Parfit, Derek Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

I argue that four-dimensionalism, especially when combined with mereological universalism, is incompatible with the desire satisfaction account of well-being, because it adds to the population of suffering individuals whose interests... more

I argue that four-dimensionalism, especially when combined with mereological universalism, is incompatible with the desire satisfaction account of well-being, because it adds to the population of suffering individuals whose interests could plausibly be said to diverge from those of the persons in whom they are embedded as temporal parts, and that in doing what is ultimately good for persons we must do what is ultimately bad for subpersons. I call this 'the frustrating problem' for the four-dimensionalist. I examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem, the Parfit-inspired claim that identity is not what matter, the pronoun revisionism of Noonan, the indirect account of Hudson, the sensible stages view of David Lewis, a 'multiple concepts' account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) the no mental states view according to which temporal parts of persons possess no intrinsic mental states and, thus, have no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions is compelling. Thus the four-dimensionalist has reason to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the adherents of the desire satisfaction view have at least some reason to reject four-dimensionalism.

Marya Schechtman has argued that contemporary attempts to save Locke’s account of personal identity suffer the same faults that are to be found in Locke. To avoid these problems, she advocates giving up the mainstream Psychological... more

Marya Schechtman has argued that contemporary attempts to save Locke’s account of personal identity suffer the same faults that are to be found in Locke. To avoid these problems, she advocates giving up the mainstream Psychological Continuity Theory and adopting a narrative account like her “Self-Understanding” View, which is purported to have the further virtue of maintaining important insights from Locke. I argue that it is misleading to understand the Psychological Continuity Theory as sharing Locke’s commitments and that the theory is capable of dealing with the problems she raises; as a result, Schechtman has not presented any reason for a shift to a narrative theory. I go on to argue that the Self-Understanding View is a great deal more at odds with Locke’s view than Schechtman cares to acknowledge.

Ongoing discussion of this paper here: https://www.academia.edu/s/cf13d33860?source=link Philosophy – whether traditional or contemporary – has nothing to say about the human metaphysical predicament, and cannot even offer a basic... more

Ongoing discussion of this paper here: https://www.academia.edu/s/cf13d33860?source=link
Philosophy – whether traditional or contemporary – has nothing to say about the human metaphysical predicament, and cannot even offer a basic phenomenology of the human condition. Part of the problem is the ongoing confusion as to what philosophy actually amounts to, and what it can achieve. It is necessary to demystify philosophy, and have it restricted to the discipline of critical thinking, and it should not be thought of as possessing any substantial theoretical content of its own. It is a method, a skillset, a series of techniques, not a repository of various highbrow theories, whether about mind, epistemology, ontology, cosmology, science, or anything else. Metaphysics is an entirely distinct and separate field of inquiry, and concerns the human predicament, and ultimate human fulfilment, and it is to this end that critical thinking skills can usefully be applied. The purpose of this short study is to give some help to those hoping to gain an insight into the metaphysical realms of their being, and who would like some guidance with regard to those formal and academic disciplines supposedly geared to dealing with that very subject.

Some philosophers argue that, because it is subject to twinning and fusion, the early human embryo cannot hold strong moral standing. Supposedly, the fact that an early human embryo can twin or fuse with another embryo entails that it is... more

Some philosophers argue that, because it is subject to twinning and fusion, the early human embryo cannot hold strong moral standing. Supposedly, the fact that an early human embryo can twin or fuse with another embryo entails that it is not a distinct individual, thus precluding it from holding any level of moral standing. I argue that appeals to twinning and fusion fail to show that the early human embryo is not a distinct individual and that these appeals do not provide us with plausible reasons for denying the strong moral standing of the early human embryo. I recognize one possible exception to this general assessment, a particular version of the appeal to fusion. Embryo fusion that results in tetragametic chimerism provides some reason for doubting the early human embryo's moral standing. But twinning and fusion are otherwise irrelevant in this context.(Online publication May 23 2011)

How is it possible that we stay the same over time even though we continuously change? Looking at the analytic debate on personal identity, we will find, very generally, three types of answers: 1) Staying the same while changing is... more

