Get Parfit's Ethics Free (till May 3)

Cambridge University Press is offering free PDF downloads of Parfit's Ethics until May 3. (After that, you can always access the pre-print from PhilPapers, which has the same essential content but differs wildly in pagination and doesn't reflect subsequent copyediting.)

At just 55 pages of main text, it's the most concise introduction you'll find to Parfit's wide-ranging ethical thought. Perfect for grad seminars, or anyone interested in highlights from the greatest moral philosopher of the past century (or, indeed, ever).

Synopsis of Parfit's Ethics

I previously shared my manuscript on Parfit's Ethics.  But I figure I might as well offer a bit more detail about what interesting content can be found in each chapter, in hopes of enticing a few more readers to give it a look.

[Updated chapter numbers to reflect that CUP starts counting from 1 at the "Introduction".]  

2. Rationality and Objectivity - A simple summary of Parfit's arguments against Rational Egoism and Normative Subjectivism.  Briefly evaluates the arguments against Parfit's non-naturalist normative realism.

3. Distributive Justice - Explains Parfit's priority view, and suggests a way to improve upon it (that basic goods or welfare contributors, rather than welfare itself, might have diminishing marginal value).  Explains away the arguments of anti-aggregationists.  Summarizes Parfit's views on "moral mathematics" and collective harm. 

4. Character and Consequence - Explains "rational irrationality", and extends it to critique Parfit's understanding of "blameless wrongdoing" (or virtuously-acquired viciousness). Defends self-effacing moral theories.  Assesses Parfit's argument that common-sense morality is directly self-defeating.

5. The Triple Theory - Assesses Parfit's Triple Theory, including a critique of the underlying motivation for his convergence-seeking project.

6. Personal Identity - Summarizes Parfit's key arguments for reductionism about personal identity, and adds a related "container/content" argument of my own (in section 6.1).  Along the way, also argues (i) that Parfit was mistaken to view reductionism as metaphysically contingent, and (ii) that Lewis' 4-D view is just a terminological variant of Parfit's reductionism.

7. Population Ethics - Briefly surveys the Non-Identity Problem and the Repugnant Conclusion (specifically, whether it can be avoided without having even worse implications).

Parfit's Ethics (manuscript)

Over the last few months, I've been working on a short book manuscript on Parfit's Ethics, for Cambridge University Press' Elements in Ethics series.  I've finally completed a (rough) first draft, which interested readers can view or download here.  (Comments welcome!)

The chapters cover:

1. Rationality and Objectivity
2. Distributive Justice
3. Character and Consequence
4. The Triple Theory
5. Personal Identity
6. Population Ethics

I've always thought that Parfit's Reasons and Persons contained the highest ratio of important insights per page of any philosophical work.  It stands to reason that a summary of this work, if done well, might be able to surpass that record.  So that's my (overly ambitious) hope for this little book.  On the other hand, Parfit's work notoriously defies easy summary.  So... see what you think.

Parfit's Cat

My favourite story from Simon Beard's Parfit Bio:

"Like my cat, I often simply do what I want to do." This was the opening sentence of Derek Parfit's philosophical masterpiece, Reasons and Persons. He believed that it was the best way to begin his book because it showed something important about people. Often we are not as special as we think we are. For instance, when people simply do what they want to do they appear to be utilizing no ability that only people have. On the other hand, when we respond to reasons, we are doing something uniquely human, because only people can act in this way. Cats are notorious for doing what they want to do, and the sense of proximity between a cat and its owner pleasingly heightens our sense of their similarity. Hence, there could be no better way for this book to begin. 

However, there was a problem. Derek did not, in fact, own a cat. Nor did he wish to become a cat owner, as he would rather spend his time taking photographs and doing philosophy. On the other hand, the sentence would clearly be better if it was true. To resolve this problem Derek drew up a legal agreement with his sister, who did own a cat, to the effect that he would take legal possession of the cat while she would continue living with it.

On Parfit on Knowing What Matters

If I had to pick a "favourite philosopher", it would be Derek Parfit.  His book Reasons and Persons is, in my view, the best there is -- containing striking insights and arguments on every page, and laying the groundwork for basically all subsequent work on the deepest puzzles surrounding consequentialism, personal identity, and population ethics.  So it was a great honour to have him respond to my paper 'Knowing What Matters' in his third volume of On What Matters.  I wish he were still around to be able to continue the conversation further, as I would have liked to prompt him to engage more closely with various claims (that he was instead initially inclined to reject by just re-asserting his antecedent view). Sadly, that's no longer possible.  But I guess I can at least continue my side of the conversation, and perhaps other readers will suggest further comments and responses that could be made on Parfit's behalf.

'Knowing What Matters' argues that Parfit concedes too much to the moral skeptic, and explores how the robust realist might defensibly take a less conciliatory line on moral epistemology.  In particular:

Cancelling Schroeder's "Implicature" Response to Parfit's Trivality Objection

According to Parfit's Triviality Objection, metaethical naturalism can't adequately capture our ability to make substantive positive normative claims.  For example, suppose a subjectivist naturalist wants to hold both:

Normative Subjectivism: You have reasons for action just when that act would fulfill one of your desires; and

Reductive Thesis: What it is to have a reason for action just is for that action to be such as to fulfill one of your desires.

