Abstract
This chapter focusses in depth on the Buddhist trope-theoretic dualism of the person, especially as this interactionist account pertains to the properties of persons salient for killing, in particular the obviation of hostile volitions. The account provides an overview of Buddhist anti-physicalism of the person, especially with regard to soteriology and the post-mortem continuity of the mental, in which volitional formations (saṃskāras) are directly implicated in the perpetuation of illusory views of self and so the karmic propensity for rebirth. These views are contrasted with consensus physicalist views that underwrite contemporary secular and scientific materialism. Buddhist post-mortem continuity is described especially as it pertains to the bearer of volitions. Having examined the causal dualism obtaining between psychophysical tropes (dhammas/dharmas), a Buddhist objection is raised against the possibility of the final extirpation, if not local obviation, of hostile volitions as the inherently mental objects of lethal acts. This determines this generic case of killing as partially deluded, which along with its epistemic failure is considered in more broadly normative terms. This Buddhist critique of the ‘doxastic account’ of killing given in Chap. 7 therefore highlights a concern for the epistemic adequacy between reasons and the causal efficacy of acts serving the Buddhist telos of the awakening from conventional (as well as ultimate) ignorance. A failure of this larger project, moreover, marks a failure of moral progress insofar as karma obtains only between mental causal functions, and not the physical ones entailed in the killing of otherwise innocent sentient bodies.
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Notes
- 1.
See Gethin (und. p.20ff.) for discussion of the bhavaṅga consciousness in the process of death and rebirth. Also Collins (1982, 205–208).
- 2.
See Waldron (2003) passim, and 220–221 (n.27) for the abhisankhāra-viññāṇa.
- 3.
Sanskrit is used with general reference to the Abhidharma and Sautrāntika contexts and their appropriations of and responses to relevant Abhidhammic doctrine already surveyed, above.
- 4.
This term is misleading, but unfortunately ubiquitous. There is nothing to be re- ‘born’ when the relevant mental continuity is defined by its process of momentary but constitutive transformation. Rather, ‘rebirth’ signifies that an authentically new entity (nāmarūpa) comes into existence on its basis.
- 5.
See Kovan (2018, 647–648) for a range of canonical examples of euthanasia rejected by the Buddha.
- 6.
See Jaini (1959/2001, 239ff.) for a study of the description of saṃskāras across the Theravāda-Abhidhamma and Sarvāstivāda-Abhidharma, and other, classificatory systems.
- 7.
Jacquette (1994, 156) for example, writes that “at the moment of death there is only oblivion”.
- 8.
Stoljar (2010) and Pereboom (2011) engage the state of physicalism in recent decades. Arnold (2015) discusses the “hard problem” of consciousness in the context of Buddhist idealism.
- 9.
Among others, see Chalmers (1996), Crane (2001), McGinn (2004), Bitbol (2008), Brogaard (2015), Nagel (2012) and Strawson (2006, 2017).
- 10.
This account will also be significant for the argument of Chapter 11, concerned with killing for the purpose of ending suffering.
- 11.
Hence, the lethal agent only ‘kills a person’ in a nominal sense, just as ‘demolishing Melbourne University’ requires that the separate buildings and administrative apparatus comprising it be dismantled, where there is no discrete existent ‘Melbourne University’.
- 12.
See e.g., Vism. VIII 246; Dhs-a 39–40; Paṭis-a I 18.
- 13.
Note that this modifies the doxastic picture of Chap. 7 only by theoretically attenuating what otherwise remains the given folk sense of a nominal dualism of the person.
- 14.
MacKenzie’s reconstruction of arguments from Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita demonstrates some of these directions, respecting their alignment in some senses and non-alignment in others. He suggests in view of a “neo-Dharmakirtian dualist” account that “The naturalistic trope dualist need not deny supervenience, but rather should deny metaphysical supervenience in favour of natural, nomological supervenience. That is, mental and physical tropes are systematically correlated in the natural world as we observe and try to explain it, but mental tropes are not metaphysically necessitated by physical tropes.” (op. cit. 139).
