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buddhistethics posted: "ISSN
1076-9005 Volume 25, 2018 It Wasn’t Us: Reply to Michael Brent Rick Repetti
Kingsborough Community College City University of New York In “Confessions of
a Deluded Westerner,” Michael Brent insists no contributions to Buddhist
Perspectives o"
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New post on Journal of Buddhist Ethics
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
It Wasn’t Us: Reply to
Michael Brent
Rick Repetti
Kingsborough Community College
City University of New York
In “Confessions
of a Deluded Westerner,” Michael Brent insists no contributions to Buddhist Perspectives on
Free Will (Repetti) even address free will because none
deploy the criteria for free will that Western (incompatibilist)
philosophers identify: the ability to do otherwise under identical
conditions, and the ability to have one’s choices be up to
oneself. Brent claims the criteria and abilities in that anthology
are criteria for intentional action, but not all intentional actions
are free.
He also insists that Buddhism, ironically, cannot even accept
intentional action, because, on his analysis, intentionality requires
an agent, which Buddhism rejects. I have four responses: (i) Brent
ignores the other half of the debate, compatibilism, in both Western
and Buddhist philosophy, represented in the anthology by several
contributors; (ii) the autonomy of Buddhist meditation virtuosos is titanic
compared to Brent’s autonomy criteria, which latter are relatively
mundane and facile, rather than something Buddhists fail to rise up
to; (iii) such titanic Buddhist autonomy challenges, and possibly
defeats, all major Western arguments against free will; and (iv)
several contributors address the possibility of agentless agency.
These responses could have been taken right out of the anthology, not
only from my contributions.
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