Karma, Moral Responsibility, and Buddhist Ethics
Bronwyn Finnigan ANU
The Buddha taught that there is no self. He also accepted a version of the doctrine of karmic rebirth, according to which good and bad actions accrue merit and demerit respectively and where this determines the nature of the agent’s next life and explains some of the beneficial or harmful occurrences in that life. But how is karmic rebirth possible if there are no selves? If there are no selves, it would seem there are no agents that could be held morally responsible for ‘their’ actions. If actions are those happenings in the world performed by agents, it would seem there are no actions. And if there are no agents and no actions, then morality and the notion of karmic retribution would seem to lose application. Historical opponents argued that the Buddha's teaching of no self was tantamount to moral nihilism. The Buddha, and later Buddhist philosophers, firmly reject this charge. The relevant philosophical issues span a vast intellectual terrain and inspired centuries of philosophical reflection and debate. This article will contextualise and survey some of the historical and contemporary debates relevant to moral psychology and Buddhist ethics. They include whether the Buddha's teaching of no-self is consistent with the possibility of moral responsibility; the role of retributivism in Buddhist thought; the possibility of a Buddhist account of free will; the scope and viability of recent attempts to naturalise karma to character virtues and vices, and whether and how right action is to be understood within a Buddhist framework.
Buddhism centres on the teachings of the Buddha, who lived and taught somewhere between
the 6-4th centuries BC. There is some disagreement about what exactly he taught, how to
interpret his views and what they entail. But most agree that the Buddha’s early teaching of the
Four Noble Truths is central. This teaching analyses the metaphysical and moral-psychological
causes and conditions of suffering. It identifies attachment to self as a central cause of suffering
but claims that this attachment is rooted in ignorance because (amongst other things) there is,
in fact, no self.1
There is considerable debate about the nature and entailment of the Buddhist claim that there is ‘no self’, as well as some contemporary debate about whether it was actually taught by the Buddha or introduced by later Buddhist scholastics. I will return to these points.
The Buddha also accepted some version of the doctrine of karmic rebirth. Like most
scholars in classical India, the Buddha accepted a cosmology of multiple realms of existence
into which sentient beings are born, die, and reborn in a continuous cycle.2 The process of
rebirth is known as saṃsāra. Where one is reborn is driven by the law of karma which functions
over moral action; good actions generate karmic merit and bad actions generate karmic
demerit. An agent's accumulated karmic debt determines the kind of existence they will have
in their next life and it causes some auspicious and inauspicious events to occur in that life.3 It
also partially explains the nature and fact of their present existence as well as some of the
auspicious and inauspicious events that occur in this life.
If we broadly define the concept of ‘moral responsibility’ as the relation by which agents are held to account for their morally evaluable actions, this doctrine offers a transpersonal retributive account of moral responsibility. It is retributive because karmic merit and demerit is a matter of deserved reward and punishment. And it is transpersonal because the laws of karma function across lifetimes and modes of existence. But how is karmic rebirth possible if there are no selves? If there are no selves, it would seem that there are no agents that could be held morally responsible for ‘their’ actions. If actions are those happenings in the world performed by agents, it would seem that there are no actions. And if there are no agents and no actions, then karmic retribution, and morality more broadly, seem to lose application. Historical opponents argued that the Buddha's teaching of no self was
he Buddha accepted a cosmology of six realms: two heavenly realms, a human realm, a realm of animals, a realm of hungry ghosts, and a realm of hell beings. The Buddha considered each realm to be impermanent and each mode of being to have its faults and limitations. Those born in the heavenly realms, for example, are considered to experience progressively subtle states of meditative calm but these experiences are obscured by mental defilements, such as pride. The behavioural expression of these defilements accrues karmic demerit and eventually leads to a lower rebirth. See Harvey (2000: 11-14) 3 I say ‘some’ because Buddhism recognises other forms of causation and does not explain all possible happenings in terms of karmic causation.
tantamount to moral nihilism.4 The Buddha, and later Buddhist philosophers, firmly reject this charge.
Historical and contemporary explanations of how and why Buddhism does, in fact, avoid the charge of moral nihilism spans a vast intellectual terrain, engaging issues in metaphysics, moral psychology and ethics as well as epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind. These issues also inspired centuries of philosophical reflection and debate, spanning cultures and continents, and resulted in a complex network of competing philosophical positions and schools. Any attempt to survey the relevant literature will provide, at best, a very narrow and selective snapshot of available views. However, since many of these issues are relevant to contemporary discussions of ethics and moral psychology, even a limited snapshot is valuable.
This article will contextualise and briefly discuss five historical and contemporary debates that emerge from the apparent tension between the Buddha's teaching of no-self and the possibilities of karmic retribution and morality. These debates concern whether the Buddha's teaching of no-self is consistent with the possibility of moral responsibility; the role of retributivism in Buddhist thought; the possibility of a Buddhist account of free will; the scope and viability of recent attempts to naturalise karma to character virtues and vices, and whether and how right action is to be understood within a Buddhist framework. This ‘selective snapshot’ of issues covers much philosophical ground. An objective of this article is to make explicit the ways in which these issues are intimately related in the Buddhist context. the article will begin by providing an overview of the Buddha's teaching of the Four Noble Truths since this teaching provides both the context and justificatory grounds for various Buddhist positions on the above issues.
4 Buddhism is accused of nihilism on several grounds. One ground refers to the Buddhist rejection of Brahmanical conceptions of God (See Patil 2009). Another ground refers to a certain understanding of the Madhyamaka Buddhist idea of emptiness (śūnyatā, see Huntington 1995). This article focuses on moral grounds for this charge.
Most contemporary Buddhist philosophers agree that the Buddha’s early teachings of the Four Noble Truths is central to his thought.5 The first is the truth or fact of suffering; suffering
(duḥkha) is a pervasive and unwanted feature of sentient life. In the Buddha’s early teachings,
the concept of suffering is discussed in terms that range from bodily physical pain to complex
psychological states associated with attachment, aversion, and loss.
The second truth diagnoses two main causes of suffering. The first is craving (tṛṣṇā): craving for pleasure, for continued existence (of oneself and what one loves), and for non-being (of that to which one is averse). On the Buddha’s analysis, craving conditions attachment which then causes suffering in the face of change or loss. The second cause of suffering is ignorance (avidyā). Ignorance, in the Buddhist tradition, is not a lack of knowledge but a confluence of false views that are all grounded in a failure to recognize that all things depend on causes and conditions for their existence (pratītyasamutpāda); nothing exists independently of all other things. Since a change to the causes and conditions changes their effect, it is thought to follow that all things are impermanent. This extends to oneself and others. The Buddha taught that there is no permanent and continuing self (ātman) that persists through time. The basic thought is that if we analyse ourselves into our constituent parts, we will only discover causally related physical and psychological elements (beliefs, desires, memories, dispositions etc.). Each of these elements are impermanent; none persists unchanging across lifetimes and each depends on some other elements for its existence. Importantly, there is no single constant, unchanging, underlying substance that unifies them as aspects of ‘me’. The Buddha taught that a thorough understanding of this fact can help remove the grounds for craving and thus the roots of suffering. It can also motivate psychological change by removing the false belief that we have fixed characters and so can’t change the tendencies that detract from our well-being.
5 For a succinct formulation of this teaching, see the Satipatthana Sutta in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (1995).
The third truth is the assertion that suffering can end. It is possible to change from a state of pervasive suffering to one of happiness or overall well-being. Nirvāṇa is the term for the resulting state or way of life. Why does the Buddha think this is true? Because he thinks that nothing exists permanently, everything depends for its existence on causes and conditions. It follows that if one changes the causes and conditions of some effect, one changes the effect. Psychological change is thus possible if one changes the relevant causes and conditions. The fourth truth outlines an eightfold path towards achieving this state of overall well being (or eight constituents of an enlightened way of life).6 The elements of this path or way of life are standardly organised under three headings; wisdom (right view, right intention), ethical conduct (right action, right speech, right livelihood) and meditation (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration).
The Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths inspired centuries of philosophical reflection and led to extensive debates about how best to understand its substantive points. These debates ranged across issues in metaphysics, logic, epistemology, phenomenology, ethics and philosophy of mind. They reached their scholarly peak in India between 4-9th centuries CE and the major philosophical trends were later classified into distinct Indian Buddhist schools. The most prominent were Abhidharma, Pramāṇavāda, Yogācāra, and Madhyamaka.7 These debates were also influenced by the emergence of Mahāyāna Buddhism in the early centuries CE, which attributed additional teachings to the Buddha that sometimes challenged established
6 This disjunction in thinking of nirvāṇa as a resulting state or way of life informs contemporary debates about whether Buddhist thought is best reconstructed (if at all) as a form of consequentialism or virtue ethics. I will return to this point. 7 Although I will use these doxographical distinctions in this article they are, in fact, not so neatly drawn and are to be treated as broad heuristics. They are useful because debates amongst proponents of these schools often turned on broadly accepted points of difference. But, as is often the case in Western philosophy, how to characterize these differences was a matter of dispute. Distinct philosophical schools also had different points of emphasis (some metaphysical, some epistemological, some phenomenological) which sometimes led to misattribution and misclassification. Prominent defenders of some schools were also prominent defenders of others. And some attempts to clarify the positions of distinct schools led to sub-classifications which, themselves, were fiercely contested. For a general introduction to the philosophical grounds on which these Buddhist schools tend to be distinguished, see Siderits (2007), and Carpenter (2014).
Buddhist views and advocated a ‘superior’ path to awakening. Buddhism also spans various cultures, countries, and historical periods and so has been shaped by these different contexts. There is thus no singular ‘Buddhist’ position on most debated issues by Buddhist philosophers; there are many Buddhist views on many substantive philosophical issues. This is particularly true of the issue concerning whether the Buddha's teaching of no-self is consistent with the possibility of moral responsibility.
