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Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622443
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 880
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Book Description
This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622443
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 880
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191084379
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 529
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Book Description
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. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: Normative Naturalism, Quasi-Realist Expressivism, and Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism, which Derek Parfit now calls Non-Realist Cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word 'reality' in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use 'reality' in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths-such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths-raise no difficult ontological questions. Parfit discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity. Though Peter Railton is a Naturalist, he has widened his view by accepting some further claims, and he has suggested that this wider version of Naturalism could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Railton is right, since these theories no longer deeply disagree. Though Allan Gibbard is a Quasi-Realist Expressivist, he has suggested that the best version of his view could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Gibbard is right, since Gibbard and he now accept the other's main meta-ethical claim. It is rare for three such different philosophical theories to be able to be widened in ways that resolve their deepest disagreements. This happy convergence supports the view that these meta-ethical theories are true. Parfit also discusses the views of several other philosophers, and some other meta-ethical and normative questions.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191084395
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. He thus challenges a view of the role of reason in action that can be traced back to David Hume, and is widely assumed to be correct, not only by philosophers but also by economists. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes, often forcefully, many leading contemporary philosophers working on the nature of ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit's criticisms, and includes essays on Parfit's views by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume.
Author: Andrea Sauchelli
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138595132
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons is an outstanding introduction to and assessment of Parfit's book, with chapters by leading scholars of ethics, metaphysics and of Parfit's work. Ideal for students of ethics, metaethics, metaphysics and anyone interested in Derek Parfit's philosophy.
Author: Husain Sarkar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367665272
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
Derek Parfit's On What Matters is widely recognized as elegant, profound, and destined to change the landscape of moral philosophy. In Volume One, Parfit argues that the distinct--indeed, powerfully conflicting--theories of deontology and contractualism can be woven together in a way so as to yield utilitarian conclusions. Husain Sarkar in this book calls this, The Ultimate Derivation. Sarkar argues, however, that this derivation is untenable. To underwrite this conclusion, this book traverses considerable Parfitian terrain. Sarkar shows why Parfit hasn't quite solved what Sidgwick had called "the profoundest problem in ethics"; he offers a reading of Kant, Rawls, and Scanlon that reveals Parfit's keen utilitarian bias; and he demonstrates why Parfit's Triple Theory does not succeed in its task of unifying conflicting moral theories (without making substantial utilitarian assumptions). The final chapter of the book is about meta-ethics. It shows that Parfit's Convergence Principle is mistaken even though it unveils Parfit's utterly humane concerns: Moral philosophers are not, as Parfit thinks, climbing the same mountain. But for all that, Sarkar maintains, Parfit's book is arguably the greatest consequential tract in the history of moral philosophy.
Author: Jeff McMahan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192894250
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 590
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Book Description
Ethics and Existence is a collective exploration of a set of topics to do with persons and value that were pioneered by the late Derek Parfit. A distinguished international team of contributors discuss ethical questions relating to population, the value of life, and the future.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198750676
Category : Applied ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This volume collects a wealth of articles covering a range of topics of practical concern in the field of ethics, including active and passive euthanasia, abortion, organ transplants, capital punishment, the consequences of human actions, slavery, overpopulation, the separate spheres of men and women, animal rights, and game theory and the nuclear arms race. The contributors are Thomas Nagel, David Hume, James Rachels, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Tooley, John Harris, John Stuart Mill, Louis Pascal, Jonathan Glover, Derek Parfit, R.M. Hare, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Peter Singer, and Nicholas Measor.
Author: David Edmonds
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691225249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
From the bestselling coauthor of Wittgenstein’s Poker, an entertaining and illuminating biography of a brilliant philosopher who tried to rescue morality from nihilism Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius. Believing that we should be less concerned with ourselves and more with the common good, Parfit dedicated himself to the pursuit of philosophical progress to an extraordinary degree. He always wore gray trousers and a white shirt so as not to lose precious time picking out clothes, he varied his diet as little as possible, and he had only one serious non-philosophical interest: taking photos of Oxford, Venice, and St. Petersburg. In the latter half of his life, he single-mindedly devoted himself to a desperate attempt to rescue secular morality—morality without God—by arguing that it has an objective, rational basis. For Parfit, the stakes could scarcely have been higher. If he couldn’t demonstrate that there are objective facts about right and wrong, he believed, his life was futile and all our lives were meaningless. Connecting Parfit’s work and life and offering a clear introduction to his profound and challenging ideas, Parfit is a powerful portrait of an extraordinary thinker who continues to have a remarkable influence on the world of ideas.
Author: Husain Sarkar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042978743X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Derek Parfit’s On What Matters is widely recognized as elegant, profound, and destined to change the landscape of moral philosophy. In Volume One, Parfit argues that the distinct—indeed, powerfully conflicting—theories of deontology and contractualism can be woven together in a way so as to yield utilitarian conclusions. Husain Sarkar in this book calls this, The Ultimate Derivation. Sarkar argues, however, that this derivation is untenable. To underwrite this conclusion, this book traverses considerable Parfitian terrain. Sarkar shows why Parfit hasn’t quite solved what Sidgwick had called "the profoundest problem in ethics"; he offers a reading of Kant, Rawls, and Scanlon that reveals Parfit’s keen utilitarian bias; and he demonstrates why Parfit’s Triple Theory does not succeed in its task of unifying conflicting moral theories (without making substantial utilitarian assumptions). The final chapter of the book is about meta-ethics. It shows that Parfit’s Convergence Principle is mistaken even though it unveils Parfit’s utterly humane concerns: Moral philosophers are not, as Parfit thinks, climbing the same mountain. But for all that, Sarkar maintains, Parfit’s book is arguably the greatest consequential tract in the history of moral philosophy.
Author: Simon Kirchin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 135184718X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Derek Parfit was one of the world’s leading philosophers. His On What Matters was the most eagerly awaited book in philosophy for many years. Reading Parfit: On What Matters is an essential overview and assessment of volumes 1 and 2 of Parfit’s monumental work by a team of international contributors, and includes responses by Parfit himself. It discusses central features of Parfit’s book, including the structure and nature of reasons; the ideas underlying moral principles; Parfit’s discussions of consequentialism, contractualism and Kantian deontology; and his metaethical ideas and arguments. Reading Parfit will be central reading for students of ethics and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of one of the most important works of philosophy published in the last fifty years.
