wars to acquire it.

Two thousand years later, in 1789, Jeremy Bentham, father of the theory of utilitarianism, pointed to the animal suffering as morally concerning and therefore implicated meat consumption.

He asked,

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? ... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes ... "

The doctrine of utilitarianism states that actions that bring about the most good and reduce the suffering in the world are the right ones. Utilitarians focus on reducing suffering and maximizing pleasure or happiness.

Mercy For Animals MFA, CC BY

Modern-day utilitarian Peter Singer thus asks whether we are justified in considering our pleasure and pain as more important than that of animals. In being willing to subject animals to the suffering of industrial farming for meat production, he questions whether we are just being "speciesists." Much like racists, he argues, speciesists favor the interest of their own species.

Other philosophers reject the attention to just the suffering of animals and argue that it is simply wrong to treat animals as our resources whether or not it involves suffering. Just as it would be wrong to treat humans as resources for harvesting organs, it is immoral to raise animals for meat.

Animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, for example, argued that animals are "the subject of a life," just as humans are. What he meant was that they too - like humans - are beings who have rights, with their own preferences, wants and expectations.

Making factory farming more humane misses the point of immorality and injustice of the use of animals as resources.

Human exceptionalism

Indeed, there are those philosophers who believed that animals do not have moral status equal to humans.

Human exceptionalism is based on the premise that humans have superior abilities compared to other animals. For example, humans can have social relationships, in particular family relationships; they also have the ability to use language; they can reason and feel pain.

Sixteenth-century French philosopher Rene Descartes, known for his dictum, "I think, therefore, I am," thought that animals were not conscious, did not have minds and, consequently, did not experience pain. They were, according to Descartes, "automata," just complex machines. Indeed, his views were later used to justify the practice of vivisection on animals for many centuries.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that it was personhood that distinguished humans from animals. For Kant, humans set their own moral rules based on reason and act upon them. This is something that animals cannot do.

The moral case against meat

More astute observations and scientific studies, however, have shown that animals do experience pain analogous to humans and have feelings. For example, elephants have complex emotional lives, including grieving for loved ones, and complex social and family relationships.

Animals can reason, communicate with one another, possibly use language in some cases and behave morally.

Thus, excluding animals from moral consideration and eating animals cannot be justified because they lack these characteristics.

Even Kant's idea that it is the rational autonomy of humans that makes them superior does not work. Infants, Alzheimer's patients, the developmentally disabled and some others might also be considered lacking in rational autonomy. And personhood, in any case, is not the defining criterion for being treated as an object of moral consideration. In my view, the question to be considered is whether Kant is just being a speciesist, as Singer has charged.

Finally, there are those philosophers who object to eating meat not based on whether animals have rights or whether their suffering should be included in the calculus for assessing moral actions. They focus on the virtues or vices of eating meat.

Virtue theorist Rosalind Hursthouse argues that eating meat shows one to be "greedy," "selfish," "childish." Other virtue theorists argue that the virtuous person would refrain from eating meat or too much meat out of compassion and caring for animals' welfare.

Can Pac Swire, CC BY-NC

As a moral philosopher, I too believe the suffering of animals in the production of meat, particularly modern industrial meat production, cannot be morally justified.

Thus, in my view, WeWork's position has a moral basis and powerful philosophical allies.
Editor's note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at ethical.questions@theconversation.com.

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What philosophers have to say about eating meat

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WeWork, a co-working and office space company, made a company policy last year not to serve or reimburse meals that include meat. WeWork's co-founder and chief culture officer, Miguel McKelvey, said in an email that it was the company's attempt at reducing its carbon footprint.

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Welcome to an introduction to Philosophy, Religion and Ethics at A Level.

As debates and discussions, often centred on difficult ethical topics, are commonplace in the subject, I thought we could attempt a 'virtual' debate here on padlet on the topic of "We must all become vegans to be true moral beings"

What I would like you to do is first have a watch of the crash course clip and if you would like you can read some of the articles and information posted here. Then once you have an idea on the issues, decide which side of the debate you agree with the most.

Then I would like you to post your views and comments (just click on the pink plus icon in the bottom right corner and type in your thoughts).

If you AGREE with the claim can you colour your box BLUE and if you DISAGREE can you colour your box PURPLE (you can do this by clicking on the three dots in the top left corner of your comment box)

Add as many comments for and against as you would like and feel free to thumbs up/down each other's comments and add responses (the speech bubble icon in the bottom right of the comment box).

In Philosophy, Religion and Ethics, your views, responses and criticisms are a central part of the subject! But please be respectful when responding to other people's ideas ;)

Let the debate begin!

Sam

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"We must all become vegans to be true moral beings"

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"We must all become vegans to be true moral beings"

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Add comment boxes in response to this question and colour them accordingly ...

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Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy #42