Abstract
Proponents of Buddhist neuroethics argue for the need to make different aspects of moral cultivation receptive to the findings and conceptual resources of neuroscience. Given its centrality to the path, compassion holds the key to understanding how moral agency can have such profoundly transformative effects despite being conditioned by various biological, social, and psychological factors. If bodhisattvas, the iconic representations of compassionate undertaking, act compassionately because of their training and cultivation, they can benefit sentient beings habitually or spontaneously. However, how such spontaneity can guarantee that violations of conventional ethical norms (which the agent-neutral framework of Buddhist ethics allows) do not translate into detrimental outcomes is deeply mysterious. On the proposal put forward here, agency presupposes some degree of self-awareness and of concern for others, both of which, it is argued, resist its explanation in terms of impersonal causal series.
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