Selfhood and the Metaphysics of Altruism
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Selfhood and the Metaphysics of Altruism A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI¢I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHILOSOPHY MAY 2017 By Kevin Perry Maroufkhani Dissertation Committee: Arindam Chakrabarti, Chairperson Ron Bontekoe George Tsai Peter Hershock Sai Bhatawadekar ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to my family, particularly, Rosanne Perry, Dariush Maroufkhani, and Roya Dennis for their moral support and stubborn belief that I could accomplish this project despite all the obstacles I created for myself. I would like to acknowledge my chair, Dr. Arindam Chakrabarti, for the breadth and vivacity of his philosophical imagination, which has continued to challenge me, and nudge me out of complacency and inevitable philosophical naps. His analytical rigor, teaching-presence, and facility in world philosophy is a testament to what is possible in the field of global philosophical discourse. I am grateful for the many hours of selfless instruction he provided, and the fertile ideas cultivated in his classrooms. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Ron Bontekoe, who has always challenged me in the true spirit of a philosophical friend. Dr. Bontekoe has been a careful and caring academic advisor, and, in the courses I’ve taken with him, has never let me off the hook. He does not mince words, and because of the background depth he has provided in hermeneutics, biology, and theoretical ethics, he has greatly benefited this project. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Peter Hershock, who continually reminds me that a hermeneutical lens can make or break the credibility, rigor and sensitivity of cross-cultural conversation. Dr. Hershock’s innovative work has inspired me to develop future projects in which my work can more compellingly touch ground and get a bit grittier in detail and much-needed application. His patient and detailed feedback on this project deserves to be addressed and developed in a much larger work, replete with primary source material and challenges to taken-for-granted paradigms that limit the imaginative scope and fertility of Buddhist thought. I would like to acknowledge Dr. George Tsai, whose rigor in analytic ethics and whose personal and professional advice has kept my conversation from veering off (too deeply, I hope) into metaphysical rabbit holes. I am also indebted to Dr. Rajam Raghunathan, whose short stay at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa provided me with much needed seminars in Madhyamaka Buddhism, Sanskrit-Buddhist metaphysics, and thorough going analyses of the kṣaṇabhaṅgavādins in dialogue with contemporary, analytic metaphysics. She also took time out of her busy schedule to help me sharpen my Sanskrit skills (which, I’m afraid, are never quite sharp enough). I would like to thank Dr. Sai Bhatawadekar for tackling this project on such short notice. Her reputation for academic excellence and careful analysis exceeds her, and I am grateful that she has devoted her valuable time to the somewhat onerous concoction I’ve produced here. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the philosophy department and its innovative faculty at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. By spearheading global philosophical dialogue, and innovating in this field when it was in its infancy, the department has cultivated intellectual possibilities that the humanities would be surely impoverished for lacking. Particularly, the innovative works of Dr. Eliot Deutsch and Dr. Roger Ames, among others, have been standouts, and no one in this department moves too far out of their shadows. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................................iii INTRODUCTION: AN ETHICAL DEFENSE OF SELFHOOD AS OTHER-CENTRICITY………………….... iv-xxiv CHAPTER 1 SELFHOOD AND ETHICAL AGENCY: OWNING MORAL SELFLESSNESS 1.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….. 1-7 1.2 Self-talk and Practical Deliberations: The Gap Between Self and Other.. 8-20 1.3.1 Conceiving Moral Selflessness: Unselfish Egocentricity…………………….... 20-33 1.3.2 Non-egocentricity, Unselfishness, and Other-regarding Considerations..34-37 CHAPTER 2 SELFLESSNESS AND NORMATIVITY: ŚĀNTIDEVA AND EMPTINESS ETHICS 2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..... 38-47 2.2 Ownership and No-Self Views………………………………………………………...... 47-55 2.3 Ownership and Individuation: Varieties of Selflessness……………….......... 55-62 2.4 Bodhicaryāvatāra: Altruism, Egoism, and Utility………………………….......... 62-67 2.5 Bodhicaryāvatāra: Altruism and the Anātman Dilemma………………......... 