Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons

An Introduction and Critical Inquiry

Andrea Sauchelli, Andrea Sauchelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429948947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is widely considered to be one of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century. Reasons and Persons is arguably the most influential of the two books published in his lifetime and hailed as a classic work of ethics and personal identity.

Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons: An Introduction and Critical Inquiry is an outstanding introduction to and assessment of Parfit's book, with chapters by leading scholars of ethics, metaphysics and of Parfit's work.

Part I provides a much-needed introduction to key topics and themes in Reasons and Persons that will be useful for those new to Parfit's complex work. These include Parfit's idea of self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal identity, future generations and well-being.

Part II explores various debates generated by Reasons and Persons, including its connections with Buddhism, metaethics, theory of rationality, transformative choices and further developments in personal identity and metaphysics such as conativism.

Combining clear exposition of the major topics and arguments in Reasons and Persons with scholarly perspectives on more advanced themes, this book is ideal for students of ethics, metaethics, metaphysics and anyone interested in Derek Parfit's philosophy.

PART I

1

Toward a unified theory of morality

An introduction to Part One of Reasons and Persons

Ben Eggleston¹

Introduction

Part One of Reasons and Persons discusses a wide variety of topics, and a first-time reader could be pardoned for not seeing the topics as unified in any clear way. This part of the book can seem, instead, like a tour de force of disconnected insights: brilliant, but haphazard. The closing pages of Part One reveal, however, that nearly all of it can be seen as articulating and arguing for a particular theory of morality. In retrospect, this gives Part One a coherent agenda that, for most readers, is not initially evident.

The moral theory advocated blends consequentialism and common-sense morality, and Parfit’s support for it has three main components: rebutting a particular set of objections to a standard form of consequentialism, arguing that this standard form of consequentialism should be modified in a particular way, and claiming that common-sense morality should also be modified in a way that makes it similar to the modified form of consequentialism.

It would have been fitting for Parfit to call Part One something like “Toward a Unified Theory of Morality” (which is why I have chosen that phrase for the title of this chapter). Why, then, does he call it “Self-Defeating Theories”? That title is apt for two interconnected reasons. First, both the standard form of consequentialism that Parfit discusses and common-sense morality are self-defeating in ways that Parfit describes at length. Indeed, practically all of Part One is concerned with self-defeating theories. The second reason is that many of the arguments of Part One focus on the self-defeating character of the theories being discussed. In the case of the standard form of consequentialism that Parfit discusses, Parfit’s main purpose is to argue that it is not self-defeating in a way that warrants its rejection. In the case of common-sense morality, his purpose is the opposite.

In fact, according to Parfit it is not just those two theories that are self-defeating in certain ways: he writes that “all of the best-known theories are in certain ways self-defeating” (p. 3).² He goes on to say, however, that some theories are self-defeating in harmless ways while the self-defeating character of others necessitates their revision or rejection. To appreciate these subtleties in Parfit’s views, some terminological points should be kept in mind. When Parfit first mentions the idea of a theory being self-defeating, he implies that such a theory thereby “fails in its own terms, and thus condemns itself” (p. 3). In later passages, however, Parfit diagnoses some theories as self-defeating, but also holds that they do not fail in their own terms, and do not condemn themselves. In other words, contrary to initial appearances, self-defeat does not imply self-condemnation – the latter verdict depends on what kind of self-defeat the theory suffers from.

I mentioned above that Parfit’s argument for a unified theory builds on discussions of both a standard form of consequentialism and common-sense morality – emphasizing, in each case, concerns about self-defeat. He begins, however, by exploring several aspects (especially the self-defeat) of yet another theory: the Self-interest Theory.

The Self-interest Theory

What the Self-interest Theory is

Parfit characterizes the Self-interest Theory in terms of several claims, the “central” one being that “For each person, there is one supremely rational aim: that his life go, for him, as well as possible” (p. 4). This theory is not a moral theory, and Parfit does not treat it as providing source material for his unified theory. It might seem odd, then, that Parfit would devote a substantial fraction of Part One to this theory. It turns out, however, that the various aspects of self-defeat that Parfit is concerned to examine in connection with consequentialism and common-sense morality also arise in connection with the Self-interest Theory. Thus, Parfit’s discussion of this theory serves mainly – at least in Part One – to acquaint the reader with self-defeat-related concepts and lines of reasoning whose real importance materializes in connection with those moral theories. (Note, however, that the Self-interest Theory serves a further purpose outside of Part One, playing a more central role in Part Two.)

How the Self-interest Theory is indirectly self-defeating

Parfit observes that an obvious way in which the Self-interest Theory is self-defeating is that when people attempt to make their lives go as well as possible, they often fail, due to false beliefs – for example, a thief’s overconfidence about being able to steal something without getting caught. Parfit quickly judges that “These cases are not worth discussing” and that this type of self-defeat is “no objection” to the theory because the problem is caused by the agent’s incompetent implementation of the theory rather than anything internal to the theory itself (p. 5).