KARMA AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY: HISTORICAL RESPONSES
Historical opponents argued that the Buddha's teaching of no-self is tantamount to moral
nihilism. The Buddha identifies these implications as ‘wrong views’ that can and should be
avoided (The Buddha 1995: 618-628). Historical and contemporary Buddhist philosophers
offer various explanations of how Buddhism can avoid this charge of moral nihilism. I will begin
by considering some historical approaches. A standard strategy of response consists of: (1)
elaborating the Buddha’s teaching of no self in relation to his idea that all things exist in
dependence on causes and conditions (pratītyasamutpāda); (2) reinterpreting the function of karma
in terms that fit this explanation; and (3) explaining away talk of agents and their actions in
reference to the Buddhist distinction between ‘two truths’.8
With respect to (1), most historical Buddhists insist that, in denying a self, the Buddha
is not asserting that no-one and nothing exists. Rather, according to at least one prominent
interpretation, he is rejecting a specific conception of self (ātman, a permanent, unchanging
substance) in favour of a positive analysis of persons as causally related configurations of
physical and psychological elements. The Buddha proposes several classifications for these
elements. The most well-known is his analysis of persons as configurations or aggregates of five
types of token elements; the Five Aggregates or skandhas. They are standardly characterised as:
8 Although many historical Buddhist arguments can be analysed in terms of this three-part strategy, I introduce it as an organising device for the sake of clarity rather than to describe an acknowledged methodological instrument.
(1) physical matter (rupa), (2) feeling (vedanā), (3) recognition or cognition (saṃjñā), (4) dispositional tendencies (saṃskāra), and (5) consciousness (vijñāna). 9 The token elements in these configurations are causally related events or states and any particular element is conditioned by a complex interaction of other elements. These elements are diachronically related and have synchronic depth insofar as a token element at a given moment can be conditioned by multiple layers of concurrent token elements. However, the configuration or aggregation, itself, is not considered to be a real substance with causal properties. There is no enduring substantial self that unifies these elements as constituents of ‘me’. It follows that if there is a law of karma, it must operate over these causally related configurations of psycho-physical elements. But which elements in these configurations does it target? This question relates to strategic move (2); reinterpreting the function of karma in terms that fit the above elaboration of the Buddha’s teaching of no-self. According to the Buddha, karma functions over intentions, decisions, or will.10 “It is volition (cetanā), O monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech, or mind” (The Buddha 2012: 963). Many consider this analysis of karma to be one of the Buddha’s great innovations. It is also broadly consistent with the Five Aggregate analysis of persons. If one accepts this analysis, what then should we make of ordinary talk of agents forming intentions, acting intentionally, and the ubiquitous variety of distinctions between oneself and others? This relates to strategic move (3); explaining away talk of agents and their actions in reference to the Buddhist distinction between ‘two truths’. Many Buddhists respond to the above question by appeal to a distinction between conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya) and ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). On at least one version of
There is much scholarly discussion of the precise nature of these token elements. Siderits (1997) and Ganeri (2001) influentially argue that they are best understood as trope-like property particulars. There is also some contemporary debate about how the five types of such token elements are best rendered in English. See Davis & Thompson (2014) and Ganeri (2017) for two competing recent accounts. 10 The interpretative range of the relevant Sanskrit term, cetanā, is broad and more inclusive than the notions of intention, decision and will (which are, themselves, importantly distinct). I will return to this.
this strategic move, ordinary talk of self and other, agents and their actions, is a matter of social convention and linguistic practice but does not reflect the ultimate nature of reality.
The Simile of the Mango in the Milindapañha provides an early example of the first two strategic moves (Rhys-David trans. 1965: 72).11 In the context of a conversation between King Milinda and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena about the operation of karma, King Milinda proposes a simile of someone stealing a mango from another person’s tree to argue that that person could appeal to the Buddha’s doctrine of no-self to justify their behaviour by saying that the mango they stole was not the same mango as that planted by the other person. But Nāgasena replies that the person is responsible on the ground that the stolen mango exists in causal dependence on the one originally planted. It is analogously reasoned that the person could not justifiably appeal to the Buddha’s teaching of no-self to argue that they are not responsible for stealing the mango yesterday because they are not the same person today. This is because there would be a definite causal connection between the elements that constitute ‘themselves’ yesterday as those that constituted ‘themselves’ today. Gethin (1988) takes the point of this simile to be that, properly understood, “the principle of the causal connectedness of phenomena is sufficient […] to answer critics of the teaching of no self and redeem Buddhism from the charge of nihilism” (p.144)
While historical Buddhist responses to the charge of moral nihilism tend to exhibit the above argumentative strategy, Buddhist philosophers vigorously debated the commitments and entailments of its constituent claims. Many disputes focused on the metaphysics and semantics of personal identity but had broader implications for the metaphysics of reality more generally. Competing positions on these issues often function to differentiate Buddhist schools. Although
The Simile of the Chariot (Rhys-David trans. 1965: 34-38) arguably provides an early example of strategic move (3).