How is it possible that we stay the same over time even though we continuously change? Looking at the analytic debate on personal identity, we will find, very generally, three types of answers: 1) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we are not properly the same then, only more or less. Identity becomes replaced with similarity. 2) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we do not properly change after all; deep down we are unchanging. 3) Staying the same while changing is not possible. Personal identity – identity of a person through time – is an illusion. In my paper, I shall show that all three of these answers are not convincing and have to be rejected. I shall defend the thesis that the difficulties analytic metaphysics has with making sense of personal identity ultimately stem from the idea that a person is some kind of thing, or a conglomerate of things, and that we can leave these difficulties behind if we think of a person as a process instead.
The idea that persons are processes is not new; it has been suggested some time ago, in particular by philosophers who nowadays have become regarded as ‘continental’. However, the idea has not yet sufficiently been linked to the more recent ‘analytic’ debate on personal identity, not least because of the difference of schools. Against this background, the paper can be seen as an attempt to merge the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ debate on personal identity by using process ontology as a unifying key. More ambitiously, given that the benefit to be gained from process ontology is as little restricted to the problem of personal identity as is the tendency in analytic metaphysics towards what I call ‘thing ontology’, the discussion presented is an exercise in reconciling ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy as such, with personal identity serving as a test case.

Parfit suggests that Rawls's separateness of persons argument and his objection to balancing have less force due to the fact that the identity relation fails to hold between myself at one time and my "self" at another time. Parfit claims... more

Parfit suggests that Rawls's separateness of persons argument and his objection to balancing have less force due to the fact that the identity relation fails to hold between myself at one time and my "self" at another time. Parfit claims that the identity relation should be replaced by Relation R because it can account for all that matters regarding morality without the metaphysical problems associated with identity. I argue that if Relation R is adequate for an account of survival, meaning psychological continuity, then it can tell us when the survival relation obtains between two person-stages and when it does not. In short, although survival is a matter of degree, the question of whether or not there is a relationship of survival between two person-stages is not itself a matter of degree. If Relation R can determine when the survival relation obtains and when it does not, then it can serve as a principle for individuating persons. And individuation is all we need to account for the fundamental separateness of persons. If the survival relation is really as powerful as Parfit claims, then his view cannot circumvent Rawls's separateness of persons argument and his objection to balancing.

The "non-identity argument" has been applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice, often generating highly unintuitive conclusions. George Sher has suggested a solution to this problem, explaining the harm to descendants... more

Cet article s'attache à comprendre si les cyrénaïques étaient sus-ceptibles d'être attaqués moyennant l'objection d'inactivité et, si oui, comment ils auraient pu essayer d'y répondre et quel type de vision morale ils auraient pu essayer... more

Cet article s'attache à comprendre si les cyrénaïques étaient sus-ceptibles d'être attaqués moyennant l'objection d'inactivité et, si oui, comment ils auraient pu essayer d'y répondre et quel type de vision morale ils auraient pu essayer de défendre. En traitant de ces questions, j'évaluerai la légitimité de l'interprétation du scepticisme cyrénaïque offerte par Jules Vuillemin. Je confirmerai ainsi la plausibilité de son interprétation et développerai en même temps l'exploration de la nature et de la portée de la philosophie cyrénaïque. Abstract: The paper aims to first understand whether the Cyrenaics were actually susceptible to the charge of apraxia; secondly, if they were, to see how they might have responded to this and what sort of ethical outlook they might have tried to defend. In dealing with these issues, I will inevitably assess the legitimacy of Vuillemin's interpretation of Cyrenaic scepticism. In so doing, I shall confirm the scholarly plausibility of his interpretation while, at the same time, providing material for further exploration of the full nature and scope of Cyrenaic philosophy.

When philosophers examine what constitutes diachronic personal identity, they want to find out what makes a person stay the same person through time. I let a description of what we love when we love someone shed light on what a... more

When philosophers examine what constitutes diachronic personal identity, they want to find out what makes a person stay the same person through time. I let a description of what we love when we love someone shed light on what a constitutive element of this diachronic identity may be. I first elicit what Derek Parfit and Bernard Williams, protagonists in the philosophical debate on personal identity, say in this regard. I explain why Williams is convinced that to love a person is basically the same as to love a body and why Parfit argues that to love a person is to love a psychological continuity. I criticise these descriptions and conclude that our love for someone directs itself towards a particular life that is contained by the body of a living organism. I point out why this is startling (we do not know anything about how this life will be led), yet intelligible (the fact that we only live one particular life allows for the constitution of a personality and catalyzes our interest in and care about this personality).

