How provisionality leads to good effects by giving us more options. The value of adaptiveness is associated with biological reductionism, but all kinds of values, including the most subtle human ones, can be better fulfilled by adaptiveness. Adaptiveness depends on optionality: our ability to use alternative strategies to reach or change our goals when we are frustrated by changing conditions. Adaptiveness is thus a way of talking about the broad value of following the Middle Way. This is a tributary video to no. 3 on provisionality.

This is the 14th video in the Middle Way Philosophy introductory course

Some suggested reflection questions:

1. How do you relate to ‘addressing conditions’ as an account of the goal of the Middle Way? (It is intended to avoid the absolutes involved in formulations of our goals of a kind that lie beyond our experience, such as the Buddhist goal of nirvana).

2. What sorts of conditions on the hierarchy of needs are most important for you in practice?

3. Are there any particular conditions that are creating difficulties for you at the moment, so that more provisionality and integration might be needed to address them?

Suggested further reading:

Middle Way Philosophy 4: The Integration of Belief, Section 2.d