there is a lot to be said (and that has been said) about these issues, it might be helpful to have a brief sketch of some of the salient philosophical differences.12 Abhidharma Buddhism is the earliest attempt by Buddhist thinkers to explicate and systematise the Buddha’s teaching into a unified and comprehensive theory. Despite subtle differences in analysis, Abhidharma Buddhists13 take the Buddha to be both proposing a mereological reduction of persons and gesturing towards an exhaustive mereological reduction of conscious experience and reality, a project that they respectively attempt to complete. Abhidharma Buddhists take this project to be motivated by the idea that ‘wholes’ (aggregations, collections, kinds and types) are merely linguistic conventions for grouping otherwise discrete entities. While we might conventionally talk about persons and other kinds of wholes, what ultimately exists, in the Abhidharma view, are simple, causally-related, momentary events individuated by essential properties.14 Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhists reject this analysis of persons and ultimate reality.15 The main point of contention for Mādhyamikas concerns the status of the individuation criterion for ultimately real entities and whether it is consistent with the Buddha’s teachings of dependent origination (Finnigan 2018). Mādhyamikas argue that it is not. The positive upshot of this refutation, however, is unclear (Tillemans 2016). Contemporary scholars treat Mādhyamikas as holding that there is no ultimate reality, there is no ultimately true reductive base for an analysis of persons, but that
thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to elaborate further. 13 The term ‘Abhidharma’ originally refers to a body of teachings attributed to the Buddha. According to tradition, around the third century BCE, the primitive Buddhist community divided into two parties or fraternities: the Sthaviras and the Mahāsāṅghikas which, in turn, sub-divided into multiple distinct schools and lineages in response to doctrinal disputes about how best to interpret the Buddha’s teaching. The contemporary category of ‘Abhidharma Buddhism’ encompasses this variety of viewpoints (and brings with it all the tensions involved in combining competing viewpoints). See Ronkin (2005, 2018) 14 The most prominent contemporary defender of (at least some aspects of) this reductive analysis of persons is Siderits (2003), who compares it favourably with the reductive analysis of persons defended by Parfit (1984). 15 While this is abundantly clear in the case of Madhyamaka, it is less so in the case of Yogācāra because the most prominent defenders of Sautrāntika Abhidharma (e.g. Vasubandhu and Dharmakīrti) are also the most prominent defenders of Yogācāra. This raises complicated issues about how these views are related; whether their advocates changed their minds, whether the textual evidence combines the views of separate authors, whether they imply a philosophical progression of insights, or whether these views are compatible or continuous in some philosophically interesting way.
“our conventional or customary standards of rational acceptance are the only game in town” (Siderits 1989: 238).16 Yogācārins, by contrast, are traditionally read as proposing some form of metaphysical idealism, in terms of which considerations of personal identity are analysed as mere reifications of the structural features of (at least some mode of) conscious experience (Finnigan 2017b, 2018b).17
There is a lot more to be said (and that has been said) about these different analyses of personal identity and reality. If we return to the issue of whether the Buddhist teaching of no self is consistent with a morality based in karmic retribution, these different analyses of personal identity face distinct challenges when it comes to explaining the operation of karma. An Abhidharma analysis might be able to account for the creation of karmic debt because it admits intentions in its reductive base. But some Buddhists argue that Abhidharma cannot explain how this debt accumulates and is discharged (for better or worse) at some later time. This is because karmic debt would need to persist through time but prominent forms of Abhidharma reduce persons to an ontology of momentary psycho-physical elements in causal relations. How could karmic debt persist in such an ontology? (Waldron, 2003) Yogācāra Buddhists respond to this challenge by positing an underlying mode of consciousness, called the store-consciousness (alayavijñāna), which stores karmic debt as seeds or potentials that ‘sprout’ or generate effects in appropriate circumstances (Schmithausen 1987, Waldron 2003). But some Madhyamaka Buddhists object that this is tantamount to reintroducing an enduring, substantial self.
While Buddhists historically debated how best to account for the operation of karma, they did not question its possibility. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that Buddhist thinkers sought to explain the ‘truth’ of the Buddha’s teachings, and the Buddha strongly rejected doctrines which denied karmic retribution (The Buddha 1995: 618-628). To
See also Cowherds (2011) for a sustained discussion of the Madhyamaka conception of conventional truth. 17 Some contemporary scholars argue against this traditional reading and insist that Yogācāra is better understood as some form of phenomenology. This is controversial but influential. See Lusthaus (2002) for its most prominent defense.
doubt its possibility was said to be a mental defilement because it demotivates moral agency. This reflects Buddhism’s practical orientation. An overarching goal of Buddhist thought and practice is the cessation of suffering. In his early teachings, the Buddha refused to answer substantive philosophical questions if he thought it would obstruct this goal in a particular dialogical context. In a conversation with Vacchagotta, for instance, the Buddha refused to answer questions about the nature of self for the apparent reason that it would cause Vacchagotta further confusion and thus suffering (The Buddha 2005: 1031-1033).18 Later Buddhist scholastics did attempt to answer substantive philosophical questions, but their dialectical context was one of defending the Buddha’s teachings against the sophisticated metaphysical and epistemological systems of their orthodox Hindu rivals. Even in this context, however, the possibility of karma and its transpersonal retributive conception of moral responsibility remained unchallenged.
KARMA NATURALISED
While historical Buddhists unquestioningly accepted the doctrine of karma, contemporary
Buddhist philosophers either (1) ignore it, (2) reject it as inconsistent with a respectably
naturalised Buddhist philosophy that fits with a modern scientific point of view, or, (3)
reinterpret it ‘naturalistically’ by retaining some of its moral psychological features while
denying its transcendental commitments, such as reincarnation and transpersonal retribution.
