Introduction Is there such a thing as free will in Buddhism? Do moral and mental forms of cultivation at the heart of Buddhist practice imply some notion of agency and responsibility? And if they do, how are we to think of those individuals who embark on the path to liberation or enlightenment, considering that all Buddhists give universal scope to the noself doctrine? Of course, Buddhism is not alone among the world's great philosophical traditions in providing ample testimony for the possibility of cultivating to a high degree such cardinal virtues as nonviolence , wisdom, compassion, and a general spirit of tolerance. But it is unique among them in articulating a theory of action that, it seems, dispenses altogether with the notion of agent causation. Buddhists pursue what are unmistakably moral ends, but there is no stable self or agent who bears the accumulated responsibility for initiating those pursuits, and seemingly no normative framework against which some dispositions, thoughts, and actions are deemed felicitous, and thus worthy of cultivation, while others are not so deemed. It is not surprising, therefore, to find a near universal lack of agreement among contemporary interpreters about how best to capture the scope of Buddhist ethics using the vocabulary and theoretical frameworks of Western ethical discourse. in	seeking	an	answer	to	the	questions	above,	the	plan,	then,	is	first	to	show	that despite some straightforward metaphysical tenets, the conception of agency in Buddhism	is	less	alien	than	it	may	seem	at	first	blush-indeed,	it	is	not	unlike	conceptions of moral agency that we find in Stoic thought, and more recently in Nietzsche (2006) and several strands of contemporary moral phenomenology; next, to	argue	for	a	solution	to	what	is	widely	regarded	as	a	clear	conflict	between	traditional conceptions of moral agency and the agentneutral metaphysical picture of causality that we glean from Abhidharma literature. Recent accounts (Flanagan 2002;	Meyers	2014;	Siderits	1987,	2008)	seek	to	resolve	this	conflict	by	arguing that the two pictures are compatible because the discourse of 'persons' and the discourse	of	'causes'	belong	in	two	distinct	and	incommensurable	domains.	Specifically, my claim is that compatibilist solutions compromise the traditional notion of moral responsibility and render ethical conduct indistinguishable from merely pragmatic acts. The main thrust of the compatibilist move is against the notion of 8 Freedom from responsibility Agentneutral consequentialism and the bodhisattva ideal Christian Coseru 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 92 24/5/16 11:30:55 32 Freedom from responsibility 93 agent causation itself, which social and cognitive psychology has presumably rendered incoherent.1 It is only to the extent that we dispense with such incoherent concepts-as	compatibilist	interpreters	of	Buddhist	action	theory	argue-that	some notion of moral agency and responsibility can be salvaged. Despite	the	dominant	and	paradoxical image	of	the	selfless	Mahāyāna	(later Buddhist) bodhisattva (one who has taken the altruistic vow) tirelessly, yet effortlessly, working to put an end to ultimately nonexistent human suffering (on account of the nonexistence of sentient beings as conventionally established), support for a robust notion of phenomenal agency can be found in nearly all major schools of Buddhist thought.2 Indeed, the Eightfold Path program, much like the promulgation of monastic rules of conduct (the Vinaya), comes in recognition of the complex range of personal and subpersonal factors that are constitutive of human agency. Because mental states such as greed, hatred, and delusion or, alternatively, loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy, can only be made sense of with reference to the person whose states they are, they are irreducibly phenomenal: they only exist firstpersonally. The impersonal description thesis at the heart of Abhidharma Reductionism (cf. Abelson, Ch. 13, this volume) may allow for the analysis of mental states in terms of their constitutive factors, but for these states to be analyzable at all, and for the attribution of moral responsibility and freedom to be intelligible, there needs to be a conception of firstpersonal agency in place. on the view i defend here, mental states	are irreducibly	firstpersonal: the idea	of	generic pain	apart	from	individually realized sensations of burning, itching, or stinging is thus deeply incoherent. in what follows, i argue that influential Mahāyāna ethicists, such as Śāntideva,	who allow for moral rules to be proscribed under the expediency of a compassionate aim, seriously compromise the very notion of responsibility. Moral responsibility is intelligible only in relation to conceptions of freedom and human	dignity that reflect a participation in, and sharing	of, interpersonal	rela-tionships. As critics of hard determinism (the view that universal causal necessitation is incompatible