I am enormously grateful to Mark Siderits both for his kind comments on my Altruism and Reality and for the eminently courteous and intelligent way in which he has developed his disagreements with the two chapters of my book in which I apply the tools of contemporary analytical philosophy to assessing some of Śāntideva's arguments concerning issues related to personal identity, rebirth, and altruism. In writing those chapters—each an independent paper—I had intended to be provocative, for Śāntideva's arguments and their Buddhist context involve philosophical issues that have been vital down through the ages and are very much at the center of contemporary discussions in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and ethics. Our Buddhist thinkers put forward a position and arguments for that position. Those arguments beg to be analyzed, assessed, and developed. They may not work. If we are interested in truth (that sadly unfashionable concept), there is no avoiding wrestling with the arguments. In doing this we transcend the history of philosophy—the understanding of those thinkers who provide our material—and we do philosophy itself. We aspire to do philosophy just in the sense that Parfit or Strawson do philosophy. This wrestling with the arguments is, if you like, "analytic meditation." At least, it is what I take analytic meditation to be, and it certainly is an essential ingredient in what analytic meditation was and is in, for example, the dGe lugs tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
On Bodhicaryāvatāra 8: 97-98
My Argument
Where Mark Siderits and I disagree I have yet to be convinced that he is right. I don't suppose he thought I would be (which is not to say I might not become convinced in the future—I keep changing my mind). Let me begin with his discussion of my second chapter, the reprint of my paper "On Altruism and Rebirth: Philosophical Comments on Bodhicaryāvatāra 8: 97-8." As I recall, the relevant philosophical argument is this: Śāntideva wants to argue (1) that in all pertinent respects (ontologically and morally) the relationship between me now and contemporary others is exactly the same as the relationship between me now and "my" next rebirth. That is, "my" next rebirth is in all pertinent respects other to me now, and this will remain the case so long as I am in the present incarnation. (2) I do, as a matter of fact, have altruistic care and concern for "my" future rebirth. (3) Therefore, in order to be rationally and morally consistent I should also have altruistic care and concern for contemporary others. Morally, the care and concern I have for one other (my future rebirth-the argument does not require reference here to more than one future rebirth) must be universalized to all others, including contemporary others. Śāntideva's argument is clever, and in practice may well be convincing for a Buddhist. If so, who could doubt the value of the results? But I have responded with the suggestion that in order to restore rational and moral consistency it is open to Śāntideva's opponent (or Śāntideva himself in his meditation, qua opponent) to reply that he or she had not realized that the relationship between me now and "my" future rebirth was one of difference, otherness, and to resolve to cease caring about his or her future rebirth(s) along with not caring about contemporary others. (Williams, "Response to Mark Siderits' Review" 424-25) Read more here
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