67-89 2.6 Toward Ownership and Other-centricity………………………………… .............. 89-92 CHAPTER 3 BEING OTHER THAN MYSELF: DEFENDING AN ETHICS OF SELFLESSNESS 3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...... 93-98 3.2.1 Anticipating My Future: How to Treat Myself as Other…………………......... 98-101 3.2.2 The Continuant Other: Good Reasons to Care About My Surrogate (Non)-Self.................................. 102-107 3.3.1 Ego-Tunnels and Madhyamaka: The Ethics and Consolation of Simulated (Non)-Selves................................. 108-120 3.3.2 Madhyamaka, Ego-Tunnels, and Altruism: Seeing the World as a Spectrum of Graded Concerns for the Other.......... 120-132 3.4 Does the Existence of a Self Make Any Practical Difference?........................ 132-147 3.5 Madhyamaka as Borderless and Constructed Care for the (Non)-Self..... 147-155 CHAPTER 4 EXALTED ALTRUISM AND MEREOLOGICAL HOLISM 4.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................... 156-162 4.2 The Normative Self........................................................................................................ 162-168 4.3 Selves as “Ownerless” Owners: Revisiting Sidgwick’s Ethical Dilemma.................................................................. 168-181 4.4 Two Chief Claims to Defend........................................................................................ 182-190 4.5.1 The Practical Inadequacies of the Anātman Thesis: Critique of Chapter 3...................................................................................................... 190-192 4.5.2 Numerical Distinction and the Egoist’s Strategy................................................ 193-196 4.5.3 Motivating Ethical Egoism............................................................................................197-208 4.5.4 A Rationally Reconstructed Buddhist Response................................................ 209-220 4.6 Momentariness and the Problem of Other Persons in Dharmakīrti: An Advaita-Śaivite Response...................................................................................... 220-229 4.7.1 The Problem of Inferring Other Minds, And the Possibility of Sharing a World................................................................... 229-232 4.7.2 Mereological Holism and Other Minds: A Metaphysical Solution to the Problem of Unity in Diversity (Bhedābheda)..................................................................................................................... 232-242 4.8.1 Self and Other Minds…a Bridge to Motivated Altruism................................... 242-248 4.8.2 “Guessing” the Existence of Other Minds: A Śaivite Account of Reaching Common Ground................................................ 248-256 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................ ........ 257-265 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................ 266-269 ABSTRACT Altruistic and greater-good considerations are not only fundamental aspects of ethical maturity, but also a basic means for coming to know each other. Rational egoism (the view that practical rationality requires some form of personal pay-off for the goal-driven agent) is not so easily snubbed, nor has it fallen terribly out of fashion in the social sciences and economics. I argue that it is not a truism that altruism is less natural than egocentrism for an ordinary self. It is false. I aim to reconceive the problem that altruistic considerations seem less rational than justified, egocentric considerations. I conclude that the self can identify with subjectivity as such, and thereby advance the interests of a “we- self.” While epistemically distant, the “we-self” is ontologically prior to the ego. I conceive the problem in terms of a central distinction in Indian philosophy; the distinction between an ego-self (ahaṅkāra) and either a bundle of property tropes (as we find in schools of Buddhist philosophy), or a persisting synthesizer of experiences that is not solely identified as “this body” (as we find in Monistic-Śaivism). For Mādhyamika-Buddhist thinkers like Śāntideva (c. 8th century C.E.), an error-theory of self provides good reasons for altruism. I argue that this is logically unconvincing. In chapter 3, I appropriate Levinas’s discussion of the Other/other to develop a Buddhist- inspired, Emptiness Ethics. However, I dismantle this in chapter 4, where I appeal to aspectual metaphysics, particularly, the notion of composition as identity (CAI), to clarify not only the rational status of other-centric considerations, but the very possibility of acting on such considerations. In chapter 4, I offer a Śaivist-inspired solution to the problem of other minds. Borrowing