with free will and moral agency) have argued, there is no threat to human agency so long as we understand that agency is essentially grounded in a range of participant reactive attitudes and feelings (e.g., resentment, gratitude, anger, etc.) that are impossible without the ascription of agency and moral responsibility (see Strawson 1973, p. 11, and discussion in Goodman 2009, pp. 147ff.). But bodhisattvas cannot be seen to harbor such participant reactive attitudes, at least	not	once they	are	sufficiently	advanced	on the	path to	understand that no beings exist whatsoever as ordinarily conceived. For compatibilists, thus, the extraordinarily	demanding	bodhisattva ideal-informed, as it is,	by a steadfast commitment to forego the body, its enjoyments, and all virtue for the sake of accomplishing the	welfare	of	all sentient	beings-makes	a	compelling case for allowing special dispensation. On an agent-neutral consequentialist interpretation	of	the	Mahāyāna	ethical	project,	we	must	grant	the	Buddhist	saint dispensation for the unfathomable and mysterious ways in which utterly impersonal psychophysical aggregates accomplish their aim, while the unenlightened must be content with merely following rules. 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 93 24/5/16 11:30:55 94 C. Coseru I do not dispute this claim. Nor do I disregard the importance of revising our traditional	notions	of	agency	and	moral	responsibility	to	accommodate	new	findings about the sociobiological roots of morality. Rather, I simply caution that such revisionary strategies, insofar as they seek to explain agency in eventcausal terms, may well (if they have not done so already) set the stage for moral epiphenomenalism.3 Indeed, on the view I defend here, an effective compatibilist solution to the problem of reconciling freedom of the will and determinism depends on expanding, rather than eliminating, the complex register of factors that underpin the experiential aspects of our moral life. In short, although social and	cognitive	psychology	has	significantly	augmented	our	knowledge of agency, there is a widespread sense that mapping out human action in impersonal terms-a	project	of	significant	affinity	to	abhidharma-has	advanced	only	marginally our understanding of agency, of what it is like to show responsiveness to norms, reasons, and principles. Freedom, destiny, and the will As with classical Western conceptions of causality and agency, the Indian philosophical context at the time of the Buddha presents us with a wide array of philosophical	views:	for	(arguably)	strict	determinists	like	the	Ājīvikas,	who	embrace a fatalist conception of human existence, all actions are predetermined by an external force of destiny (niyati), from which there is no escape; at the other end of	the	spectrum	we	find	the	Cārvākas,	the	indian	physicalists,	for	whom	the	most probable explanation for the existence of the universe is a series of random events.	The	Cārvākas reject both the law	of	karma	and the concept	of	destiny because implicit in these notions is a view of existence as inherently purposeful (Bhattacharya 2011). The latter view is not unlike that of some contemporary libertarians	who,	drawing	on	the	findings	of	quantum	mechanics,	argue	that	the statistical probabilities that characterize events at the subatomic level extend to the everyday realm of human experience: actions, though biologically and psychologically conditioned, and constrained by the norms of social conduct, are not strictly causally determined (Kane 1996, 1999; Wallace 2011). It is worth noting from the outset that causal determinism was far less an issue of	concern	for the	historical	Buddha	than	the	fatalism	of the	Ājīvikas.	in	a	discourse	on	"The	Fruits	of	the	ascetic	life"	(Sāmaññaphala	Sutta),	the	Buddha	is particularly	concerned	to	reject	the	view	of	Makkhali	Gosāla,	who,	by	removing all trace of effort from human action, renders the ethical life meaningless: neither defilement	nor	purification	have	any	cause	or	condition,	no	action	is	voluntarily undertaken either by oneself or by another, and, generally speaking, humans lack power, energy, and steadfastness; it is simply their lot in life to experience pain and pleasure in a manner beyond their control (DN2.19–20, in Walshe 1987, pp. 94ff.; Meyers 2014, pp. 62ff.). In condemning this view, the Buddha not only emphasizes	the	reality	of	karmic	action	but	also	the	efficacy	of	individual	effort. To those who claim that nothing is done either by oneself or another, the Buddha responds	by	pointing	out	the	inconsistency	of	such	statements:	taking	a	first	step 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 94 24/5/16 11:30:55 Freedom from responsibility 95 in articulating any view whatsoever shows that there is an element of initiative, that	one	either	strives	to	overcome	some	resistance	or	to	reach	the	sort	of	reflective equilibrium that comes with understanding and insight (AN.6.38, in Bodhi 2012, p. 901). Should	