Works by Derek Parfit
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- Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit -1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.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 of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)
- On What Matters: Two-Volume Set.Derek Parfit -2001 - New York: Oxford University Press.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.
- On What Matters: Volume Three.Derek Parfit -2011 - Oxford University Press UK.Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences.
- Why We Should Reject S.Derek Parfit -1984 - InReasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.An argument against the bias towards the near; how a defence of temporal neutrality is not a defence of S; an appeal to inconsistency; why we should reject S and accept CP.No categories
- (1 other version)Personal identity.Derek Parfit -1971 -Philosophical Review 80 (January):3-27.
- (1 other version)Equality and priority.Derek Parfit -1997 -Ratio 10 (3):202–221.
- Equality or Priority?Derek Parfit -2001 - In John Harris,Bioethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 81-125.One of the central debates within contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy concerns how to formulate an egalitarian theory of distributive justice which gives coherent expression to egalitarian convictions and withstands the most powerful anti-egalitarian objections. This book brings together many of the key contributions to that debate by some of the world’s leading political philosophers: Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, and Larry Temkin.
- We Are Not Human Beings.Derek Parfit -2012 -Philosophy 87 (1):5-28.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. (shrink)
- (1 other version)Reasons and motivation.Derek Parfit -1997 -Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1):99–130.When we have a normative reason, and we act for that reason, it becomes our motivating reason. But we can have either kind of reason without having the other. Thus, if I jump into the canal, my motivating reason was provided by my belief; but I had no normative reason to jump. I merely thought I did. And, if I failed to notice that the canal was frozen, I had a reason not to jump that, because it was unknown to (...) me, did not motivate me. Though we can have normative reasons without being motivated, and vice versa, such reasons are closely related to our motivation. There are, however, very different views about what this relation is. This disagreement raises wider questions about what normative reasons are, and about which reasons there are. After sketching some of these views, I shall discuss some arguments by Williams, and then say where, in my opinion, the truth lies. [...] I [will] suggest why, as I believe, we should be non-reductive normative realists, and should regard all reasons as external. (shrink)
- Future People, the Non‐Identity Problem, and Person‐Affecting Principles.Derek Parfit -2017 -Philosophy and Public Affairs 45 (2):118-157.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 bleak view was fairly plausible. But our successors would be able to prevent most human suffering. Some optimists would also answer No . . . These [views] are, I believe, deeply mistaken. Given what our successors could achieve in the next million or billion years, here and elsewhere in our galaxy, it would be likely to be very much worse if there were no future people. (shrink)
- What We Together Do.Derek Parfit -manuscript
- Can We Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion?Derek Parfit -2016 -Theoria 82 (2):110-127.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.
- Rationality and Reasons.Derek Parfit -unknownWhen Ingmar and I discuss metaphysics or morality, our views are seldom far apart. Hut on the subjects of this paper, rationality and reasons, we deeply disagree.
- On What Matters: Volume Two.Derek Parfit -2011 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.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.
- Future generations: Further problems.Derek Parfit -1982 -Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (2):113-172.
- Another Defence of the Priority View.Derek Parfit -2012 -Utilitas 24 (3):399-440.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 are uncertain, the relative moral (...) importance of actual and expectable benefits, whether people should sometimes be given various chances of receiving benefits, and principles that appeal to competing claims. (shrink)
- (2 other versions)The unimportance of identity.Derek Parfit -1997 - In H. Harris,Identity. Oxford University Press. pp. 13-45.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. The 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 he is in (...) every other way just like me. Of those who have thought about such cases, some believe that it would be I who would wake up on Mars. They regard Teletransportation as merely the fastest way of travelling. Others believe that, if I chose to be Teletransported, I would be making a terrible mistake. On their view, the person who wakes up would be a mere Replica of me. (shrink)
- (1 other version)Justifiability to each person.Derek Parfit -2003 -Ratio 16 (4):368–390.sonable, in this sense, if we ignore, or give too little weight to, some other people's well-being or moral claims.' Some critics have suggested that, because Scanlon appeals to this sense of 'reasonable', his formula is empty. On this objection, whenever we believe that some act is wrong, we shall believe that people have moral claims not to be treated in this way. We could therefore argue that such acts are disallowed by some principle which no one could reasonably reject, (...) since anyone who rejected this principle would be giving too little weight to people's moral claims not to be treated in this way. Since everyone could claim that the principles which they accept could not be reasonably rejected, Scanlon's Formula would make no difference to our moral thinking. That is not so. If we reject the principles that disallow certain acts, we are denying that such acts are wrong. This denial would be unreasonable if it would give too little weight to some other people's moral claims. So Scanlon's Formula implies that.. (shrink)
- (1 other version)Overpopulation and the quality of life.Derek Parfit -2008 - In Jesper Ryberg,The repugnant conclusion. pp. 7-22.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.
