Introduction PART I: METAPHYSICS AND COMMITMENT: Libertarianism, action, and self-determination Kant and commitment Commitment, illusion, and truth Non-rational commitment: a view of freedom Phenomenology, commitment, and what might happen PART II: THE OBJECTIVIST BASIS: Objectivism: preliminaries Choice Self-consciousness PART III: THE SUBJECTIVIST CHALLENGE: Evidence and independence Contravention and convention The spectator subject and integration The natural epictetans The experience of ability to choose Subjectivism and the experience of freedom Anitomy and truth Appendices.

Freedom and Belief.

Acknowledgements Preface 1. What is Buddhist Philosophy? 2. The Metaphysical Perspective I: Interdependence and Impermanence 3. The Metaphysical Perspective II: Emptiness 4. The Self 5. Consciousness 6. Phenomenology 7. Epistemology 8. Logic and the Philosophy of Language 9. Ethics 10. Methodological Postscript References Index

Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy

Mindfulness meditation and other techniques drawn from Buddhism have increasingly been integrated into forms of psychotherapeutic intervention. In much of this work, mindfulness is understood as a mode of awareness that is present-centered and nonevaluative. This form of awareness is assumed to have intrinsic value in promoting positive mental health and adaptation by interrupting discursive thoughts that give rise to suffering. However, in the societies where it originated, mindfulness meditation is part of a larger system of Buddhist belief and practice with strong ethical and moral dimensions. Extracting techniques like mindfulness meditation from the social contexts in which they originate may change the nature and effects of the practice. The papers in this issue of Transcultural Psychiatry explore the implications of a cultural and contextual view of mindfulness for continued dialogue between Buddhist thought and psychiatry. This introductory essay considers the meanings of mindfulness meditation in cultural context and the uses of mindfulness as a therapeutic intervention in contemporary psychiatry and psychology.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1363461515598949

Mindfulness in cultural context

This wide-ranging introduction to classical Indian philosophy is philosophically rigorous without being too technical for beginners. Through detailed explorations of the full range of Indian philosophical concerns, including some metaphilosophical issues, it provides readers with non-Western perspectives on central areas of philosophy, including epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion. Chapters are structured thematically, with each including suggestions for further reading. This provides readers with an informed overview whilst enabling them to focus on particular topics if needed. Translated Sanskrit texts are accompanied by authorial explanations and contextualisations, giving the reader an understanding of the argumentative context and philosophical style of Indian texts. A detailed glossary and a guide to Sanskrit pronunciation equip readers with the tools needed for reading and understanding Sanskrit terms and names. The book will be an essential resource for both beginners and advanced students of philosophy and Asian studies.

An Introduction to Indian Philosophy

There is a long tradition in philosophy for claiming that selfhood is socially constructed and self-experience intersubjectively mediated. On many accounts, we consequently have to distinguish between being conscious or sentient and being a self. The requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the latter are higher. My aim in the following is to challenge this form of social constructivism by arguing that an account of self which disregards the fundamental structures and features of our experiential life is a non-starter, and that a correct description and account of the experiential dimension must do justice to the first-person perspective and to the primitive form of self-referentiality, mineness or for-me-ness that it entails. I then consider and discuss various objections to this account, in particular the view that an endorsement of such a minimal notion of self commits one to an outdated form of Cartesianism. In the final part of the paper, I argue that the self is so multifaceted...

Is the Self a Social Construct

INTRODUCTION 1. Fundamental Buddhist Teachings 2. Main Features of some Western Ethical Theories 3. Theravada Ethics as Rule-Consequentialism 4. Mahayana Ethics Before Santideva 5. Santideva and After 6. Transcending Ethics 7. Buddhist Ethics and the Demands of Consequentialism 8. Buddhism on Moral Responsibility 9. Punishment 10. Objections and Replies 11. A Buddhist Response to Kant CONCLUSION

Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics

Consequences of Compassion

Soulevant la question de la volonte libre dans le cadre du debat (in)compatibiliste sur la liberte et la responsabilite morale, et dans le contexte d'un dialogue entre les cultures asiatique et occidentale, l'A. repere dans la doctrine bouddhiste une conception de la volonte libre qui reconcilie la theorie et la pratique morales et admet l'existence d'un homme parfait degage de toute responsabilite.

Resentment and reality: buddhism on moral responsibility

might be enriched by the ideas of the other. However, such a dialogue will be very difficult unless we Westerners can find some way of understanding, in our terms, what kind of ethical theory Buddhism might involve. Damien Keown's influential work on this topic has convinced many scholars that Buddhist ethical views are not very similar to utilitarianism. Keown holds that these views should be understood through analogies with Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, if we draw on current debates in Western ethics to clarify the range of theories available for comparison, Keown's position becomes less plausible. Though a case could be made that no form of Buddhist ethics is as similar to Aristotelianism as Keown claims, I focus here on Mah?y?na Buddhism. There are several Indian Mah?y?na texts that express an ethical perspective that has many features in common with the various versions of universalist consequentialism. Of these versions, the one that seems most promising as a basis of comparison with Mah?y?na views has sometimes been called "?deal Utilitarianism" or "perfectionist consequentialism." Consequentialism is a broad and diverse family of ethical theories. Each of these theories gives consequences some kind of decisive role in deciding how we should behave. Thus, an act-consequential ist ethical theory says that actions should be eval uated with reference only to their consequences. Meanwhile, a rule-consequentialist theory says that we should follow a set of rules whose acceptance would, under some specified circumstances, bring about the best consequences. Various rule consequentialist theories involve endorsing rules that would produce the best conse quences if everybody followed them; or merely if everybody tried to follow them; or perhaps if enough people tried to follow them. And there are additional forms of consequentialism that trace the rightness of actions to consequences in some other indirect way, such as through the motives of the agent. The consequentialist theories that I want to put forward as models of Mah?y?na ethics are universalist: they take into account consequences for all sentient beings over the entire future history of the universe. I will be ignoring those consequentialist theories that are not welfarist, in that they assign intrinsic value to states of affairs that have nothing to do with the goodness of the lives of sentient beings. I shall take it as obvious that the beauty of rock formations and the balance of ecosystems, for exam ple, are not the sorts of matters with which Indian Buddhist ethical thinkers were pri marily concerned.1

Consequentialism, Agent-Neutrality, and Mahāyāna Ethics

Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's ‘Treasury of Metaphysics’. This neglect is unjustified. The account of the nature of the physical world given in the ‘Treasury’ is a one-category ontology of dharmas, which are simple, momentary tropes. They include bade physical tropes, the most fundamental level of the physical world, as well as higher-level tropes, including sensible properties such as colours, which are known as derived form. I argue that the relationship between the basic physical tropes and derived form is one of supervenience. Vasubandhu's theory is a powerful and flexible one, which can be adapted so as to be consistent with modern science.

Charles Goodman

Papers

Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics

Consequences of Compassion

Resentment and reality: buddhism on moral responsibility

Consequentialism, Agent-Neutrality, and Mahāyāna Ethics

The Treasury of Metaphysics and the Physical World