this	rejection	of	fatalism	be	taken	to	mean	that	the	Buddha	is	championing freedom of the will? More importantly, is there a notion of personal autonomy at work in the Buddha's clear admonition to his followers to jettison the extremes of both determinism and indeterminism, and devote themselves instead to an ethical life in the pursuit of liberation? It would appear that the picture of the ordinary human condition, mired in ignorance and moved by shortterm pragmatic goals, precludes such a notion of personal freedom. The evaluative attitude implicit in this complex analysis of cognitive and affective states, however, seems to suggest otherwise. Clearly, an expression of selfconcern and concern about the consequences of one's actions is a ubiquitous feature of Buddhist teachings. Indeed, while the value placed on shame and apprehension suggests that the Buddha favors a conception of responsibility and moral selfregard for those pursuing the Eightfold Path, such a perspective is not ultimate (see Meyers' 2014 deft analysis of this view).	Specifically,	morally reactive attitudes,	whether	unwholesome (e.g., anger and hatred) or wholesome (shame and apprehension), are still impersonal mental factors. But, like the complex notion of disposition (cetanā), they are also selfreferential mental states: "they presuppose the notion of oneself as a morally responsible agent" (Meyers 2014, p. 63). Is this conception of moral agency selfreferentiality constitutive or is it merely an emergent feature of these mental states? Are our choices and the sense of control and ownership of action illusory or is agency built into the very fabric of lived experience? Agency, choice, and selfreferentiality are complex notions with a rich and contested	history	of	interpretation.	Some	attention	to	Western	theories	of	intentionality, the will, and motivation for action, then, is necessary if we are to make any progress in clarifying whether, and in what way, we can make sense of the Buddhist	conception	of	selfless	agency.	This	contrasting	analysis	must	recognize that while Western and Buddhist ethical discourses are embedded in their own intellectual histories, there is no neutral stand from which to assess their merits and possible limitations. While contemporary philosophers do address metaethical questions, historically the paucity of inquiries into the nature of ethics in Buddhist philosophy makes the matter all the more complicated. By noting this absence	(first	pointed	out	in	Siderits	1987),	i	do	not	mean	to	suggest	that	Buddhists either deny or doubt the possibility of moral knowledge. Nor do I mean to endorse the sort of moral skepticism championed by Mackie (1977), which says that judging a particular action morally permissible is simply a statement about one's participation in a specific way of life, Buddhist or nonBuddhist. i do, however, share the generally Kantian line of argumentation, which says that there are better and worse ends, and thus better and worse ways of achieving those ends depending on the criteria that we adopt (Kant 1993). As I already noted, efforts to capture the scope of Buddhist ethics are mired in disagreements, mainly between those who favor a virtue ethical model, on 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 95 24/5/16 11:30:55 96 C. Coseru account of the presence of a rich catalogue of virtues and of practices conducive to their mastery (Keown 2001), and those who advance consequentialist interpretations,	owing	mainly	to	the	identification	of	happiness	and	the	elimination	of suffering	as	key	elements	in	a	comprehensive	list	of	factors	that	define	wellbeing (Goodman	2009).	Efforts	to	map	out	the	theoretical	structure	of	Buddhist	ethics in	sui	generis	terms-and	thus	to	steer	clear	of	both	consequentialist	and	virtue ethical	models-have	so	far	gestured	in the	direction	of	moral	phenomenology as the basis for the tradition's normative claims: only the experience of enlightened beings can serve as a criterion for moral blame or praiseworthiness (see Garfield	2010,	2014).	i	have	no	intention	to	weigh	in	on	this	debate,	relevant	as it	may be to the broader question of	whether a specific conception of agency underwrites the Buddhist path all the way to awakening or only up to a point (namely, the moment immediately preceding it). Of course, this question assumes that we know what kind of agency, if any, enlightened beings exhibit, an assumption that lies at the heart of yet another controversy, about the very nature	and	possibility	of	enlightened	agency	(see	Garfield	2006;	Finnigan	2011). let	us, then,	briefly	consider	the	concept	of	the	will.	an	integral	part	of	the Western vocabulary, captured by such ubiquitous statements as "Did you do that of	your	own	free	will?"-the	idea	of	will	occurs	in	the	classical	worlds	of	neither india	nor	Greece.	