Este artículo está dedicado a eliminar numerosas confusiones posibles acerca del pensamiento igualitarista. Comienzo por mostrar que las formas más plau-sibles de igualitarismo no se adecuan bien en ninguno de los lados de la distin-ción... more

Este artículo está dedicado a eliminar numerosas confusiones posibles acerca del pensamiento igualitarista. Comienzo por mostrar que las formas más plau-sibles de igualitarismo no se adecuan bien en ninguno de los lados de la distin-ción entre igualitarismo télico e igualitarismo deóntico. Prosigo argumentando que la pregunta referida al alcance de los principios distributivos igualitaristas no puede ser respondida en abstracto, sino que, en cambio, supone proveer pre-viamente una explicación acerca de las distintas maneras en que la desigualdad en la distribución puede ser algo malo. Luego, discuto algunas comprensiones erradas de la “objeción de nivelar hacia abajo” y de la relación entre igualitarismo y prioritarismo. Al hacer esto, mi propósito es ofrecer una explicación más plausible acerca de lo que los igualitaristas deberían creer.

Prioritarianism is nowadays understood as the doctrine in distributive justice, which advocates the maximization of weighted utility. This article argues that this narrow reading does not correspond to Parfit's original introduction of... more

Prioritarianism is nowadays understood as the doctrine in distributive justice, which advocates the maximization of weighted utility. This article argues that this narrow reading does not correspond to Parfit's original introduction of the view. I suggest to understand prioritarianism more broadly as referring to a family of views that are developed in light of the prioritarian intuition that benefitting people matters more the worse off these people are. Broad priori-tarianism is neither committed to a utilitarian currency, nor weighting, nor maximization. Making this distinction has a number of important taxonomic and substantial implications. First, recent arguments against prioritarianism do not refute prioritarianism in the broader sense but only the narrow, utili-tarian variant of it. Second, narrow and broad prioritarianism fail to live up to Parfit's claim that prioritarianism is a complete view that can replace exist-ing views in distributive justice. Third, broad prioritarianism is not an antag-onist but rather combinable with views such as utilitarianism, egalitarianism and sufficientarianism. Last, the prioritarian intuition has strong force but is by no means universally accepted. Prioritarians need to put more attention to defending and specifying their basic intuition.

Some of Derek Parfit’s most significant work concerns the non-identity problem. Briefly put, this is the problem of how, morally-speaking, we should understand cases in which we can act in one way, and produce persons with sub-optimal... more

Some of Derek Parfit’s most significant work concerns the non-identity problem. Briefly put, this is the problem of how, morally-speaking, we should understand cases in which we can act in one way, and produce persons with sub-optimal lives, or act in another way, and produce different persons with better lives. Discussions of the non-identity problem tend to assume that it is a single problem, raising a single set of moral issues. This chapter seeks to complicate this picture. It introduces ‘Impure Non-Identity Cases’. These are cases in which a policy, or group of actions, is a non-identity case, and so nobody is harmed, or made worse off, by the policy, or group of actions, but some (and maybe even all) of the individual actions within the policy or group are not non-identity cases, and are harmful. The chapter investigates the moral implications of such cases, and the problems and questions they raise, aside from those raised by ‘pure’ non-identity cases.

How would Nishida answer the problem of personal identity?

Eine Bemerkung Edmund Husserls über die Konstitution des (eigenen) Menschseins lautet: „Der Andere ist der erste Mensch, nicht ich“. Ich möchte diesen Gedanken der intersubjektiven Konstitution des Menschseins aufgreifen und ihn unter... more

Eine Bemerkung Edmund Husserls über die Konstitution des (eigenen) Menschseins lautet: „Der Andere ist der erste Mensch, nicht ich“. Ich möchte diesen Gedanken der intersubjektiven Konstitution des Menschseins aufgreifen und ihn unter Zuhilfenahme einer durch Ideen Wittgensteins angereicherten (und, wie ich denke, bereicherten) phänomenologischen Konzeption der Einfühlung auf ein Grundproblem der Philosophie der Subjektivität anwenden. Es handelt sich dabei um die Frage, wie sich die Annahme der synchronen (also zeitgleichen) Identität des Subjekts zweier Bewußtseinszustände rechtfertigen läßt, genauer gesagt: zweier Bewußtseinszustände, die ich mir selbst zuschreiben zu dürfen glaube. Das Problem wird besonders dringlich vor dem Hintergrund einer insgesamt sehr plausiblen Theorie der synchronen Bewußtseinseinheit, die der analytische Philosoph Derek Parfit aufgestellt hat.