Volume 63, Issue 2, June 2023
Michael Joseph Fletcher
Pages 171-190
https://doi.org/10.5840/ipq202415226
Buddhist No-Self Reductionism, Moral Address, and the Metaphysics of Moral Practice
Can Buddhists be Motivated by Second-Personal Moral Reasons?
In this paper, I argue that, on a reductionist reading of Buddhist no-self ontology, Buddhists could not have sincere ethical intentions toward persons. And if Buddhists cannot have sincere intentions toward persons, they cannot have second-personal moral reasons for acting. From this I conclude that Buddhists fail to qualify as genuine members of the moral community if, as some contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophers argue, such membership depends on an individual agent¡¯s having the capacity to be motivated by second-personal moral reasons.