For	aristotle,	who	provides	much	of	the	technical	philosophical vocabulary for virtue ethics, voluntary action is conveyed by the less ambiguous concept of deliberative desire (bouleutikê orexis), which captures what it means for an action to be within our power. For an action to be deliberately and effectively undertaken, desire and reason must converge: it is only when reason is desiderative (orekticos nous) and desire is thoughtful or deliberative (orexis dianoetike) that we are in a position to make informed decisions (NE.VI.2, 1139b4, in Aristotle 1999, p. 87; Murphy 2001). When these two work in concert they give rise to the more capacious idea of moral purpose (prohairesis). In classical India, there are different avenues of volitional pursuit, typically classed alongside material (artha), affective (kāma), social (dharma), and ultimately emancipatory (mokṣa) ends. These ends are not necessarily continuous. The	ethical	life,	centered	on	the	first	three	aims,	is	almost	entirely	dispensed	with in	the	generally	spiritual	and	otherworldly	quest	of	upaniṣadic	lore.	if	aristotle heeds the Socratic dictum 'knowledge is virtue,' the upaniṣadic sage Yājñavalkya	is	proleptically	Humean	in	regarding	morality	as	the	play	of	emotions over reason. The early Buddhist conception of the ethical life, likewise, shares in this upaniṣadic impulse to transcend all inclination, desire, and emotion in the pursuit of the higher, if still selfreferentially constituted, goal of liberation (see Bilimoria et al. 2007, pp. 40ff.). The	idea	of	'will'	as	a	distinct	faculty	occurs	for	the	first	time	in	the	writings of	St.	augustine.	in	On Free Will (De libero arbitrio),	St.	augustine	sets	out	to address the problem of theodicy by the introduction of a new faculty, free will (liberum arbitrium), which alone is responsible for moral acts being deemed praiseworthy or blameworthy.4 an omniscient and omnibenevolent God, as creator of the world, cannot be the cause for the primal fall from grace that 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 96 24/5/16 11:30:55 Freedom from responsibility 97 marks	the	human	condition	(according	to	the	old	Hebrew	myth	of	the	Fall	from Eden). Hence, the invention of a new faculty, the will, capable of producing uncaused	free	action-that	is,	action	that	is	not	accountable	in	terms	of	natural events	and	processes	(see	Stump	2001).	But	he	also	uses	the	term	voluntas ('the will'),	which	he	adopts	from	Cicero	and	especially	Seneca,	who	use	it	to	refer	to the	Stoic	manner	of	assenting	to	a	given	proposition.	For	the	Stoics,	this	assent to propositions of the sort, "No man can compel you to receive what is false,"5 has moral valence. Thus, to the extent that Augustine's use of 'voluntas' captures the notion that we morally assent to various propositions, his understanding of agency is ultimately continuous with the Greek conception of moral purpose (prohairesis),	especially	as	it	finds	articulation	in	Epictetus.	With	one	caveat:	the Stoic	and	Christian	conceptions	of	human	nature	are	radically	different.	For	the Stoics,	who	take	human	nature	to	be	ultimately	pure,	pursuing	the	moral	life	is basically living in accordance with right reason (not to be confused with the (kantian) idea	of	a	morality	grounded in rationality).	as	Seneca	so	eloquently puts it in Epistulae morales, the pursuit of such moral ends is predicated on the notion that "conduct cannot be right unless the will to act is right" (1917–1925, XCV, pp. 56ff.). For Augustine, the 'right will to act' becomes 'free will,' not as a condition for the possibility of right attitudes of the mind (habitus animi), but as a necessary condition of the justice of divine retribution (see Rist 2001, pp. 34ff., for a detailed discussion). Clearly, nothing resembling the Augustinian conception of a free will tied to divine justice is to be found in Indian philosophy. Karma, or the reward and punishment for action, is the closest we come to a conception of justice. But this is cosmic, rather than divine, justice: karmic consequences depend on the universality of the causal principle of dependent arising, not on uncaused divine judgment. The more pressing question, however, is whether the idea of free will is compatible with determinism, given a conception of the world as causally ordered. Here,	i	want	to	draw	on	Stoic	thought	again	as	providing	a	better	basis	to	conceptualize	the	Buddhist	conception	of	moral	agency.	The	Stoic	emphasis	on	the causal antecedents of mental states does not mean that they are externally necessitated (Long 2002, p. 28). The occurrence of mental states may be causally governed, but their intelligibility is not: the latter requires assent, the only criterion of individuation that marks a mental state as mine, as occurring in my mental stream. It is the volition manifest in assenting, thus, that serves as the basis for Stoic	conceptions	of	personal	identity	and	moral	agency.	