The third strategy is increasingly popular. Many naturalise karma to the fairly
uncontroversial idea that sentient beings can act intentionally and that their intentional actions
18 Some contest the claim that the Buddha denied the existence of self (ātman), arguing that this denial was introduced by later Buddhist scholastics. Supposed evidence is derived from the fact that the Buddha used the terms ‘self’ (ātman), agent and actions, and that the Buddha remains silent in the Vacchagottasutta when directly asked whether the self exists. This is a minority view. Most historical and contemporary Buddhist philosophers consider the Buddha’s analysis of persons to be exhaustive and render meaningless talk of substantial enduring selves and that a proper understanding of the two-truth doctrine adequately explains the Buddha’s use of these terms. Gethin (1998) also convincingly contextualises the Buddha’s silence in the Vacchagottasutta relative to his desire not to confuse his interlocutor rather than reflecting a general agnosticism (p.160).
have a variety of effects on themselves, others, and their physical and social environment (Flanagan 2011). And most emphasise the intrapersonal effects of action on one’s own character or dispositions to feel, act and experience a meaningful world (Keown 1996, Wright 2005). These approaches typically naturalise karma to a psychological mechanism of character development, where character-development is broadly understood as a process of directed change to a constellation of dispositions (behavioural, affective, reactive, discriminating, evaluative) that are conventionally identified as ‘oneself’. Elements of this idea can be found within the traditional doctrine. Buddhists relate the operation of karma to intention (cetanā). Contemporary scholars emphasise that the concept of cetanā has a wide interpretive range that extends beyond volition to include one’s orientation or intentional attitudes towards the objects of one’s experiences (Heim 2013). This might look like a conflation of two senses of intentionality; (1) intentions as volitions with objectives that motivate action, and (2) intentionality understood as the thesis that conscious experiences are object directed. However, contemporary work increasingly emphasises enactive interpretations of conscious experience according to which interests, values, intentions and habituated dispositions inform both what the subject experiences and the ways in which experienced objects solicit behavioural response (Mackenzie 2013, Ganeri 2018). Intentional attitudes such as anger, fear, jealousy (etc.) might be said to exemplify this idea if understood as adopted stances which both inform how an object (person or situation) is experienced and implicate modes of behavioural response (Finnigan 2017, 2019). Such a view might also help explain why the Buddha and later historical Buddhists considered the (otherwise mere) possession and encouragement of these intentional attitudes to be forms of mental activity that accrue karmic merit or demerit. I think there is a lot to be said for this extended analysis of Buddhist cetanā (pending more detail and argument). However, several problems arise from attempts to use it to ground a naturalised account of karma. For one thing, this extended interpretation of cetanā connects
to broader themes in Buddhist moral psychology that make no reference to karma. Most Buddhist philosophers maintain that the Buddhist analysis of persons, as causally related psychological and physical elements, provides for a rich and deep account of the psychological causes and conditions of suffering and overall well-being. Most also contend that this generalises to a broader analysis of the way our inner worlds shape our behaviour in ways that do not necessarily involve conscious acts of choice or decision-making. And many consider this to imply that there are intricate feedback mechanisms between our behaviour and our dispositional modes of experience and response. However, these insights are thought to follow from a thorough analysis of the relationship between the Buddhist doctrines of no-self and dependent origination. It is questionable whether the doctrine of karma is required for their expression.
Further problems arise from the fact that naturalised accounts of karma emphasise the way enacting intentional attitudes, expressing them in bodily action, serves to entrench and reinforce them as habituated dispositions or aspects of character. It is not clear that this captures all relevant aspects of the traditional doctrine of karma. One difficulty concerns how it accommodates the retributive aspect of the traditional doctrine and the sense of agents being held morally responsible by a mechanism of justice that metes out appropriate rewards and punishments (Reichenbach 1990). Many of the historical examples of karmic fruit refer to such goods as fortune, longevity, health, physical appearance and social influence. While some of these goods might causally relate to character (a conscientious person might, for instance, be disposed to act in ways that positively contribute to their health and longevity), many of these goods relate to character only contingently, at best. A good person is just as susceptible to terminal illness or being severely injured in an accident as anyone else (Wright 2005). Without the doctrine of rebirth to guarantee the proportionality of merit and reward or punishment, these retributive goods have no place in a naturalised conception of karma.
This last objection might not seem to be a problem. A defender of naturalised karma might grant the point but insist that there remains a large and interesting class of intrapersonal and social goods that can be causally related to character-development to a sufficiently reliable degree and that these are the only goods it needs to accommodate. But even so, the retributive aspects of the traditional doctrine and the relevant sense of moral responsibility remain unexplained. The traditional doctrine of karma assumes some sense of moral desert; agents get what they deserve (in this life or the next) and are thereby held accountable for their actions. But while the behavioural expression of compassion might generate certain psychological and social goods for the compassionate agent, it seems odd to describe this in terms of desert without some transpersonal or cosmic mechanism to ensure these outcomes. A defender of naturalised karma might respond that the notions of retributive justice and moral desert are irretrievably tied to the notions of rebirth and cosmic justice or to the notion of self that the Buddha rejected and so should be jettisoned. But if naturalised karma jettisons the retributive aspects of cosmic karma, how might it alternatively ground moral responsibility? Some argue that the notion of moral responsibility should also be abandoned (Goodman 2002). But this is extreme and inconsistent with the historical tradition.
