Parfit on fission

Derek Parfit famously defends a number of surprising views about “fission.” One is that, in such a scenario, it is indeterminate whether I have survived or not. Another is that the fission case shows that it does not matter, in itself, whether I survive or not. Most critics of the first view contend that fission makes me cease to exist. Most opponents of the second view contend that fission does not preserve everything that matters in ordinary survival. In this paper I shall provide a critique that does not rely on either of these contentions. There are other, interrelated reasons to reject Parfit’s defense of the two theses. In particular, the availability of the following view creates trouble for Parfit: I determinately survive fission, but it is indeterminate which fission product I am.     

Parfit on Direct Self-Defeat

In the first part of Reasons and Persons , Derek Parfit argues that common-sense morality, or M , is self-defeating, so that it must be rejected or revised. I defend M . We can rebut Parfit's argument if we make an assumption about the moral importance of doing what is morally right. We need to assume that this end has sufficient weight in M .     

Why Parfit did not go far enough

Parfit has argued for the revolutionary thesis that personal identity does not matter in ordinary survival, only the R-relation does. “Reconciliationists,” such as Lewis, have tried to stop this revolution, arguing that both personal identity and the R-relation matter. The disagreement has been between those who hold that only the R-relation matters and those who hold that, in addition, personal identity matters. But there is a third option. I argue that Parfit is right that personal identity does not matter but he is wrong that the R-relation matters, and the reconciliationists are wrong to think both matter since neither does.     

Fission,Fusion and the Parfit Revolution

Philosophical Studies -     

Attitudes to suffering: Parfit and Nietzsche

Abstract

In On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that Nietzsche does not disagree with central normative beliefs that ‘we’ hold. Such disagreement would threaten Parfit’s claim that normative beliefs are known by intuition. However, Nietzsche defends a conception of well-being that challenges Parfit’s normative claim that suffering is bad in itself for the sufferer. Nietzsche recognizes the phenomenon of ‘growth through suffering’ as essential to well-being. Hence, removal of all suffering would lead to diminished well-being. Parfit claims that if Nietzsche understood normative concepts in Parfit’s objectivist sense, he would not disagree with the claim that suffering is bad in itself – that intrinsic facts about suffering count in favour of our not wanting it. I argue that Nietzsche would disagree. Suffering for Nietzsche is not merely instrumentally necessary for psychological growth, nor is it easy to construe it as something bad in itself that contributes value as part of a good whole. Suffering that can be given meaning through growth is something we have reason to want. Suffering that remains brute and uninterpreted is something we have reason not to want. But for Nietzsche, suffering as such has no invariant value across all contexts.     

Sympathy for the Error Theorist: Parfit and Mackie

Derek Parfit claims that “Williams and Mackie…do not use the normative concepts that I and other Non-Naturalists use.” Whatever we think of Parfit’s interpretation of Williams, his interpretation of Mackie should be rejected. For understandable historical reasons, Mackie’s texts are ambiguous. But if we apply to the interpretation of Mackie the same principle of charity Parfit employs in interpreting Williams, we find decisive reason to interpret Mackie as using the same normative concepts as Non-Naturalists.     

Creating the Best Possible World: Some Problems from Parfit

It is sometimes argued that if God were to exist, then the actual world would be the best possible world. However, given that the actual world is clearly not the best possible world, then God doesn’t exist. In response, some have argued that the world could always be improved with the creation of new people and that there is thus no best possible world. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to an instance of Parfit’s mere addition paradox and should thus be rejected. Others (Robert Adams, in particular) have argued that the actual world may, in fact, be the best possible world, at least for all actual people. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to Parfit’s non-identity problem and should thus be rejected.

Parfit on Free Will,Desert, and the Fairness of Punishment

In his recent monumental book On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues for a hard determinist view that rejects free will-based moral responsibility and desert. This rejection of desert is necessary for his main aim in the book, the overall reconciliation of normative ethics. In Appendix E of his book, however, Parfit claims that it is possible to mete out fair punishment. Parfit’s position on punishment here seems to be inconsistent with his hard determinism. I argue that Parfit is mistaken here, in a way that leads him to unjustified optimism about the possibility of fair penalization. Insofar as we take the free will problem seriously, we cannot reconcile a belief in the absence of desert with a belief in the fairness of penalization.     

Taylor and Parfit on personal identity: a response to Lötter

In this paper the author attempts to show that Lötter is not justified in ignoring orthodox views of personal identity on the basis of arguments offered by Taylor. It is argued that Taylor's arguments against the orthodoxy do not establish what he, and Lötter, hope they establish, namely, that the orthodox position, represented by the work of Parfit, fails to account for personal identity. The author also attempts to show the importance of this area of debate between orthodox theories of personal identity and the concept of personal identity offered by Taylor, Lötter, and others.     

Personal Identity and the Importance of One's Own Body: A Response to Derek Parfit

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irreducible ambiguities of human embodiment in order to show the presuppositions and the limitations of Parfit's view. Of interest is the conception of time and the model of continuity that is appropriate to an embodied subject's life. I employ Paul Ricoeur's concept of 'human time' to argue that the reflective character of human experience demands a model of temporality and continuity that differs significantly from the one Parfit employs.