But	assenting	is	not	the same as judging. Evaluative judgments may intrude, but the entire scope of the Stoic	life	is	to	bracket	them,	to	realize	(with	Epictetus)	that	"death	is	nothing	terrible, else it	would have seemed so even to	Socrates; rather it is the idea that death	is	terrible	that	is	terrible"	(Encheiridion,	5,	in	Hard	2014,	p.	288). This	Stoic	conception	of	the	moral	purpose	(prohairesis), indeed, is not unlike the role assigned to cetanā ('disposition' or 'volition')6 in the canonical Buddhist literature. Variously rendered as 'will,' 'volition,' 'intention,' 'motivation,' 'conation,' 'drive,' 'stimulus,' 'determination,' 'effort,' 'choice,' and 'resolve,' 'cetanā' is typically the sort of bodily, verbal, and mental activity one performs either on 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 97 24/5/16 11:30:55 98 C. Coseru one's own or conditioned by others (AN.II.158, in Bodhi 2012, pp. 563ff.). I can either voluntarily raise my arm or have it raised by another, as a referee would upon	declaring	the	winner	of	a	boxing	match.	Similarly,	i	can	either	think	through an issue and volunteer an opinion or ponder a question and offer a response. Thus, I can say with certainty that my response to a question is causally determined by external factors. But this determinist picture of agency is too simplistic to capture the complexity of intersubjective relations (the sort of relations that, as already noted,	Strawson	has	in	mind	when	he	suggests	that	participant	reactive	attitudes	are indispensable to an account of moral agency and responsibility). My response might be solicited by a question, but that a string of sounds registers as a question requires a complex set of interpretive, evaluative, and analytic skills that can only be constituted as reasons. It is our responsiveness to reasons prompted by valuing judgments-of	the	sort	that	extol	the	cultivation	of	certain	mental	states	as	wholesome	and	the	rejection	of	others	as	unwholesome-that	serves	as	conduit	for	verbal and mental activity, even when caused by other things. The question of freedom and determinism, thus, must consider not whether factors relevant to moral assessment can be causally assessed, but whether the agentneutral framework of Buddhist Reductionism is compatible with a conception of responsibilityentailing moral agency.7 Agency, causation, and the moral domain Does the Buddhist conception of agency demand a radical reassessment of our understanding of voluntary action and of the causal and motivational factors that inform, condition, and sanction our valuing judgments? To answer this question, we	must consider the	defining experience that transforms	Siddhartha	Gautama from a human being caught in the causal web into the Buddha, an enlightened being. This transformative experience becomes at once the source of the Buddhist metaphysical picture of reality and the culmination of all human aspiration for genuine freedom. The centerpiece of this metaphysical picture is the causal principle of dependent arising (pratītya-samutpāda) and a thoroughly reductionist account of persons, which takes volition to be but one of several contributing factors that shape human identity and agency. Firmly situated within this causal web, yet unattached to its emerging phenomena, the Buddha can thus declare that we ought to regard any form of sensation, attention, and consciousness, whether "past, future, or present; internal or external; manifest or subtle . . . as it actually is . . . [as]: 'This is not mine. This is not	my	self.	This	is	not	what	i	am'	"	(SN22,	48,	in	Bodhi	2000,	p.	887).	Rather, we are told, the arising of each element in the person series is only as conditioned	by	the	presence	of	immediately	preceding,	causally	efficacious	elements: [D]ependent on the eye and forms, visualconsciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, that one thinks about. (MN.i.111–112,	in	Ñāṇamoli	and	Bodhi	2001,	p.	203) 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 98 24/5/16 11:30:55 Freedom from responsibility 99 This picture of causality, however, does not entail strict determinism. The enlightened being's actions are not so much causally grounded as conditioned by an ongoing series of enabling factors. Unlike the typical 'if, then' formula of Western	forms	of	sentential	logic,	the	Pāli	canonical	literature	uses	the	locative absolute to capture the conditional nature of phenomena: 'when that, then this.' Hence,	the	central	thesis	(dependent	arising)	that	all	Buddhists	endorse	is: When this is present, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises. When this is absent, that does not come to be. On the cessation of this, that ceases. (See,	e.g.,	MN.ii.32,	in	Ñāṇamoli	and	Bodhi	2001,	p.	655) It would appear thus that the conception of agency in Buddhism is not that of an autonomous, free willing agent or self, but of an embodied and selfreferential bundle of aggregates. We can thus get on with the business of charting out the experiential domain using the 'when that, then this' formula: when there is touch, then there is feeling, when there is awareness, then there is grasping for objects. Can we go as far as to say 'when there is agency, there is moral responsibility'? The early Buddhist literature, as we have already noted, is unambiguous that initiative is essential to moral progress. But the philosophical innovations of later Mahāyāna Buddhism, specifically the doctrine of 'emptiness' (universal metaphysical insubstantiality) proposed by Nāgārjuna, complicate the ethical project.	