- Innumerate ethics.Derek Parfit -1978 -Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (4):285-301.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.
- Comments.Derek Parfit -1986 -Ethics 96 (4):832-872.
- (2 other versions)Later selves and moral principles.Derek Parfit -1973 - In Alan Montefiore,Philosophy and personal relations. Montreal,: McGill- Queen's University Press.
- (1 other version)Divided minds and the nature of persons.Derek A. Parfit -1987 - In Colin Blakemore & Susan Greenfield,Mindwaves: Thoughts on Intelligence, Identity, and Consciousness. Blackwell. pp. 19-26.
- (1 other version)Normativity.Derek Parfit -2006 -Oxford Studies in Metaethics 1:325-80.
- Climbing the Mountain.Derek Parfit -forthcoming - Oxford University Press.No categories
- Why Anything? Why This?Derek Parfit -2004 - In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas,Metaphysics: a guide and anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.No categories
- (1 other version)Personal identity and rationality.Derek Parfit -1982 -Synthese 53 (2):227-241.There are two main views about the nature of personal identity. I shall briehy describe these views, say without argument which I believe to be true, and then discuss the implications of this view for one of the main conceptions of rationality. This conception I shall call "C1assical Prudence." I shall argue that, on what I believe to be the true view about personal identity, Classical Prudence is indefensible.
- Experiences, subjects, and conceptual schemes.Derek Parfit -1999 -Philosophical Topics 26 (1-2):217-70.
- On the importance of self-identity.Derek Parfit -1971 -Journal of Philosophy 68 (October):683-90.
- Prudence, Morality, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma‹.Derek Parfit -1981 - Oxford: Oxford University Press."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.
- (1 other version)Iv Lewis, Perry, and What Matters.Derek Parfit -1976 - In Amélie Oksenberg Rorty,Identities of Persons. University of California Press. pp. 91-108.No categories
- The Puzzle of Reality: Why Does the Universe Exist?Derek Parfit -1991 - In Peter van Inwagen & Dean W. Zimmerman,Metaphysics: The Big Questions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 418-427.No categories
- The indeterminacy of identity: A reply to Brueckner.Derek Parfit -1993 -Philosophical Studies 70 (1):23 - 33.
- Persons, bodies, and human beings.Derek Parfit -2008 - In Theodore Sider, John P. Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman,Contemporary debates in metaphysics. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
- (1 other version)Is common-sense morality self-defeating?Derek Parfit -1979 -Journal of Philosophy 76 (10):533-545.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?
- Why Does the Universe Exist?Derek Parfit -1991 -The Harvard Review of Philosophy 1 (1):4-5.
- What we could rationally will.Derek Parfit -2002 -The Tanner Lectures on Human Values.DEREK PARFIT is senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He regularly teaches there and is also afŠliated with New York University and Harvard. He was educated at Oxford and was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia and Harvard. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Temple, Rice, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is a fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has made major contributions to our understanding (...) of personal identity, philosophy of the mind, and ethics, and he is thought to be one of the most important moral philosophers of the past century. His many academic articles include “Personal Identity” (1971), “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life” (1986), “The Unimportance of Identity” (1995), and “Equality and Priority” (1997). Rationality and Morality and Rediscovering Reasons are forthcoming from Oxford University Press. His book Reasons and Persons (1984) has been described by Alan Ryan of The Sunday Times as “something close to a work of genius.”. (shrink)
- Why our identity is not what matters.Derek Parfit -2003 - In Raymond Martin & John Barresi,Personal identity. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 115--143.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 people, which are like our reasons to care about our own future;and how it is hard to believe that personal identity, or our own continued existence, is not what matters. (shrink)
- Postscript.Derek Parfit -2008 - In Jesper Ryberg,The repugnant conclusion. pp. 387-388.The reasoning in this anthology shows how hard it is to form acceptable theories in cases that involve different numbers of people. That's highly important. And it gives us ground for worry about our appeal to particular theories in the other two kinds of case: those which involve the same numbers, in the different outcomes, though these are not all the same people, and those which do involve all and only the same people. But there is still a clear distinction (...) between these three kinds of case. And there may be some hope of 'quarantining' the impossibility, and the resulting scepticism, to Different Number Choices. Her's a partial analogy, which may be worth mentioning. It's very difficult to formulate acceptable welfarist theories that could apply to cases that involve infinite quantities of such things as suffering and happiness. That's a worry, but it doesn't undermine our confidence in the theories that can handle cases with only finite quantities. (shrink)
- Bombs and coconuts, or rational irrationality.Derek Parfit -2001 - In Christopher W. Morris & Arthur Ripstein,Practical Rationality and Preference: Essays for David Gauthier. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 81--97.
