Intransitivity and Future Generations: Debunking Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox

ABSTRACT Duties to future persons contribute critically to many important contemporaneous ethical dilemmas, such as environmental protection, contraception, abortion, and population policy. Yet this area of ethics is mired in paradoxes. It appeared that any principle for dealing with future persons encountered Kavka's paradox of future individuals, Parfit's repugnant conclusion, or an indefensible asymmetry. In 1976, Singer proposed a utilitarian solution that seemed to avoid the above trio of obstacles, but Parfit so successfully demonstrated the unacceptability of this position that Singer abandoned it. Indeed, the apparently intransitivity of Singer's solution contributed to Temkin's argument that the notion of “all things considered better than” may be intransitive. In this paper, I demonstrate that a time‐extended view of Singer's solution avoids the intransitivity that allows Parfit's mere addition paradox to lead to the repugnant conclusion. However, the heart of the mere addition paradox remains: the time‐extended view still yields intransitive judgments. I discuss a general theory for dealing with intransitivity (Transitivity by Transformation) that was inspired by Temkin's sports analogy, and demonstrate that such a solution is more palatable than Temkin suspected. When a pair‐wise comparison also requires consideration of a small number of relevant external alternatives, we can avoid intransitivity and the mere addition paradox without infinite comparisons or rejecting the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Principle     

敦煌文献中的西魏、北周佛教思想——一百二十法门与《菩萨藏众经要》

地论学派自从慧光之后,以法上--慧远、道凭--灵裕为两大主流,这是就北齐佛教对北魏佛教的继承而言.但是,由于宇文泰、宇文护的奉佛,在僧实的领导下,西魏、北周佛教获得一定的发展;而且,由于西魏征服梁朝的巴蜀、荆襄等地,迁移江南人口至关中,于是南朝佛教亦随之北传.所以,西魏、北周佛教在地论学派佛学体系的基础上,融合南朝佛学,编纂<菩萨藏众经要>二十二卷、<一百二十法门>一卷等.本文依敦煌文献B.8388(潜71)、B.8389(制8),恢复与重现了<一百二十法门>;同时,日本大谷大学藏敦煌本"<菩萨藏修道众经抄>卷第十二",即是<菩萨藏经要>的第十二卷.从此,可以看出西魏、北周佛教对佛教的弘扬与理论创造.