By	making	the	agentneutral	metaphysical	picture	of	selflessness	indispensable	to	Mahāyāna	Buddhist	ethics,	Śāntideva	describes	a	way	of	living	with the practical consequences of actions that effectively lack agency, and thus also lack the sort of intersubjective relation that entails moral responsibility. This complication is especially problematic when, in the Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCa), Śāntideva (1995), drawing on the principles of dependent arising and momentariness, claims that there is no continuity between agency and the experience of its consequences "in terms of a unity of the continuum of consciousness" (pp. 9, 72). Pressed with the objection that divorcing agency from the experience of moral responsibility makes the pursuit of virtues such as compassion for all sentient	beings	irrelevant,	Śāntideva	appeals	to	the	'two	truths'	(ultimate	vs	conventional) framework of Madhyamaka ('Middle Way') dialectic to make an even more radical claim: from the perspective of ultimate truth, the embodiment of such perfections as wisdom and compassion lacks the intentionality, aboutness or directness of ordinary (conventionally understood) mental states. In response to the crucially critical question: "for whom is there compassion if no being exists?"	(BCa.9.75),	Śāntideva	contends	that	so	long	as	the	delusion-that	there is a task to be done (e.g., bringing sentient beings to the realization of the truth of	emptiness)-persists,	the	illusion	of	effort	persists	too	(BCa.9.76). Thus,	when ethicists like Śāntideva reject even this	minimal conception of agency as the ground for moral and mental cultivation, the Buddhist ethical project reaches an impasse. If there is no agent, and if actions are merely transient events arising within a continuum of causally interconnected states, 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 99 24/5/16 11:30:56 100 C. Coseru what explains the phenomenal character of experience? Touch, after all, is not generic	contact,	but	an	active	and	firm	grip.	awareness	is	not	bare	wakefulness, but the sense of being present here and now. And compassion is no mere feeling for others, but empathetic selfdisclosure in the presence of others. Furthermore, the capacity for selfregulation that grounds our moral sense presupposes that we are not merely selfaware but aware in a way that makes us implicitly responsive to action and their consequences. Even if we assume, as the evidence from cognitive neuroscience seems to suggest, that we are psychologically hardwired to attribute agency and hold others responsible for their actions, the question why such agencyattributing capacities should be accompanied by a moral sense remains	to	be	explained	(see	Gray	et al. 2007; Arico et al. 2011). Whether the Buddhist noself view is simply a theoretical construct, derived from metaphysical considerations about agency and causality, or a descriptive account grounded in the phenomenology of lived experience, matters to our conception of agency and moral responsibility. Compatibilists argue that reductionism about persons is not incompatible with the pursuit of an ethical life. Of course, the compatibilist must acknowledge that the conventional practice of morality (to which the Buddha offers precepts, inspiring tales, and rules of	conduct)	and	Buddhist	metaphysical	doctrine	are	in	conflict	(this	is	precisely Siderits'	2008	view). Can appealing to the 'two truths' framework of Buddhist philosophy solve this conflict?	How	is	the	moral	life	to	be	justified	in	terms	that	ultimately	make	no	reference to anything experiential and intentional? If enlightened agency is no agency at all, what makes it desirable? The Buddha's concern to reject any conception of determinism	that	strips	our	efforts	of	causal	efficacy	becomes	all the	more	pertinent. Indeed, if the Buddhist analysis of experience allows for persons to have the kinds of freedom necessary for the pursuit of moral ends, then the principle of dependent arising cannot function as a basis for strict causal determinism. That agency and moral responsibility are deeply intertwined is obvious when we consider the relation between practical deliberation and theorizing about the nature of things: the latter looks for causal explanations of events, and ultimately finds	them	in	impersonal	elements	and	factors	that	are	constitutive	of	the	natural world. This naturalistic picture has no place for concepts like 'freedom' and 'responsibility.' But most, if not all, of our most pressing deliberations rest on practical reasoning	of the	sort that	asks,	"What	should	i	do?"