Buddhism can accommodate a meaningful conception of free will, but one that differs from Western incompatibilist notions of ultimate control or the freedom to do otherwise. The article argues that accounts of physical and neurobiological processes do not settle the free will debate; instead, the key issue is mental autonomy grounded in meditative cultivation. This conception of autonomy is compatible with the three cardinal Buddhist doctrines of momentariness, dependent arising, and no-self, because these doctrines do not eliminate agency but reframe it as a conditioned, self-correcting process. Buddhism thus has sufficient resources to account for personal agency, self-control, and moral responsibility, even within its antisubstantialist metaphysics.
The Buddhist philosopher Śāntarakṣita challenges the Cārvāka materialist view that consciousness can be fully explained by physical causation. He argues that causal accounts of material generation fail to explain how conscious awareness acquires its structural and phenomenal features. The chapter claims that arguments against reductive physicalism benefit from understanding phenomenal consciousness without rejecting causal-explanatory reasoning. Against causal models relying on potentiality, the Buddhist principle of dependent arising offers a dynamic conception of efficient causality, where elements defined by sentience and agency can be causally efficacious.