Congratulations to Prof. Oren Hanner for publishing two articles "Mindfulness Meditation and the Meaning of Life" and "How Not to Do Things with Others: A Buddhist Account of Shared Agency"!
"Mindfulness Meditation and the Meaning of Life"
Abstract
Throughout the history of philosophy, ethics has often been a source of guidance on how to live a meaningful life. Accordingly, when the ethical foundations of mindfulness are considered, an important question arises concerning the role of meditation in providing meaning. The present article proposes a new theoretical route for understanding the links between mindfulness meditation and meaningfulness by employing the terminology of Susan Wolf’s contemporary philosophical account of a meaningful life. It opens by examining the question of what kinds of life-meanings are made available by Buddhist doctrine, considering the two alternatives of a cosmic, human-independent meaning of life versus the subjective meanings that humans give to their individual lives. After surveying current psychological theories that aim to explain the correlation between mindfulness as a trait and meaning in life, all of which see mindfulness as a mediating factor in the production of meaning, I argue that Wolf’s framework offers a promising theoretical basis for clarifying the relationship between mindfulness and meaning in that it explains why mindfulness has a direct bearing on meaning in life. I then show that mindfulness meditation, as understood in Buddhism, can respond to some of the philosophical worries that arise from Wolf’s theory, specifically her concern with the standards for securing the objective value of meaningful activities and projects. My claim is that mindfulness meditation is representative of a broader class of activities that are non-subjectively valuable insofar as they are required for any exploration of objective meaning or standards of values, as well as for engagement in objectively valuable projects and activities.
"How Not to Do Things with Others: A Buddhist Account of Shared Agency"
Abstract
Unlike Western philosophers, classical Buddhist thinkers largely remained silent about socio-political issues and did not develop explicit frameworks for theorizing them. The present article reconstructs a Buddhist account of shared action based on select passages from works by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. It outlines the structure of individual action, according to Vasubandhu, and identifies three conditions that need to be satisfied for a joint activity to take place. This model, I suggest, is reductive in seeing joint action as an aggregation of individual actions, and it differs from Western treatments of shared agency in several respects. Primarily, Vasubandhu’s paradigm rests on an extended structure of action, it is guided by an internalist standard of moral evaluation that emphasizes the consequences of shared actions for the acting members, and it is centrally concerned with how individuals can extricate themselves from social entanglements and gain control over their actions.