Parfit responds that, if the Reductive Thesis were true, Normative Subjectivism could no longer state a positive substantive normative fact, since it would not be attributing any further normative property to acts that fulfill one of your desires.  It would just be to re-attribute that same property under another guise, and so the only real normative fact in the vicinity would be the negative one that there is no further normative property of being a reason that acts may have when they have the property of being such as to fulfill your desires (or whatever).

Schroeder responds, in 'What Matters about Metaethics' (forthcoming, pp.7-8), that on his view positive normative claims are still possible because the attribution of reasons pragmatically implicates that the reasons in question are relatively weighty ones.  And the property of being a weighty reason is a further normative property, just as Parfit asked for.

I have a couple of worries about this response.  Firstly, Schroeder is relying on pragmatic implicatures from normative claims in order to explain their status as positive substantive normative claims, but implicature is cancellable.  So consider the following putatively positive substantive normative claim:

Information and Parfit's Fact Stating Argument

In Chapter 26 of On What Matters (vol 2), Parfit sets out his (comparatively neglected) 'Fact-Stating Argument' against non-analytical moral naturalism.  This begins by distinguishing the referential and informational senses of "same fact".  Consider the following three claims:

(J) Shakespeare is Shakespeare
(K) Shakespeare and the writer of Hamlet are one and the same person.
(L) Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.

Parfit explains:

In the referential sense, (J) and (K) state the same fact, since both claims refer to Shakespeare and tell us that Shakespeare has the property of being numerically identical to himself.  In the informational sense, however, (J) and (K) state different facts. Unlike (J), (K) refers to Shakespeare in a way that also tells us that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. In the informational sense, it is (K) and (L) that state the same fact.

Parfit then goes on to consider the moral naturalist's thesis:

(Q) moral rightness is the same as some particular natural property

Parfit's Mere Means Principles

In chapter 9 of On What Matters, Parfit explores the Mere Means Principle, that "[i]t is wrong to treat anyone merely as a means."  He expands on it in a couple of ways, but I think fails to pin down the best formulation of the idea.

Parfit on Aggregation and Iteration

People often claim that a large harm to one person is more important to prevent than a very great number of smaller harms to different people.  But this "anti-aggregative" view (that we ought to prevent the one great harm rather than the many smaller ones that quantitatively outweigh it) is indefensible for the straightforward reason that repeated iterations of such a choice would make everyone worse off.  As Parfit explains in 'Justifiability to Each Person' (p.385):

[W]e might claim that
    (1) we ought to give one person one more year of life rather than lengthening any number of other people’s lives by only one minute.
And we might claim that
    (2) we ought to save one person from a whole year of pain rather than saving any number of others from one minute of the same pain.
These lesser benefits, we might say, fall below the triviality threshold.

These claims, though plausible, are false. A year contains about half a million minutes. Suppose that we are a community of just over a million people, each of whom we could benefit once in the way described by (1). Each of these acts would give one person half a million more minutes of life rather than giving one more minute to each of the million others. Since these effects would be equally distributed, these acts would be worse for everyone. If we always acted in this way, everyone would lose one year of life. Suppose next that we could benefit each person once in the way described by (2). Each of these acts would save one person from half a million minutes of pain rather than saving a million other people from one such minute. As before, these acts would be worse for everyone. If we always acted in this way, everyone would have one more year of pain.

Review of Parfit, On What Matters

[My first attempt at a book review: 1300 pages distilled into 1600 words. Comments/suggestions welcome!]

Derek Parfit’s On What Matters is arguably the most important work in moral philosophy since Reasons and Persons.  Its two massive volumes offer a comprehensive and densely-argued presentation of Parfit’s views in metaethics and normative theory, with occasional forays into other areas of philosophy -- including a probing analysis of the classic metaphysical question: ‘Why anything? Why this?’

Parfit on Philosophical Waste

It seems strangely common for commentators to misrepresent Parfit as claiming that a mistaken philosophical project (e.g. exploring and defending a false theory) lacks all value. Eric Schliesser previously attributed to Parfit the view "that there is no philosophic value (pure waste) in failure." (Sadly, Eric refused to correct this misattribution even when prompted.) More recently, Philip Kitcher writes:

If Naturalism is true, then many of Parfit’s claims are indeed wrong and his perspective is indeed askew. Does it follow that his efforts (and consequently much of his life) have been wasted? I do not think so. Almost all those who have engaged in any form of inquiry have been wrong and misguided...

Knowing What Matters (draft)

A pdf draft of my paper, 'Knowing What Matters' (forthcoming in Peter Singer (ed.), Does Anything Really Matter? Responses to Parfit) is now online.