- 15.
McGinn (2004, Chap. 6) postulates an atomic (or trope-theoretic) model of mind or consciousness, entirely independent of Buddhist dharma theory yet sharing many of its hallmarks (including a compatibility with psychophysical dualism). He aligns his schema with aspects of physical atomism, in which “Conceivably, the correct atomic theory of consciousness might make the psychophysical divide look even more unbridgeable, and some quite new conceptual framework be needed in order to get a unified picture.” (133) Moreover, McGinn (apparently unaware of the over two-millennium history of such a theory in the Buddhist Abhidhamma) is confident that an atomic theory of mind “is the best bet in the current state of knowledge” (117) and that “it seems like a theory-form that might actually be true.” (135) Cf. Brogaard (2015) for a similar prospective tropic theory of mind.
- 16.
The defining characteristics (svalakṣaṇa) of physical events are extension, spatio-temporal location and a felt resistance (paṭigha; Sk. pratigha) to objects of form. Recall that rūpa itself derives from the root rup- meaning ‘to strike, break, injure,’ so that this etymology with its semantic links with ‘resistance’ is concretised in the centrality of rūpa to killing.
- 17.
Including, by extension, rūpa and axiological causal incommensurability, as we’ll see below. Of course, as kamma, mental cetanā and moral value are explicitly equivalent.
- 18.
This is because the denial of the identity of physical and mental properties does not entail the denial of mental properties as ultimately inclusive in the ‘physical’ in a manner natural science does not yet understand, but might in a future physics. As Crane (2001, 62ff.) theorizes, a view of mental causation in an emergentist ‘downward causation’ conceives mental events as distinct and independent causal operators only contingently supervenient on neural states. Cf. MacKenzie (2019, 140–141).
- 19.
Siderits (2016, 155 & n.16) notes Dharmakīrti’s rejection of absences as reals.
- 20.
Note though that while the causal series enabling individuated consciousness is disaggregated, a theoretical mental substrate, perhaps non-conscious, need not be.
- 21.
Torture clearly presents the case of the exertion of degrees of physical force as a means to effect mental change on its object-person. It potentially succeeds, unlike lethal action, just to the degree that by stopping short of killing it sustains the possibility of mental events being so affected by virtue of primary physical causes in tandem with their secondary mental effects. There would be no causal basis for torture were this possibility not the case. Whether this translates into its normative recommendation is another question. See Jenkins (2010) for discussion of compassionate Buddhist torture in the Mahāyāna record.
- 22.
What becomes of the causal series of saṃskāras is a question for the theories concerning the mental substrate that encodes the kammic content of the saṃskāras (in terms of bījas and vāsanās), but their rehearsal is logically not required for the present argument (see e.g., Brewster 2020; Prueitt 2018; Kuan 2013; Gethin n.d.; Griffiths 1986; Jaini 1959/2010, 219ff.).
- 23.
- 24.
This is to be distinguished from the Abhidharma posit of the dravyasat of dharmas, which refers to the intrinsic qualitative characteristic (svalakṣaṇa) they ipso facto instantiate (where, example, the qualitative solidity of a rūpa-dharma is the index for its veridical essential nature).
- 25.
The mental factor of nibbāna is of course another, limit point, of them.
- 26.
MacKenzie notes that “For a trope dualist, the most basic form of event is the occurrence of a trope. At the fundamental level mental and physical events are distinct just because mental and physical tropes are distinct.” (2019, 141).
- 27.
We’ve seen in Chapter 6 the sense in which hostile affect, and the cognitive misrepresentations attending it in killing, precisely fails that same process.
- 28.
Further chapters will revisit this point in different epistemic contexts of intentional killing.
- 29.
Griffiths is discussing the distribution of dharmas in the Vaibhāṣika tradition, but his remarks translate without conflict into the Theravāda Abhidhamma and Sautrāntika.
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Kovan, M. (2022). Critique of the Conventional: The Cessation of Volition and Buddhist Dualism of the Person. In: A Buddhist Theory of Killing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2441-5_8
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