This is one dense book of philosophy. It has many thought experiments and digressions that make it more bearable, but each page (and almost every sentence) has to be pondered over and reread to get the full depth of Parfit’s arguments. The beauty of this book is that it makes you reexamine your most cherished and basic beliefs. It makes you question the very essence of the Self and what makes you you.
Parfit argues that humans would benefit from a new way of seeing the world. “Our reasons for acting should become more impersonal.” When viewing our own actions and weighing their morality it is often not enough to look at their effects in isolation. “It is true, of the act of each, that its effects on others are trivial or imperceptible. We mistakenly believe that, because this is true, the effects of our acts cannot make them wrong. But, though each act has trivial effects, it is often true that we together impose great harm on ourselves or others.” Actions often have imperceptible harms and benefits. It is better to be a rational altruist, who views it as irrelevant whether their acts perceptibly harm another.
Another area in which it behooves humans to be more impersonal is in relationships to their own children, family, and friends. “If we follow this impersonal principle, and give no priority to our own children, this will be better for all our children. Impersonality is again better, even in personal terms.”
Parfit considers effects logically and with numeracy. He takes into account probability and risk. “When the stakes are very high, no chance, however small, should be ignored. The same is true when each chance will be taken very many times.”
Parfit believes human morality should accept the Critical Present-aim Theory. “On this theory, the fundamental unit is not the agent throughout his whole life, but the agent at the time of acting. Though CP denies the supreme importance of self-interest through time, and of a person’s whole life, it is not impersonal. CP claims that what is rational for me to do now depends on what I now want, or value, or believe. This claim gives more importance to each person’s particular values or beliefs.” The reason this makes more sense to Parfit than a self-interest belief, which takes account of a person’s values throughout his life, is Parfit’s views on the nature of the Self. “We cannot explain the unity of a person’s life by claiming that the experiences in this life are all had by this person. We can explain this unity only by describing the various relations that hold between these different experiences, and their relations to a particular brain. We could therefore describe a person’s life in an impersonal way, which does not claim that this person exists…. Persons are not, as we mistakenly believe, fundamental.”
Parfit’s views on personhood do not imply a dismissal of the subjective world. “What are called subjective truths need not involve any subject of experiences. A particular thought may be self-referring. It may be the thought that this particular thought, even if exactly similar to other thoughts that are thought, is still this particular thought—or this particular thinking of this thought. This thought is an impersonal but subjective truth.”
However, Parfit denies the conception of the Further Fact of something like a Cartesian soul, ego, or any other type of mind/body dualism. “On the Reductionist View that I defend, persons exist. And a person is distinct from his brain and body, and his experiences. But persons are not separately existing entities. The existence of a person, during any period, just consists in the existence of his brain and body, and the thinking of his thoughts, and the doing of his deeds, and the occurrence of many other physical and mental events…. Personal identity just involves physical and psychological continuity. As I argued, both of these can be described in an impersonal way. These two kinds of continuity can be described without claiming that experiences are had by a person.”
Parfit also ruminates on how the ever-changing Self can affect love. “It may be clear to some couple that they love each other. But if they ask whether they are still in love with each other, they may find this question perplexing. It may still seem to them that they are in love, yet their behaviour towards each other, and their feelings in each other’s presence, may seem not to bear this out. If they distinguished between successive selves, their perplexity might be resolved. They might see that they love each other, and are in love with each other’s earlier self.” In fact, Parfit later suggests, “we can love, and believe we are committed to, someone who is dead. And the object of such love and commitment may be, not someone who is dead, but some living person’s earlier self.” This can be true because “we may regard some events within a person’s life as, in certain ways, like birth or death. Not in all ways, for beyond these events the person has earlier or later selves. But it may be only one out of the series of selves which is the object of some of our emotions, and to which we apply some of our principles.”
This view of the Self leads to Parfit’s views on morality and responsibility. “We no longer have the right to do whatever we like, when we affect only ourselves. It is wrong to impose upon ourselves, for no good reason, great harm…. These claims again give less importance both to the unity of each life and to the boundaries between lives…. I believe that what matters is Relation R, psychological continuity and/or connectedness…. This is what matters and the physical continuity does not matter…. On the Reductionist view, the unity of our lives is a matter of degree, and is something that we can affect.” We can affect this through the process of keeping a connectedness with our former selves as we age in our continual bodily process. “I want my life to have certain kinds of overall unity. I do not want it to be very episodic, with continual fluctuations in my desires and concerns. Such fluctuations are compatible with full psychological continuity, but they would reduce psychological connectedness.”
