Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters
Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters

Author: Jussi Suikkanen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-01-15

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781444322897

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters, seven leadingmoral philosophers offer critical evaluations of the central ideaspresented in a greatly anticipated new work by world-renowned moralphilosopher Derek Parfit. Presents critical assessments of what promises to be one of thekey moral philosophy texts of our time Features essays by a team of leading philosophers includingPrinceton's Michael Smith, one of the world's leadingmeta-ethicists Addresses Parfit's central thesis - that the main ethicaltheories can agree on what matters - as well as his defense ofmoral realism

Does Anything Really Matter?
Does Anything Really Matter?

Author: Peter Singer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0191084395

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

On What Matters
On What Matters

Author: Derek Parfit

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-02-09

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 0191084379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Reasons and Persons
Reasons and Persons

Author: Derek Parfit

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 1986-01-23

Total Pages: 880

ISBN-13: 0191622443

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Ethics and Existence
Ethics and Existence

Author: Jeff McMahan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 590

ISBN-13: 0192894250

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, is widely believed to have been the best moral philosopher in well over a century. The twenty new essays in this book were written in his honour and have all been inspired by his work--in particular, his work in an area of moral philosophy known as 'population ethics', which is concerned with moral issues raised by causing people to exist. Until Parfit began writing about these issues in the 1970s, there was almost no discussion of them in the entire history of philosophy. But his monumental book Reasons and Persons (OUP, 1984) revealed that population ethics abounds in deep and intractable problems and paradoxes that not only challenge all the major moral theories but also threaten to undermine many important common-sense moral beliefs. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a broad range of practical moral issues that cannot be adequately understood until fundamental problems in population ethics are resolved. These issues include abortion, prenatal injury, preconception and prenatal screening for disability, genetic enhancement and eugenics generally, meat eating, climate change, reparations for historical injustice, the threat of human extinction, and even proportionality in war. Although the essays in this book address foundational problems in population ethics that were discovered and first discussed by Parfit, they are not, for the most part, commentaries on his work but instead build on that work in advancing our understanding of the problems themselves. The contributors include many of the most important and influential writers in this burgeoning area of philosophy.

Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons
Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons

Author: Andrea Sauchelli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-12

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0429948948

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

The Moral Landscape
The Moral Landscape

Author: Sam Harris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 143917122X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

Concealment and Exposure
Concealment and Exposure

Author: Thomas Nagel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-10-14

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 019803489X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thomas Nagel is widely recognized as one of the top American philosophers working today. Reflecting the diversity of his many philosophical preoccupations, this volume is a collection of his most recent critical essays and reviews. The first section, Public and Private, focuses on the notion of privacy in the context of social and political issues, such as the impeachment of President Clinton. The second section, Right and Wrong, discusses moral, political and legal theory, and includes pieces on John Rawls, G.A. Cohen, and T.M. Scanlon, among others. The final section, Mind and Reality, features discussions of Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, and the Sokal hoax, and closes with a substantial new essay on the mind-body problem. Written with characteristic rigor, these pieces reveal the intellectual passion underlying the incisive analysis for which Nagel is known.

Principles and Persons
Principles and Persons

Author: Jeff McMahan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 019264629X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, is widely believed to have been the most significant moral philosopher in well over a century. The twenty-one new essays in this book have all been inspired by his work. They address issues with which he was concerned in his writing, particularly in his seminal contribution to moral philosophy, Reasons and Persons (OUP, 1984). Rather than simply commenting on his work, these essays attempt to make further progress with issues, both moral and prudential, that Parfit believed matter to our lives: issues concerned with how we ought to live, and what we have most reason to do. Topics covered in the book include the nature of personal identity, the basis of self-interested concern about the future, the rationality of our attitudes toward time, what it is for a life to go well or badly, how to evaluate moral theories, the nature of reasons for action, the aggregation of value, how benefits and harms should be distributed among people, and what degree of sacrifice morality requires us to make for the sake of others. These include some of the most important questions of normative ethical theory, as well as fundamental questions about the metaphysics of personhood and personal identity, and the ways in which the answers to these questions bear on what it is rational and moral for us to do.

The Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion

Author: Jesper Ryberg

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-11-10

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1402024738

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Most people (including moral philosophers), when faced with the fact that some of their cherished moral views lead up to the Repugnant Conclusion, feel that they have to revise their moral outlook. However, it is a moot question as to how this should be done. It is not an easy thing to say how one should avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, without having to face even more serious implications from one's basic moral outlook. Several such attempts are presented in this volume. This is the first volume devoted entirely to the cardinal problem of modern population ethics, known as 'The Repugnant Conclusion'. This book is a must for (moral) philosophers with an interest in population ethics.