The scenarios that Parfit takes more seriously involve not just isolated acts in which a person attempts to make her life go as well as possible, but an underlying disposition toward performing such acts. One might expect Parfit to focus on the disposition to always try to make one’s life go as well as possible, and he does mention this disposition (pp. 5–6). But he claims that we should also include, as pertinent to assessing the Self-interest Theory, many acts that people perform while “acting on a more particular desire” than the desire to make one’s life go as well as possible. For example, Nina might help Oren make a cake because she loves him, not because she has any opinion about how that activity will affect her life. In such a case, as long as Nina does not regard her act as making her life go worse, we should (according to Parfit) count her decision-making as aligning with the Self-interest Theory. So, the disposition Parfit elects to focus on is that of being “never self-denying” (p. 6). A person with this disposition might sometimes be inattentive to the goal of making her life go well and might sometimes lack beliefs about her acts’ promotion of that goal, but she will (and this is the defining trait of the disposition) never do what she does believe will be worse for her (p. 6).

Parfit presents several cases showing that if a person is never self-denying, then her life can go worse than if she had a non-self-interested disposition. Here is one such case:

Suppose that I am driving at midnight through some desert. My car breaks down. You are a stranger, and the only other driver near. I manage to stop you, and I offer you a great reward if you rescue me. I cannot reward you now, but I promise to do so when we reach my home. Suppose next that I am transparent, unable to deceive others. I cannot lie convincingly. Either a blush, or my tone of voice, always gives me away. Suppose, finally, that I know myself to be never self-denying. If you drive me to my home, it would be worse for me if I gave you the promised reward. Since I know that I never do what will be worse for me, I know that I shall break my promise. Given my inability to lie convincingly, you know this too. You do not believe my promise, and therefore leave me stranded in the desert. This happens to me because I am never self-denying.

p. 7

Parfit’s example might seem rather peculiar and far-fetched, but it is an instance of a large class of cases that exhibit a well-established and widely applicable concept known as the paradox of happiness (though Parfit does not use this term). This is the initially surprising – but generally acknowledged – fact that “regarding happiness as the sole ultimately valuable end or objective, and acting accordingly, often results in less happiness than results from regarding other goods as ultimately valuable (and acting accordingly).”³ Parfit’s example illustrates the paradox perfectly: if he (upon having been driven home) were able to regard keeping his promise as more important than advancing his happiness, then he (earlier, in the desert) could sincerely make that promise and he would thereby advance his happiness more than he actually can, given that he is never self-denying. Hence, being never self-denying is worse for him than having some other disposition (i.e., one that allowed occasional self-denying acts, such as keeping certain promises) would be.

According to Parfit, in cases such as these the Self-interest Theory is “indirectly individually self-defeating” (p. 7). As Parfit defines this term, it applies to a theory T (here the letter “T” is a variable) when the following is true: “if someone tries to achieve his T-given aims [such as making one’s life go as well as possible], these aims will be, on the whole, worse achieved” (p. 5). This is Parfit’s first major conclusion concerning the self-defeating character of any of the theories he discusses.

The failure of several objections to the Self-interest Theory

Having shown that the Self-interest Theory is indirectly individually self-defeating, Parfit then asks whether this means the theory “fail[s] in its own terms,” or whether it “condemn[s] itself” (p. 7). To answer these questions, Parfit notes that the theory implies many things about what people have reason to do, and one of these is the following:

what each person has most reason to do is to cause himself to have, or to allow himself to keep, any of the best possible sets of motives [which, for Parfit, include dispositions], in self-interested terms. These are the sets of motives of which the following is true. There is no other possible set of motives of which it is true that, if this person had these motives, this would be better for him.

p. 8

Because of the paradox of happiness, being never self-denying is “for many and perhaps most people” (p. 17) definitely not among the best possible sets of motives. Consequently, Parfit explains, the Self-interest Theory does not tell these people to have that disposition. Thus, when people suffer the ill effects of having that disposition, they are violating, not complying with, the Self-interest Theory. So, the theory is not failing in its own terms (p. 11).⁴

Parfit goes on to consider other questions about the Self-interest Theory, such as whether there might be other grounds for saying that it fails in its own terms (p. 11), or whether it is objectionable because it directs people to be disposed to sometimes act irrationally (p. 12), or whether it is objectionable because it implies that we cannot entirely avoid acting irrationally (p. 16), or whether it is objectionable because it might sometimes tell agents to believe a revised version of itself (p. 19), or whether it would be objectionable if it were self-effacing, in the sense of telling “everyone to cause himself to believe some other theory” (p. 24), or whether it is objectionable because the outcome would be bad for a group of people if they believed it and were unable to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction to the collection
• Part I
• Part II
• Index