Reasons and Persons

by Derek Parfit

HOW S IMPLIES THAT WE CANNOT AVOID ACTING IRRATIONALLY

The problem is that he does not include time in his formula . Since we do not know the future , we always act irrationally .

These theories are agent-relative, giving to different agents different aims. It can be claimed, for example, that each of us should have the aim that he does not coerce other people.

He is stuck within essentialism. This he sees only two options, either objectivism (rationalism) or subjetivism (irrationalism). The sollution lies.in intersubjectivism, where truth or what best in any sense, even moral sense, is decided between people for each case in time separately.

this supports the claim that acting morally is a mere means.

Tis makes sense abd is important. Anything that becomes the final goal causes suffering. Even if to act morally becomes the finnal goal, such utopian mission represnts thee first tep to hell.

What if our theory is agent-relative, giving to different agents different aims?

Agents are different. They have different values. This question is thus pure nonsense. Everyghing is agent dependent.

There might, for instance, be delayed reciprocity.

Finally the time co.es in play.

Suppose that each is disposed to do what will be better for himself, or his family, or those he loves. There is then a practical problem. Unless something changes, the actual outcome will be worse for everyone. This problem is one of the chief reasons why we need more than laissez-faire economics—why we need both politics and morality.

We do not need them. We can not but hav them both. People are memetic creatures. There is a constant dialogue taking place between laissez faire and morality. The problem arisez when morality prevails.

We must abandon the view that an act cannot be either right or wrong, because of its effects on other people, if these effects are imperceptible.

Yes . Mathematics cannot solve mortality .

It may be said: ‘So would rational egoists.

Not bad. He comes to a simplee conclusion why egoist is altruist at thee same time. But later he forgets this finding .

The problem is this. We may have moral reasons to make the altruistic choice. But it will be better for each if he makes the self-benefiting choice. Morality conflicts with self-interest. When these conflict, what is it rational to do?

As if acrions of self interest would be morally wrong.

In true Dilemmas, if we both do A rather than E, we are doing better in S’s terms. We are causing the S-given aim of each to be better achieved. This is so on all theories about self-interest. We do better in S’s terms if we do what S tells us not to do.

He fails complsegtely for one reason. He does not take discounts of value over time. Should he read Human Action, he would know that evaluation of anything human is time dependant. One might evaluate one action today differently than tomorrow.

For a Kantian, the essence of morality is the move from each to we.

Really?

The Self-interest Theory does not claim to be a collective code. It is a theory of individual rationality. To be collectively self-defeating is, in the case of S, not to be damagingly self-defeating.’

If he would understand freemasonry he would completely change his theory.

On most of the other views about the nature of moral reasoning, morality is essentially a collective code.

That is a huge misake.

No one has this man’s pattern of concern. But it closely resembles the pattern that is common: the bias towards the near. The difference is that this common bias is proportional to the feature that it favours. Those who have this bias care more about what is in the nearer future.

He knows nothing about economy abd future discount value.

all of my desires throughout my life should be given equal weight, the S-Theorist may have to conclude that it would be worse for me if I now ceased to contribute.

He knows notbing about vaues. He does not eveen mention them. Only desires are important. Pure communist.

Since my loss of this desire involved no change in my value judgements,

Wrong assumption.

A community of self-interested people would do better, even in self-interested terms, if they all followed, not the Self-interest Theory, but some version of morality.

According to Parfait self interest does not comply mlorality. This is his starting position that is the cause of all his next mistakes.

I believe that my arguments justify this bolder conclusion. I began with a strategic metaphor. The Self-interest Theory has two rivals: morality, and the Present-aim Theory. In some respects it lies between these two rivals. It is therefore vulnerable in what is often a fatal way: it can be attacked from two directions. The Self-interest Theory has long been dominant in our intellectual tradition. But this dominance has largely derived from the failure of its two rivals to attack together. When it is attacked by moral theorists, it has stolen strength from the Present-aim Theory, and vice versa.