-and then looks for	the	most	justifiable	course	of	action.	if	such	is	the	case,	then	holding	myself responsible for actions that I undertake is integral for their success. That is, regardless of whether theoretical reason is able to demonstrate freedom or not, practical reason must assume that freedom is possible for the purpose of effective action. This Kantian perspective on human agency is motivated by the assumption that the kind of freedom we are supposed to consider (and criticize) is as described by libertarians or agent causal theorists. This conception of freedom gives agency its spontaneity within the logical space of reasons. Do 'freedom' and 'responsibility' belong in a discourse about causation in the natural world? If such discourse does not eliminate consciousness from its ultimate 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 100 24/5/16 11:30:56 Freedom from responsibility 101 picture of what there is, then freedom and responsibility are no mere artifacts of practical reason, but epistemically objective features of lived experience. If, on the other	hand,	we	find	no	room	for	practical	concerns	about	how	best to live in	our ultimate	ontology,	then	freedom	and	responsibility	are	confined	exclusively	to	the domain of social convention. The Buddhist metaphysical picture of reality, as a product of theoretical reason, is devoid of any reference to selves and their concerns, or indeed to anything substantive. At least in principle, the noself view would preclude any robust account of free will and responsibility. Yet, Buddhist practice requires the observance of certain norms and the valuation	of	certain	types	of	thought,	speech,	and	action	that	are	considered	beneficial. Chief among these is the restraint of unmitigated willful thought, speech, and action. However, this valuation, and the psychological terms in which it is expressed, is at odds with an impersonal account of phenomena in causal terms. Proposals for some kind of Buddhist compatibilism to solve this conflict, as i have	argued elsewhere (Coseru 2017), indirectly render agency in general, and moral agency in particular, epiphenomenal. The largely consequentialist framework of compatibilism, on my view, cannot give an adequate account of our moral institu-tions, and is generally indifferent to the concerns of practical reason. Which action, whose responsibility? Now that we have a clearer grasp of why understanding the nature of agency matters to morality, we can return to the metaphysical question of what personal agency entails. What does it mean to take ourselves as capable of choosing or directing our actions in a deliberate way? As it should be obvious, entertaining such	a	question	and reflecting	on	what it	means for the	alternatives it	presents (voluntary or intentional behavior vs behavior that is simply caused by a totality of causes and conditions) opens up the possibility that reason could serve as a causal motive for action. For someone like Kant, this deliberative process does not simply inform, but also enacts, the idea of spontaneity (1998, A533/B561, p. 533). In short, when we act, as opposed to merely being acted upon by causal factors beyond our control, we do so for reasons. We may dispute the libertarian conception of an unconditioned spontaneity. But reflection	compels	us to acknowledge its epistemic	and	phenomenological salience in differentiating between voluntary and involuntary actions. It is, after all, a demonstrable truth that how we choose to act (by deliberating about possible alternatives) makes a difference in how we actually act. Of course, choice means that the alternatives so entertained are equally attainable, and that deliberation is effective in charting the range of available possibilities. The choice to act one way or another is also grounded in all sorts of practical considerations. Do we need a conception of free will or even an idea of freedom in	a	transcendental	sense	to	ground	our	practical	deliberations?	Those	who	find the	kantian	argument-about	the	independence	of	reason	from	the	necessitation of	impulses-compelling,	take	the	view	that	we	can	only	be	free	if	we	conceive of ourselves as such. But this way of framing the problem confronts us with yet 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 101 24/5/16 11:30:56 102 C. Coseru another metaphysical conundrum, in this case about whether conceivability entails possibility. It seem intuitively plausible that we can and indeed do conceive of ourselves as free agents, and thus that we do assume freedom for the possibility of action. And it is equally plausible that we can conceive of ourselves as lacking agency by externalizing the causes of our actions (Dennett 2004, p. 292 entertains this very possibility). This is precisely the strategy that informs Śāntideva's	Madhyamaka ethics: pain, anger, and desire simply arise due to causes and conditions without there being someone for whom the pain is sharp or stingy, the anger righteous or impulsive, and the desire wholesome or unwholesome, respectively. If conceiving of ourselves as free agents challenges the dominant picture of the universe as a causally closed physical system, conceiving of ourselves as lacking	agency	comes,	it	seems,	at	a	significantly	lesser	cost:	with	human	behavior explainable in terms of either external causes or internal, but subpersonal, cognitive processes, we can dispense with the notion of responsibility altogether. The utility calculus at the heart of agentneutral consequentialism compels us to make	the	less	expensive	choice:	sacrificing	freedom	also	means	the	end	of	moral responsibility. It is no longer the individual but her brain or hormones that precipitate	action.	