Buddhist no-self, the person convention, and the metaphysics of moral practice: is hayashi's emergentist account of vasubandhu's ontology of persons explanatorily self-defeating?

Abstract

Post-millennial scholarship in Buddhist studies reflects increasing interest from Anglophone philosophers working within the analytic tradition.¹ Within this emerging body of work the aim has been not merely to bring the conceptual toolkit of analytic philosophers to bear on topics traditionally of interest to Buddhist philosophers but also to enlist the theories that analytic philosophers have developed on core topics within epistemology and metaphysics as frameworks within which to interpret the work of major Buddhist philosophers. Two recent notable examples of this interpretative enterprise are seen in the work of Siderits (2007, 2015a, 2015b) and Hayashi (2016). These Anglophone commentators utilize theories from analytic metaphysics as frameworks for interpreting the thought of a major Buddhist philosopher, in their case that of Vasubandhu, one of the greatest fifth-century system-builders originating from the Indian subcontinent.