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129How We Are not What We BelieveIn Reasons and Persons, Oxford Paperbacks. 1984.Examines how the Psychological Criterion of identity is not circular, since psychological continuity can be described in a way that does not presuppose identity. It explores the subject of experiences; souls or Cartesian egos; how a non‐reductionist, Cartesian view might have been true. It offers spectrum arguments against both the Physical and Psychological Criteria; how we think about ourselves in a way that would be justified only if a Cartesian view were true.
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121Five Mistakes in Moral MathematicsIn Reasons and Persons, Oxford Paperbacks. 1984.Examines how we should assess the effects of our acts, especially when we act together with other people, why we should reject the share‐of‐the‐total view and accept the marginalist view, which appeals to the difference made by each act, why we should not ignore either small chances, or effects that are trivial or imperceptible. It also presents several cases in which effects are overdetermined. Rational altruism is also discussed.
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92Different Attitudes to TimeIn Reasons and Persons, Oxford Paperbacks. 1984.Discusses whether it is irrational to give no weight to past desires – desires that depend on value judgements or ideals; three attitudes to time: caring more about, or being biased towards, what is near, what is in the future and what is present – whether these attitudes are rational; the direction of causation; how it would be better for us if we were temporally neutral; Time's passage; and the asymmetry in our attitudes to our own lives and the lives of others.
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57ConclusionsIn Reasons and Persons, Oxford Paperbacks. pp. 111-114. 1984.Seeks to reduce the distance between Common‐Sense Morality and Consequentialism. Acts, dispositions, motives are also discussed.
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120Later selves and moral principlesIn Alan Montefiore (ed.), Philosophy and personal relations, Mcgill- Queen's University Press. pp. 137-169. 1973.
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65Iv Lewis, Perry, and What MattersIn Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Identities of Persons, University of California Press. pp. 91-108. 1976.
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Equality and priorityIn Derek Matravers & Jonathan Pike (eds.), Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Routledge. 2005.
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182On What Matters: Volume TwoOxford University Press. 2011.This is the second volume of a major new work in moral philosophy. It starts with critiques of Derek Parfit's work by four eminent moral philosophers, and his responses. The largest part of the volume is a self-contained monograph on normativity. The final part comprises seven new essays on Kant, reasons, and why the universe exists.
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120Divided Minds and the Nature of PersonsIn Susan Schneider (ed.), Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, Wiley-blackwell. 2016.This chapter discusses problems for informational patternism and the popular soul theory of personal identity, suggests that they are incoherent, and urges that the self does not really exist. It employs the science fiction pseudotechnology of a teleporter and presents the example of split brains from actual neuroscience cases. There are two theories about what persons are, and what is involved in a person's continued existence over time. On the Ego Theory, a person's continued existence cannot …Read more
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45Commentary on ParfitIn Kim Atkins (ed.), Self and Subjectivity, Wiley-blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains section titled: Reasons and Persons, “What We Believe Ourselves to Be”
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74Improving Scanlon’s ContractualismIn Markus Stepanians & Michael Frauchiger (eds.), Reason, Justification, and Contractualism: Themes from Scanlon, De Gruyter. pp. 109-118. 2021.
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4411. Reasons and PersonsIn John Martin Fischer (ed.), The Metaphysics of Death, Stanford University Press. pp. 191-218. 1993.
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Is common-sense morality self-defeating?In Samuel Scheffler (ed.), Consequentialism and its critics, Oxford University Press. 1988.
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1The unimportance of identityIn John P. Lizza (ed.), Defining the beginning and end of life: readings on personal identity and bioethics, Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009.
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2NormativityIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 1, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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Later Selves and Moral PrinciplesIn James Rachels (ed.), Ethical Theory 2: Theories About How We Should Live, Oxford University Press Uk. 1998.
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79Personal IdentityIn Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: a guide and anthology, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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7693Overpopulation and the Quality of LifeIn Muresan Valentin & Majima Shunzo (eds.), Applied Ethics: Perspectives from Romania, Center For Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Hokkaido University. pp. 145-164. 2013.How many people should there be? Can there be overpopulation: too many people living? I shall present a puzzling argument about these questions, show how this argument can be strengthened, then sketch a possible reply.
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940Future People, the Non‐Identity Problem, and Person‐Affecting PrinciplesPhilosophy and Public Affairs 45 (2): 118-157. 2017.Suppose we discover how we could live for a thousand years, but in a way that made us unable to have children. Everyone chooses to live these long lives. After we all die, human history ends, since there would be no future people. Would that be bad? Would we have acted wrongly? Some pessimists would answer No. These people are saddened by the suffering in most people’s lives, and they believe it would be wrong to inflict such suffering on others by having children. In earlier centuries, this ble…Read more
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9936Divided minds and the nature of personsIn Colin Blakemore & Susan Greenfield (eds.), Mindwaves: Thoughts on Intelligence, Identity, and Consciousness, Blackwell. pp. 19-26. 1987.
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32The Puzzle of Reality: Why Does the Universe Exist?In Peter van Inwagen & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Metaphysics: The Big Questions, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 418-427. 1991.
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223Acts and Outcomes: A Reply to Boonin‐VailPhilosophy and Public Affairs 25 (4): 308-316. 1996.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of J STOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. J STOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non—commercial use
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671Lewis, Perry, and what mattersIn Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons, University of California Press. pp. 91-108. 1976.
Derek Parfit
(1942 - 2017)
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
| Meta-Ethics |
| Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
| Metaphysics |
| Meta-Ethics |
| Normative Ethics |