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323Why our identity is not what mattersIn Raymond Martin & John Barresi (eds.), Personal Identity, Blackwell. pp. 115--143. 2003.Presents actual cases of brain bisection; how we might be able to divide and reunite our minds; what explains the unity of consciousness at any time; the imagined case of full division, in which each half of our brain would be successfully transplanted into the empty skull of another body; why neither of the resulting people would be us; why this would not matter, since our relation to each of these people contains what matters in the prudential sense, giving us reasons to care about these peopl…Read more
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240Is common-sense morality self-defeating?Journal of Philosophy 76 (10): 533-545. 1979.When is a moral theory self-defeating? I suggest the following. There are certain things we ought to try to achieve. Call these our moral aims. Our moral theory would be self-defeating if we believed we ought to do what will cause our moral aims to be worse achieved. Is this ever true? If so, what does it show?
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463Can We Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion?Theoria 82 (2): 110-127. 2016.According to the Repugnant Conclusion: Compared with the existence of many people who would all have some very high quality of life, there is some much larger number of people whose existence would be better, even though these people would all have lives that were barely worth living. I suggest some ways in which we might be able to avoid this conclusion. I try to defend a strong form of lexical superiority.
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110Rationality and TimeProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 84. 1984.One theory about rationality is the Self-interest Theory, or S. S claims that what each of us has most reason to do is whatever would be best for himself. And it is irrational for anyone to do what he knows would be worse for himself. When morality conflicts with self-interest, many people would reject the Self-interest Theory. But most of these people would accept one of the claims that S makes. This is the claim that we should not care less about our further future, simply because it is furthe…Read more
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354Another Defence of the Priority ViewUtilitas 24 (3): 399-440. 2012.This article discusses the relation between prioritarian and egalitarian principles, whether and why we need to appeal to both kinds of principle, how prioritarians can answer various objections, especially those put forward by Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, the moral difference between cases in which our acts could affect only one person or two or more people, veil of ignorance contractualism and utilitarianism, what prioritarians should claim about cases in which the effects of our acts ar…Read more
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1083Prudence, Morality, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma‹Oxford University Press. 1981."From the Proceedings of the British Academy, London, volume LXV (1979)" - title page. Series: Henrietta Hertz Trust annual philosophical lecture -- 1978 Other Titles: Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol.65: 1979.
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595Lewis, Perry, and what mattersIn Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons, University of California Press. 1976.
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1593We Are Not Human BeingsPhilosophy 87 (1): 5-28. 2012.We can start with some science fiction. Here on Earth, I enter the Teletransporter. When I press some button, a machine destroys my body, while recording the exact states of all my cells. This information is sent by radio to Mars, where another machine makes, out of organic materials, a perfect copy of my body. The person who wakes up on Mars seems to remember living my life up to the moment when I pressed the button, and is in every other way just like me.
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86CorrespondencePhilosophy and Public Affairs 10 (2): 180-181. 1981.An act utilitarian tries to maximize expected utility. This is the sum of possible benefits, minus possible costs, with each benefit or cost multiplied by the chance that his act will produce it. Two recent essays claim that, in this calculation, the act utilitarian should ignore very tiny chances. If this is so, he will have no reason to vote, support revolutionary movements, or contribute to countless other public..
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1690Reasons and PersonsOxford University Press. 1984.Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions that most …Read more
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412On What Matters: Two-Volume SetOxford University Press. 2011.This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.
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1Justifiability to Each PersonIn Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), On What We Owe to Each Other, Blackwell. pp. 67-89. 2004.
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370Innumerate ethicsPhilosophy and Public Affairs 7 (4): 285-301. 1978.Suppose that we can help either one person or many others. Is it a reason t0 help the many that We should thus be helping more people? John Taurek thinks not. We may learn from his arguments.
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111Personal and Omnipersonal DutiesThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 23 1-15. 2016.This paper’s main aim is to discuss the relations between our duties and moral aims at different times, and between different people’s moral aims and duties. The paper is unfinished because it was written as part of an intended chapter in the third volume of my book On What Matters, and I later decided to drop this chapter. That is why this paper asks some questions which it doesn’t answer. But though this paper does not end with some general conclusions, it defends some particular conclusions.
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22Why Anything? Why This?In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology, Oxford University Press Uk. 2004.
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9Reductionism and personal identityIn David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press. pp. 655-51. 2002.
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110CorrespondencePhilosophy and Public Affairs 8 (4): 395-397. 1979.An exchange of correspondence with Charles Fried. Parfit's section begins: "I am puzzled. Consider Case One: I could save either one stranger or five others. Both acts would involve a heroic personal sacrifice. I choose, for no reason, to save the one rather than the five. Fried argues: (i ) Since both acts would involve a heroic sacrifice, I could not be criticized if I chose to do neither. (2) If I could not be criticized for choosing to do neither, I cannot be criticized for choosing …Read more
Derek Parfit
(1942 - 2017)
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |