Parfit, the Reductionist View, and Moral Commitment

Parfit, the Reductionist View, and Moral Commitment

ABSTRACT: In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit argues for a Reductionist View of personal identity. According to a Reductionist, persons are nothing over and above the existence of certain mental and/or physical states and their various relations. Given this, Parfit believes that facts about personal identity just consist in more particular facts concerning psychological continuity and/or connectedness, and thus that personal identity can be reduced to this continuity and/or connectedness. Parfit is aware that his view of personal identity is contrary to what many people ordinarily think about persons, and thus if his view is correct, many of us have false beliefs about personal identity. Further, since many of our views about morality are based upon our views about personal identity, it follows that we may also have to change our beliefs about morality as well. Parfit, however, thinks that in many cases such changes represent an improvement over our former beliefs and better fit with our considered moral judgments. But instead, I argue that Parfit’s account poses a serious threat to considered moral judgments, and, in particular, that it seriously undermines any substantial notion of moral commitment. As such, even if Parfit is metaphysically correct, I suggest we may have practical reasons, based on our moral concerns, for holding to a more weighty view of the nature of persons.

In Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit argues for a Reductionist View of personal identity. According to the Reductionist persons are nothing over and above the existence of certain mental and/or physical states and their various relations. As Parfit states it, "on the Reductionist View, each pers...

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...oncerning the implications of the metaphysics of persons for issues of rationality and morality I think that I have show that we will have to radically reconsider many of our basic assumptions concerning our commitments and the range of their applicability.

NOTES

(1) Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). p. 211.

(2) Ibid., p. 210.

(3) Ibid., p.

(4) Ibid., p. ix

(5) Ibid., p. 325.

(6) Ibid., p. 326.

(7) Ibid., p. 327.

(8) Ibid., p. 328.

(9) See Christine Korsgaard, "Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit," Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989).

(10) Of course, one might also argue that the failure of Parfit’s view to account for our intuitions concerning the nature of commitments may give us some reason to reconsider the Non-Reductionist View of personal identity.