A BUDDHIST ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL?
Contemporary Buddhist debates about the possibility of moral responsibility are often related
to the question of whether Buddhism can admit a theory of free will (Repetti 2017). Given that
the Buddha rejects the existence of a substantial self, it would seem that Buddhists should deny
an analysis of free will in terms of agent-causation or agents with sui generis causal powers.
However, the Buddha also explicitly rejected a version of fatalism or the view that occurrences
are inevitably caused (The Buddha 1995: 618-628). This view was thought to be inconsistent
with the Four Noble Truths, which collectively assert that it is possible to change one’s state or
way of life from that of persistent and unwanted suffering to overall well-being. Intentions, volitions or decisions (cetanā) were proposed as relevant causal determinants of action. However, this proposal is arguably consistent with some contemporary versions of determinism,19 and it is a live question whether they are compatible with the possibility of moral responsibility. What is the best way to characterise the Buddhist position on freedom and determinism and is there a contemporary analysis that it best approximates? Contemporary Buddhist philosophers are all over the map on this issue. Buddhism has been variously characterised as assuming ‘hard-determinism’ (Goodman 2002), ‘neo compatibilism’ (Feferman 2010) ‘paleo-compatibilism’ (Siderits 2008), ‘semi-compatibilism’ (Repetti 2017a), and even a form of libertarianism that assumes agent causation (Griffiths 1982). Some argue that Buddhists are illusionists about the possibility of free will (Harris 2012) and others that it is anachronistic to even raise the issue of freedom and determinism in the Buddhist context (Garfield 2017). Debates on this issue are complicated by the fact that these various positions are often contextualized to distinct Buddhist philosophical traditions which do not necessarily share the same metaphysical assumptions. And their contemporary defenders do not necessarily share the same assumptions about what moral responsibility means, requires and entails. If one thinks that moral responsibility necessarily presupposes the metaphysical possibility of a free will, then a defender of naturalised karma will need to navigate this contested terrain. However, the field is still young and various possibilities have yet to be thoroughly explored. One promising strategy might involve appeal to contemporary instrumentalist theories of moral responsibility and/or versions of the social regulation view of free will, according to which activities of praise, blame, reward and punishment function to prospectively
Potential candidates include “physicalism, causal explanations in general, the causal closure of the physical, mechanism, naturalism, and determinism of more and less particular forms (such as psychological, neurological, biological, and physical determinism).” (Vargas, forthcoming)
regulate behaviour rather than as modes of retribution that track desert.20 Breyer (2013) defends a version of this approach in the Buddhist context, arguing that the assignment and acceptance of moral responsibility can be justified in relation to its role in motivating agents to act in ways that eliminate suffering and achieve liberation (p.374). Breyer thus proposes a psychological regulation view of moral responsibility justified in terms of a certain interpretation of the goals of Buddhist practice outlined in the Four Noble Truths.21 While these practices assume conventional distinctions between intentional agents, this is to be treated as just a psychological technique that is normatively justified in terms of efficacy rather than grounded in a robustly substantial metaphysical analysis of free will. While I think a regulatory approach to the attribution of moral responsibility is promising, Breyer’s particular account seems to exclude the retributive dimension of moral responsibility that is so central to the traditional doctrine of karma. While it could be argued that this is the inevitable cost of naturalising karma, it remains an open-question whether some alternative regulatory analysis of Buddhist moral responsibility might admit backward-looking retributive judgments.
BUDDHIST NORMATIVE ETHICS
Discussions of naturalised karma often occur in the context of debates about how best to
understand Buddhist ethics. This is not surprising. Since karma operates over moral action, the
doctrine of karma must presuppose some view of the moral determinants of action. Those who
naturalise karma as a psychological mechanism of character-development tend to argue that
character, as a relevantly extended sense of cetanā, is the morally determining factor for good
See, for example, Schlick (1939), Dennett (1984), Arneson (2003), Vargas (2008, forthcoming), and McGeer (2013, 2015). Vargas argues that there are ways to appeal to forward-looking views of the practice (qua practice) that allow for some backward-looking retributive judgments within the practice. If plausible, it might accommodate some of the retributive dimensions of karma that would be otherwise lost in a naturalised karma. 21 Breyer also claims that in order to most effectively enable successful practice, each practitioner should regard herself as fully responsible for her choices, but others as not responsible. Goodman (2017) suggests a modification whereby we (ordinary, unenlightened folk) should hold ourselves but not others responsible for immoral actions but others and not ourselves responsible for moral actions. Whether this asymmetry consistently coheres with other socially justified notions of justice is an open question.
or bad actions. While good consequences correspond to good actions in the doctrine of karma, these consequences presuppose rather than determine the evaluative worth of the action. From this it has been argued that “karma, is not a consequentialist ethic but a virtue ethic” (Keown 1992: 346). Others argue, however, that relation to suffering provides a more fundamental evaluative ground, even of intentions and character, and so Buddhist ethics is better understood as some form of consequentialism.
