#derekparfit — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #derekparfit, aggregated by home.social.
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🧵 5/5
See also Simon Blackburn on Parfit's grand project "On What Matters":http://www.theotodman.com/Abstracts/Abstract_20/Abstract_20118.htm
#Philosophy #DerekParfit #OnWhatMatters #MoralPhilosophy #Metaethics #SimonBlackburn
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🧵 4/5
My own feeling is that Parfit's systematic point-of-view-of- the-universe approach is a bad way to think about value and lives worth living and has consequently not been an entirely benign influence on our thinking about ethics.
"Reasons and Persons" was published in 1984, but I would choose the 1985 "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" as a key work to read when thinking in general terms about how one should live.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674268586
#Philosophy #MoralPhilosophy #DerekParfit #BernardWilliams #ReasonsAndPersons #EthicsAndTheLimitsOfPhilosophy
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🧵 3/5 Parfit's fans never cease to proclaim his genius and his importance.
That he has been influential is certain, but I would be interested to hear the opinions of scholars and students of philosophy on the current extent of Parfit's influence in the discipline.
Image: Derek Parfit at Harvard-April 21, 2015-Effective Altruism -- Anna Riedl -- Wikimedia Commons -- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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🧵 2/5 After reading about his eccentricities, one might think that Parfit would have been insufferable as an intimate partner and hence doomed to a life without romance or marriage. In fact, this was not the case, as this article by his admirer and biographer makes clear:
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🧵 1/5 I was struck by the paragraph on Parfit and Bernard Williams; I'm not sure whether this should the seed for a work of intellectual history or of a novel, but I do know that I would devour either!
Imperfect Parfit - The Philosophers' Magazine
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🧵 1/5 I was struck by the paragraph on Parfit and Bernard Williams; I'm not sure whether this should the seed for a work of intellectual history or of a novel, but I do know that I would devour either!
Imperfect Parfit - The Philosophers' Magazine
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Reading #Dynomight explaining #DerekParfit I realise that just as #liberalism/#libertarianism is the most inclusive political/economic system because it allows for other orders to emerge within it, #consequentialism may be the most inclusive moral theory because it may contain other systems just by redefining what a “good outcome” is.
That is:
A group of free individuals (liberalism) may enter voluntary agreements and commit to redistributing their wealth (socialism), transferring all power to a certain person (autocracy), abiding by rules decided by the majority (democracy), etc.
A consequentialist, in its narrowest definition, is free to conclude that the best possible outcome is one in which they and their special ones enjoy the best of life (egoism), one where certain rules are obeyed most strictly (deontology), one where all actions align perfectly with the word of god (theological voluntarism), etc. — and to act accordingly.
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Useful taxonomy of moral theories (#DerekParfit via #Dynomight)
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Probably the best distillation of #morality in one sentence, by #DerekParfit:
“Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good