- Five Mistakes in Moral Mathematics.Derek Parfit -1984 - InReasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.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.No categories
- A reply to Sterba.Derek Parfit -1987 -Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (2):193-194.I did not, as James Sterba writes, claim to have explained "the asymmetry view." I claimed that, since my suggested explanation makes it impossible to solve the Paradox of Future Individuals, "we must abandon" one of its essential premises (my p. i52). Sterba's main claim is that my suggested explanation "does not so much explain or justify the [asymmetry] view as simply restate it." Is this so? My explanation assumed (W) that an act cannot be wrong if it will not (...) be bad for any of the people who ever live.' Sterba asks why we should not appeal instead to one of my Wide Principles, which are concerned with possible effects on people who might have lived. And he suggests that, since "the only ground" for preferring (W) is that it explains the asymmetry view, (W) cannot explain this view. There are other grounds for appealing to (W), such as those provided by certain theories about the nature of moral reasoning. On Scanlon's theory, for example, our fundamental moral motive is "to be able to justify one's actions to others on grounds that they could not reasonably reject.'" We may claim that, on such a theory, an act cannot be wrong unless it will affect someone in a way that cannot be justified unless there will be some complainant whose complaint cannot be answered. Similarly, Brandt suggests that, by the phrase "is morally wrong," we should mean "would be prohibited by any moral code which all fully rational persons would tend to support... for the society of the agent, if they expected to spend a lifetime in that society."> It seems likely that, on the chosen.. (shrink)
- The Non‐Identity Problem.Derek Parfit -1984 - InReasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.Examines how our identity depends on when we were conceived. It discusses cases that involve all and only the same people, same numbers but different people, and different numbers of people; what weight we should give to the interests of future people. It examines the case of a young girl's child; how lowering the quality of life might be worse for no one; and whether this fact makes any moral difference.No categories
- What We Believe Ourselves to Be.Derek Parfit -1984 - InReasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.Discusses numerical identity, or being one and the same, qualitative identity, or being exactly similar, personal identity, or what is involved in our continued existence over time. According to the Physical Criterion, our identity over time consists in the continued existence of enough of our brain. According to the Psychological Criterion, our identity consists in overlapping chains of psychological continuity and connectedness. The chapter discusses how we are inclined to believe that, even in purely imagined cases, our identity must be (...) determinate. When we ask – Would I still exist? Would that future person be me?, it seems that it must always have an answer. (shrink)No categories
- Rationality and Time.Derek Parfit -1984 -Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 84:47 - 82.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 further in the future. We should not, for example, postpone pains at the foreseen cost of making them much worse. In our concern for our own self-interest, we should give equal weight to all the parts of our future. In this paper I shall discuss how a Self-interest Theorist should defend this claim. (shrink)
- Personal and Omnipersonal Duties.Derek Parfit -2016 -The Harvard Review of Philosophy 23:1-15.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. (shrink)
- Reductionism and personal identity.Derek Parfit -2002 - In David John Chalmers,Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. New York: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 655-51.
- An Attack on the Social Discount Rate.Derek Parfit -1981 -Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly 1 (1):8.No categories
- Acts and Outcomes: A Reply to Boonin‐Vail.Derek Parfit -1996 -Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (4):308-316.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.
- Improving Scanlon’s Contractualism.Derek Parfit -2021 - In Markus Stepanians & Michael Frauchiger,Reason, Justification, and Contractualism: Themes from Scanlon. De Gruyter. pp. 109-118.No categories
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
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