The issue of how best to understand Buddhist moral thought in mainstream normative ethical terms dominates contemporary Buddhist moral philosophy. Some insist that Buddhist ethics is best construed in consequentialist terms (Siderits 2003, 2007, 2015, Goodman 2009, 2015). Others that it is a form of virtue ethics (Keown 2001, Cooper & James 2005). Some argue that no version of virtue ethics can provide a viable reconstruction of Buddhist ethics (Kalupahana 1976, Goodman 2009, 2013, Siderits 2015). Others, that Buddhist ethics “cannot be utilitarian” (Keown 2001: 177). Some argue for an integration of these theories into a form of virtue consequentialism (Clayton 2006). Others that Buddhist moral thought is such a complex and messy affair that it resists systematization into a singular ethical theory (Hallisey 1996). And yet others argue that attempting to systematize Buddhist moral thought in terms of Western philosophical categories is moribund because it structurally overlooks what is distinctive of Buddhist moral thought (Garfield 2010-11).
Most participants in these debates accept the observation that Buddhist moral thought is a complex and messy affair. If we take Buddhism in its widest possible sense, spanning countries, cultures, historical periods and distinct philosophical traditions, we find much agreement in moral views but also different points of moral emphasis, distinct modes of moral reasoning, and disagreements about what the Buddha’s teachings practically entail. Recall the Four Noble Truths. The fourth truth outlines an eightfold path or way of living. One of its constituents is ‘right action’. In response to queries about what this practically
entails, the Buddha provided a set of precepts for his disciples to follow in a monastic setting. This is known as the vinaya. The earliest schisms amongst Buddhist communities after the Buddha’s death (or parinirvāṇa) concerned the legitimacy and priority of these precepts. There are now several bodies of vinaya precepts accepted by distinct Buddhist communities around the world.22 The Buddha also did not initially admit the ordination of women. When he did, he provided a more extensive set of vinaya precepts to regulate their behavior than that of monks. There are contemporary debates about the legitimacy of some of these gender-specific precepts, particularly those that require nuns to demean themselves before monks, such as the requirement that nuns sit below or behind monks regardless of their respective spiritual or hierarchical status (Banks Findley 2000).
Further complexity in Buddhist moral thought relates to the emergence of Mahāyāna in the early centuries CE. Mahāyāna Buddhism distinctively recognizes certain additional teachings of the Buddha (or sūtras) that are not accepted by all Buddhists. Some of these sūtras make claims that contradict or are in tension with those made in the early teachings. A controversial case concerns vegetarianism. The first precept taught by the Buddha was that of ahiṃsā or non-violence. Ahiṃsā was a common precept or virtue in classical India and is the center-piece of Jainism. Buddhists often explicate it as the prescription to neither kill nor harm others, where this refers to all sentient beings including animals. The Jains took ahiṃsā to entail vegetarianism. But the Buddha did not prohibit eating meat in his early teachings and there is even some evidence that he may, himself, have eaten meat. 23 This was historically controversial. However, at least three of the Mahāyāna sūtras (Laṅkāvatārasūtra, Mahaparinirvāṇasūtra, and Angulimālasūtra) present the Buddha as explicitly arguing that
They include the Vinaya Piṭaka of the Theravāda (followed in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand), the Dharmaguptaka (followed in China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam), and the Mūlasarvāstivāda (followed in Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal and Ladakh). Historically, they also included the Mahāsaṃghika, Mahīśāsaka and Sarvāstivāda Piṭakas. See Keown (2004). 23 The Buddha did, however, place some constraints on the practice. See Finnigan (2017b:.8)
Buddhists should be vegetarian. And while these sūtras explicitly acknowledge the inconsistency, they explain it away by arguing that the earlier teaching was a mere provisional step towards complete prohibition. These Mahāyāna sūtras were highly influential in China and vegetarianism is virtually definitive of Chinese Buddhism (Kieschnick 2005, Chuan, 2014). This was arguably not the case in India, Tibet or many South East Asian Buddhist countries. While all Buddhists agree that one may not intentionally harm or kill animals, there was (and still is) a lot of disagreement about whether Buddhists should be vegetarian (Finnigan 2017c). The Mahāyāna sūtras also emphasise and champion the bodhisattva ideal. A bodhisattva is a person who has committed to remain in the cycle of rebirth to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. This commitment is called bodhicitta. The motivation for this commitment is said to be their great compassion (mahakaruṇā) for the sufferings of the world. And the enactment or expression of this commitment in action is said to be informed by other moral virtues or perfections, such as loving-kindness (maitrī), equanimity (upekkhā), and sympathetic joy (muditā). There is some debate about whether these ideas constitute a genuine Mahāyāna innovation or just elaborate ideas already contained in the Buddha’s early teachings. They are nevertheless distinctively central to Mahāyāna Buddhist thought and inform distinct modes of moral emphasis and reasoning. In the context of Mahāyāna, these ideas are bound up with the traditional doctrine of karma in interesting ways. For instance, the typical method by which bodhisattvas assist others is by performing good deeds that only indirectly involved others (if at all) and then dedicating the karmic merit to the benefit of others rather than themselves (Clayton 2009). This practice of ‘dedicating merit’ is replicated in the Chinese Buddhist ritual of animal release whereby Buddhists purchase an animal (typically a small fish or turtle) from a temple, release it into a pond or waterway, and dedicate the karmic merit to the benefit of others.
Given the evident plurality in Buddhist moral concepts and modes of moral reasoning, there is good reason to be skeptical that all Buddhist moral thought can be easily unified into a single normative ethical theory. To some extent, defenders of first-order reconstructions of Buddhist ethics acknowledge this fact by contextualizing their accounts to some Buddhist text taken to be authoritative by some Buddhist tradition.24 But even so, they anticipate that these contextualized studies will reveal a single evaluative thread that spans Buddhism as a whole and is sufficiently similar to mainstream theories to warrant comparison. If plausible, it has several potential benefits. It might provide grounds for adjudicating intra-Buddhist disagreements about precepts and implications. It might also serve as an informative conversational bridge with mainstream ethics that goes beyond simply asserting ‘You say this, and Buddhists say this too’ to reveal new justificatory grounds, new modes of reasoning, and new implications for shared evaluative assumptions. Debates remain as to whether consequentialism or virtue ethics best articulates this general evaluative thread. What might justify one or other of these competing theories as a plausible reconstruction of Buddhist moral thought? Finnigan (2017) engages this question and individuates three necessary conditions. The first is that the account needs to be consistent with the Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths. The second is that the account needs to be meta-ethically consistent with some Buddhist metaphysical or epistemological theory (which will exclude some options and render the final verdict on those included beholden to the outcomes of the metaphysical and epistemological disputes at their justificatory base). And the third is that the account needs to plausibly reconstruct the moral thought or reasoning contained in some Buddhist canonical text. The first condition is the most important given that the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths is the closest to a central tenet of Buddhism accepted by all Buddhists. If some
Good examples are Clayton (2006) and Goodman (2009) who reconstruct the moral thought of Śāntideva.
version of Buddhist normative ethics is inconsistent with this teaching, then it should be rejected as an implausible reconstruction. Finnigan (2017) provides reasons to think that some version of Buddhist consequentialism and some version of Buddhist virtue ethics can meet this condition. Stated briefly, the Four Noble Truths can justify some version of Buddhist consequentialism if one emphasizes the first noble truth and accepts a specific interpretation of the third. On this reading of the Four Noble Truths, the over-arching goal of Buddhist practice is to eliminate suffering and produce nirvāṇa, where nirvāṇa is understood as a state of overall well-being. Actions (intentions, dispositions) are justified as good relative to their role in causing these outcomes. But the Four Noble Truths can also justify some version of Buddhist virtue ethics if one accepts a different interpretation of the third noble truth and emphasize the fourth. On this alternative reading, the eightfold path characterizes the constituents of nirvāṇa, understood as an enlightened way of life. Actions (intentions, dispositions) are justified as good to the extent that they are mutually dependent and reinforcing constituents of such a way of life and are collectively inconsistent with pervasive and unwanted suffering. Both accounts involve consequences of a sort insofar as they both posit conditional relations between their various constituents. But in one case the evaluative relation is instrumental and assumes an external relation between the evaluated item (means) and the basis of evaluation (effect). And in the other, the evaluative relation is constitutive and assumes an internal regulative relation between the evaluated item and other aspects of the relevant system or way of life. There is a lot to be said about this distinction. Versions of it are widely employed in contemporary Buddhist scholarship and are respectively related to utilitarianism and virtue ethics. They do not readily map onto what contemporary Buddhist philosophers defend in their name, however. The Buddhist consequentialism of Goodman (2009), for instance, looks an awful lot like the version of Buddhist virtue ethics outlined above. There is also reason to think that both reconstructions of Buddhist Ethics can satisfy the remaining two conditions Finnigan
(2017) identifies as necessary to count as a justified reconstruction of Buddhist moral thought. This raises important questions about whether we should embrace a genuine pluralism about Buddhist ethics. Leaving this question open, there are several positive and less controversial conclusions one could draw. A potentially positive outcome is that Buddhist consequentialism and Buddhist virtue ethics provide two distinct routes for a defender of naturalized karma to justify practices of ascribing moral responsibility and the various evaluative components of their proposed mechanism for character-development. These practices or components can be justified relative to their instrumental role in eliminating suffering and producing overall well being or to their constitutive role in reinforcing and regulating an overall good way of living (both individually and socially) that is inconsistent with pervasive suffering. As a result, they provide more grounds for potentially fruitful cross-cultural exchange.
CONCLUSION
The Buddha’s teachings of the Four Noble Truths contain several distinctive ideas that are relevant to contemporary discussions of moral psychology. This article focused on debates concerning whether the Buddha's teaching of no-self is consistent with the possibility of moral responsibility; the role of retributivism in Buddhist thought; the possibility of a Buddhist account of free will; the scope and viability of recent attempts to naturalise karma to character virtues and vices, and whether and how right action is to be understood within a Buddhist framework. The discussion was not exhaustive; Buddhism contains many more themes that are relevant to moral psychology than discussed in this article and there is more to be said about those that were discussed. This article had a more focused aim: to introduce and explore some of the more distinctive features of Buddhist moral philosophy and, hopefully, inspire further inquiry.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Many thanks to Tom Tillemans for informal discussion of the philological background and to
Manuel Vargas and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.
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[[Category:]Buddhist Philosophy]
