Philosophy, et cetera

Cambridge University Press is offering free PDF downloads of  Parfit's Ethics until May 3. (After that, you can always access the pre-p...

I previously shared my manuscript on Parfit's Ethics .  But I figure I might as well offer a bit more detail about what interesting con...

Over the last few months, I've been working on a short book manuscript on Parfit's Ethics , for Cambridge University Press' Elem...

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 ...

If I had to pick a "favourite philosopher", it would be Derek Parfit.  His book Reasons and Persons  is, in my view, the best ther...

According to Parfit's Triviality Objection , metaethical naturalism can't adequately capture our ability to make substantive positiv...

In Chapter 26 of On What Matters  (vol 2), Parfit sets out his (comparatively neglected) 'Fact-Stating Argument' against non-analyti...

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....

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 peop...

[My first attempt at a book review: 1300 pages distilled into 1600 words. Comments/suggestions welcome!] Derek Parfit’s On What Matters i...

It seems strangely common for commentators to misrepresent Parfit as claiming that a mistaken philosophical project (e.g. exploring and defe...

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

I'm very puzzled by Parfit's concern, in On What Matters , to establish that most actual moral theories converge. That is, I'm...

In Chapter 11 of On What Matters , Parfit defends the following form of skepticism about moral responsibility: We cannot justifiably have i...

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

In Chapter 31 of On What Matters , Parfit defends a view he calls 'non-metaphysical cognitivism': There are some claims that are ir...

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...

Parfit's new book includes a chapter on metaphysics and an appendix, 'On What There Is', where he argues against the (metaphysic...

Reading Blackburn's response to Parfit , I must confess that I found the parodic objections to 'Bramsey' more convincing than Bl...

When arguing against subjectivism (i.e. desire-based accounts of normative reasons) Parfit puts a lot of weight on the theory's failure ...