ABSTRACT
The Buddhist teacher Nagasena, David Hume, Derek Parfit, and Daniel Dennett are four philosophers who do not believe that among real things are other persons, or even that there are any persons at all. The four are not a chance collection. They all consider persons from the spectator stance. Parfit is the heir of Hume, and invokes Buddhism to support his concept of person. Together, Parfit and Dennett give allegiance to a metaphysics whose bottom line is scientism, the metaphysical appropriation of the natural sciences. One of the givens in Buddhist thought is a dualism of body and something else; so the death of the body does not destroy the something else. Westerners may experience astonishment, even indignation, when they encounter the Buddhist doctrine that persons are illusory. Hume presents his concept of person in the course of discussing personal identity.