Good explanation of what is wrong in his theory.

Most of these people assumed that, because we shall have an after-life or be re-incarnated, morality and self-interest always coincide.

Why allways? With allways he rejeects an option to say someetimes. Self interest theory can coincide with morality.

What makes a person at two different times one and the same person? What is necessarily involved in the continued existence of each person over time?

My answer is simple: meme-complex attached to that particular human body makes that bodi identical as human being.

Though nations exist, a nation is not an entity that exists separately, apart from its citizens and its territory. We would accept (6) A nation’s existence just involves the existence of its citizens, living together in certain ways, on its territory. Some claim (7) A nation just is these citizens and this territory. Others claim (8) A nation is an entity that is distinct from its citizens and its territory.

It is amazing how memetics makes such statements completely obsolete. They miss the point competely from the perspective of memetics.

This is because the existence of a club is not separate from the existence of its members, acting together in certain ways.

False

DIVIDED MINDS SOME recent medical cases provide striking evidence in favour of the Reductionist View. Human beings have a lower brain and

Multiple personalities. Obvious.

‘What we have called “the two resulting people” are not two people. They are one person.

Fallacy of the origin. He compares two personaitiies to imaginary one that is original. No original personality exists. Personality is all the time co-constructed.

After my blueprint is beamed to Mars, the Replicator makes a perfect organic copy.

Memes are not going to be copied! He takes in account physical and psychological criteria but not memetic one.

My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This

Using memetics one can be non-reductionist and have similar understanding of death at the same time.

What we value are the various relations between ourselves and others, whom and what we love, our ambitions, achievements, commitments, emotions, memories, and several other psychological features.

Here hee becomes rellationalist. Good. But he only touches this important concept. He iss still far from al consequences of relationalism.

Many people would be afraid of Teletransportation. I admit that, at some level, I might be afraid.

As a non-reductionist I know that memes cannot be teletransported. Namely memes act only as attached to some sort of substrat, be that substrat brain tissue or a book. While the brains or the book can be physically teletransported it is only a brain infected by memes, a brain that is interrelated with meme-compleexes that can exchange memes with a book for instance. Teletransported body and brains would operate on chemical and eleectrical reactions, but not on memetic. Teletransported human body would become a zombie!

Looked at as copies of the prototype, they will become copies which are increasingly blurred or written over; looked at in their own right,

He is unaware of biology and genetics. He is compleetely analoggue in thinking.

As Mill’s critics claimed, purely ‘self-regarding’ acts are rare.

NAarrow minded view. Self intefrest in North Korea is something else than in Japan. There is no abstract self interest. They all forget evolution, Mill, Parfit...

We ought to prevent anyone from doing to his future self what it would be wrong to do to other people.

As a rationalist he believes in objective truth. Pitty.

This claim distinguishes the person from the human being. If we know that a human being is in a coma that is incurable—that this human being will certainly never regain consciousness—we shall believe that the person has ceased to exist. Since there is a living human body, the human being still exists. But, at this end of lives, we should claim that only the killing of persons is wrong.

And mankind is not a super-organism.

It is not superorganism but superpersonnlity.

But we do deny that they are separately, or independently, real.

Emeergeence is not known to him. Which is strange because reductionism rests on emergence.

Should we aim for equality of welfare, or equality of resources?

What about equality of opportunifty vs. equality of outcome? Does not exist for him.

If we cannot accept (3), we must reject (1).

Life is not rational mathematics!

Given some finite stock of resources,

Total nonsense. Stupidity. Cant believe.

Someone might say: This is not so. This principle includes the phrase if other things are equal. Other things never would be equal. We can therefore ignore the Repugnant Conclusion.’

But his arguments always rest on fixed background hypo.

The Narrow Principle is intuitively plausible.

His morality stinks. It has nothing to do with real life. Intelectualism at worst. He despises people as full bodied free and responsible creatures. He does not care about them.

have argued that, in various ways, our reasons for acting should become more impersonal.

What a mislead.