The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will meet on April 7th from 2:00-4:00 in-person at the Graduate Center (Room 7395) for a talk by Allison Aitken (Columbia).

Title: Vasubandhu on intentional action: From mind-body to mind-only

Abstract: Jonathan Schaffer argues that mereological nihilism “culminates in monism.” In other words, the same sorts of parsimony considerations that motivate the rejection of real composites ultimately lead to a monist ontology. In this talk, I show how the 4th-5th century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu makes a similar argument, but instead of proposing an existence monism, as Schaffer does, Vasubandhu advances a type-monism–specifically, a form of metaphysical idealism on which all that exist are mental representations. I show how he exploits challenges confronting mereological nihilists when it comes to accommodating intentional action in their ontologies in order to call into question the explanatory utility of matter itself. He first uses puzzles concerning the metaphysics and causal mechanics of action to eliminatively reduce bodily action to mental action, and then leverages the same principle of parsimony that motivates his external world realist interlocutors to exclude real composites from their ontology to jettison matter from the picture altogether. I consider reasons why Vasubandhu resists existence monism and instead takes his type-monism to be the simplest sufficient ontology capable of explaining the sorts of things that matter most to him and his fellow-Buddhists, like intentional actions that are both morally significant and causally efficacious.