However,	counterintuitive	it	may	seem	at	first,	the	noself	picture is perfectly suited to accommodate this account of personal identity. also	conceivable	is	that	Buddhist	ethical	thinkers	such	as	Śāntideva,	are	less concerned with the possibility of freedom in a causally ordered universe (such possibility is nonetheless taken to be the modus operandi of all enlightened beings), and more with minimizing suffering and/or maximizing happiness for all sentient beings. As there is no overarching normative framework and no need to demonstrate freedom, ethical conduct is simply a matter of pursuing certain pragmatic ends. Most importantly, the rules that regulate the pursuit of such ends vary depending on whether one is a novice bodhisattva or a realized Buddhist saint. And since Buddhist saints, unlike novice practitioners, are permitted to break moral rules in the service of carrying out compassionate actions, they are also free from the responsibility such actions entail for the unenlightened. In the end, it is precisely this freedom from responsibility, perhaps ironically, that makes the bodhisattva ideal the more costly alternative. No responsibility does not just	mean	no	justification	for	action: it	also	means	no	agency,	not	even	for the Buddha, who obviously could not have taught, let alone inspired, myriad generations to follow in his path. Notes 1 See	Caruso	(2012),	Smart	(2006),	and	Wegner	(2002)	for	various	attempts	to	prove	the illusory nature of experiences of mental causation. While not conclusive, Nahmias et al. (2004) review experimental data that seems to favor compatibilist over incompatibilist accounts of free will. 2 Despite the taboo on speaking about 'the self,' psychological and moral attitudes form an integral part of the Buddhist tradition (see Collins 1982, Ch. 6). Also, despite the dominance of the ultraminimalist account of agency developed in the Abhidharma, 826 08 Buddhist 08.indd 102 24/5/16 11:30:56 Freedom from responsibility 103 there	are	good	and	compelling	reasons	to	give	'Buddhist	personalists'	(pudgalavādins) credit for insisting that important features of personhood are ineliminable (see Carpenter 2015; Priestley 1999). 3 The problem with eventcausal theories of action is their failure to capture agency altogether, instead reducing it merely to things that happen to us. On this model, there are pushes and pulls but no one does anything ever. This is the socalled problem of the 'disappearing	agent'	(see	Mele	2003,	Ch.	10;	lowe	2008,	pp.	159ff.;	Steward	2013). 4 as	Garfield	(2014,	p.	166,	n.1)	notes,	both	compatibilists	and	libertarians	claim	augustine as their source, and both readings are possible. 5 as	Epictetus	(Hard	2014)	notes in	Discourses 1.17, moral agency is grounded in our capacity to assent: Can any man hinder you from assenting to the truth? No man can. Can any man compel you to receive what is false? No man can. You see that in this matter you have the faculty of the will free from hindrance, free from compulsion, unimpeded. 6 Among the most common translations are 'will' (Rhys Davids 1898), 'volition or conation' (aung and Rhys Davids 1979), 'choice' (keown 2001), 'volition' (Guenther 1976),	and	'intention'	(Gombrich	1988;	Heim	2014).	Garfield	(2014) thinks	all	arguments in favor of a conception of 'the will' in Buddhism are bad arguments because they rely on tendentious translations of cetanā as 'choice' rather than 'intent' or 'volition.'	See	also	Repetti	(2010)	for	an	analytic	review	of	Western	discussions	of	free	will in Buddhism that focuses on interpretations of the principle of dependent arising, and its possible interpretation as endorsing either a soft or hard determinism. 7 as Siderits (2008, p. 30) notes, since classical indian philosophers did not directly address this problem, we cannot go to the historical record in search of an answer. Instead, the question should be framed in terms of what Buddhists 'should say, given their other commitments.' References arico,	a.,	Fiala,	B.,	Goldberg,	R.F.,	and	Nichols,	S.,	2011.	The	folk	psychology	of	consciousness. Mind & Language, 26(3), pp. 327–352. Aristotle, 1999. Nicomachean ethics. 2nd edn. Translated by T. Irwin. 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