Abstract:

Parfit's On What Matters offers a rousing defence of non-naturalist normative realism against pressing metaphysical and epistemological objections. He addresses skeptical arguments based on (i) the causal origins of our normative beliefs, and (ii) the appearance of pervasive moral disagreement. In both cases, he concedes the first step to the skeptic, but draws a subsequent distinction with which he hopes to stem the skeptic's advance. I argue, however, that these distinctions cannot bear the weight that Parfit places on them. A successful moral epistemology must take a harder line with the skeptic, insisting that moral knowledge can be had by those with the right kind of psychology -- no matter the evolutionary origin of the psychology, nor whether we can demonstrate its reliability over the alternatives.

Along the way, I also (1) argue against Street's "normative lottery" analogy; (2) argue that her constructivist view is self-defeating; (3) introduce an "internalist" version of reliabilism; and (4) offer an analysis of when it makes a difference whether some possible disagreement is actual.

I still have a couple of months to put on the finishing touches, so any suggestions would be most welcome!

Actual vs. Possible Disagreement

I'm very puzzled by Parfit's concern, in On What Matters, to establish that most actual moral theories converge. That is, I'm not sure why he sees the 'argument from disagreement' as troubling only when it involves alternative views with actually existing advocates. If it's epistemically undermining to be faced with an internally coherent alternative to your present views, why should it matter whether the advocate of this alternative view really exists, or is merely a figment of your imagination playing devil's advocate?

Cosmic Injustice is Bad, Mmkay?

In Chapter 11 of On What Matters, Parfit defends the following form of skepticism about moral responsibility:

We cannot justifiably have ill will towards [...] wrong-doers, wishing things to go badly for them. Nor can we justifiably cease to have good will towards them, by ceasing to wish things to go well for them. We could at most be justified in ceasing to like these people, and trying, in morally acceptable ways, to have nothing to do with them.

This strikes me as a pretty unappealing view (especially if we extend it to the positive reactive attitudes: is gratitude likewise never warranted?). Parfit defends it by assuming that desert-involving moral responsibility requires the impossible, namely ultimate sourcehood: "To be responsible for our acts in some way that could make us deserve to suffer, we must be responsible for being in the relevant ways how we are."

Maxims and Morally Relevant Descriptions

In chapter 12 of On What Matters, Parfit discusses the 'rarity objection' to Kant's Universal Law formulation of the categorical imperative:

Suppose that I wrongly steal some wallet from some woman dressed in white who is eating strawberries while reading the last page of Spinoza's Ethics. My maxim is [unrealistically, but let's suppose] to act in precisely this way, whenever I can. I could rationally will it to be true that this maxim is universal, because it would be most unlikely that anyone else would ever be able to act in precisely this way, so this maxim's being universal would be most unlikely to make any difference. Since I could rationally will this maxim to be universal, Kant's formulas mistakenly permit my act.

Non-Metaphysical Cognitivism

In Chapter 31 of On What Matters, Parfit defends a view he calls 'non-metaphysical cognitivism':

There are some claims that are irreducibly normative in the reason-involving sense, and are in the strongest sense true. But these truths have no ontological implications. For such claims to be true, the reason-involving properties need not exist either as natural properties in the spatio-temporal world, or in some nonspatio-temporal part of reality.

It's an appealing view, and one that I defended in an old post on 'non-spooky moral realism'. But it also raises some puzzling questions.

The Superfluity of Hypothetical Consent

In chapter 8 of On What Matters, Parfit defends what he calls the "Consent Principle":

It is wrong to treat people in any way to which they would not have sufficient reasons to consent in the act-affecting sense. [To consent in the 'act-affecting' sense is not to perform a speech act, for which there might be confounding instrumental reasons, but just to have the attitude whereby if you had power over the person's choice, you would allow them to act in this way.]

Parfit's Possibilism

Parfit's new book includes a chapter on metaphysics and an appendix, 'On What There Is', where he argues against the (metaphysical) Actualist view that there are no mere possibilia, or that only actually existing things exist simpliciter. (Not to be confused with evaluative actualism!) At least, that's what he claims to be doing. But I'm doubtful that what he ends up arguing against is really what self-identified metaphysical Actualists actually have in mind.

Expressivism and Evidence

Reading Blackburn's response to Parfit, I must confess that I found the parodic objections to 'Bramsey' more convincing than Blackburn presumably intended. 'Bramsey' holds that single-case probability judgments are really just expressions of one's credences or betting dispositions. As in Blackburn's moral expressivism, I take it that our normative commitments are, on this view, not objectively assessable (e.g. from an outside perspective). There's nothing in the world to make one person's expressed commitments more reasonable than another's. At most, I can offer a conflicting expression from my own (arbitrary) perspective.

Subjective Prohibitions

When arguing against subjectivism (i.e. desire-based accounts of normative reasons) Parfit puts a lot of weight on the theory's failure to accommodate the datum that everyone has reason to avoid agony: agony-indifferent agents are making a mistake, according to Parfit, whether or not they would admit this upon reflection. I find this pretty persuasive, but I think the argument is more ambitious than it really needs to be, as in its current form it would seem to target nihilists as well as subjectivists. A more modest, and hence even more persuasive, argument against subjectivism would instead focus on the positive normative claims entailed by subjectivism.