Parfit believes “that Relation R— continuity and connectedness— gives us a reason to be specially concerned about our own futures. This reason may not be as strong as the reason that would be provided by the Further Fact. And, because psychological connectedness is a matter of degree, we should reject the claim that it must be irrational to care less about some parts of our future.” However, Relation R, rather than the Further Fact, “makes me care less about my own future, and the fact that I shall die. In comparison, I now care more about the lives of others.” Parfit continues on death, “I believe that we ought not to be biased towards the future. This belief does not beg the question about the rationality of this bias. On any plausible moral view, it would be better if we were all happier. This is the sense which, if we could, we ought not to be biased towards the future. In giving us this bias, Evolution denies us the best attitude to death.”
Parfit makes the case that morality is simply a means and not an end in itself. “Compare two people who are trying to relieve the suffering of others. The first person acts because he sympathizes with these people. He also believes that suffering is bad, and ought to be relieved. The second person acts because he wants to think of himself as someone who is morally good. Of these two people, the first seems to be better. But the first person has no thoughts about the goodness of acting morally, or the badness of wrongdoing. He is moved to act simply by his sympathy, and by his belief that, since suffering is bad, he ought to try to prevent it. This person seems to regard acting morally as a mere means. It is the second person who regards acting morally as a separate aim that is in itself good. Since the first person seems to be better, this supports the claim that acting morally is a mere means.”
Parfit suggests that two of our moral beliefs can often compete and yet neither is intrinsically wrong. “We may have a pluralist morality in which we believe that it would be better both if there was greater equality and if there was a greater sum of benefits. There may then be cases where greater equality would lower sum of benefits. Our two principles would here conflict. But there would be no inconsistency in our moral view. We would merely have to ask whether, given the details of the case, the gain in equality would be more or less important than the loss of benefits.”
In the last section of his book, Parfit tries to tie his morality into a unifying theory through sheer effort of reasoning. He admits he does not fully succeed. He discusses some major unresolved problems at length. I will skim over some without doing justice to any.
One is the Non-Identity Problem. The Time-Dependence Claim states that “if any particular person had not been conceived when he was in fact conceived, it is in fact true that he would never have existed.” Parfit goes on to debate what then we, in the present, owe to future generations. “Since these future people’s lives will be worth living, and they would never have existed if we had chosen [otherwise, any choice we do make] is not only not worse for these people: it benefits them.” In the future, the same people will not exist based on whatever choice we choose in the present. Should we then conclude about how our actions might affect the future, “since it will be bad for no one, our choice cannot have a bad effect?”
On morality, Parfit argues “it becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves…. We are right to ignore whether experiences come within the same or different lives…. When we are trying to relieve suffering, neither persons nor lives are the morally significant units…. Suffering is compensated if it comes within a life that is worth living. If it comes within a life that is not worth living, it is uncompensated…. It is always bad if there is more uncompensated suffering. To this badness there is no upper limit…. The badness of this suffering cannot be reduced by the fact that other people are happy…. [However,] when there is more suffering only because there are more lives lived that are worth living, this extra suffering does not make the outcome worse.”
Parfit discusses his Repugnant Conclusion: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.”
Parfit contrasts his Absurd Conclusion: “In one possible outcome, there would exist during some future century both some population on the Earth that is like the Earth’s present actual population, and an enormous number of other people, living on Earth-like planets that had become part of the Solar System. Nearly all of the people on these other planets would have a quality of life far above that enjoyed by most of the Earth’s actual population. In each ten billion of these other people, there would be one unfortunate person, with a disease that makes him suffer, and have a life that is not worth living.
In a second possible outcome, there would be the same enormous number of extra future people, with the same high quality of life for all except the unfortunate one in each ten billion. But this enormous number of extra future people would not all live in one future century. Each ten billion of these people would live in each of very many future centuries.
On our view, the first outcome would be very bad, much worse than if there were none of these extra future people. The second outcome would be very good. The first would be very bad and the second very good even though, in both outcomes, there would would be the very same number of extra future people, with the very same high quality of life for all except the unfortunate one in each ten billion….
This conclusion followed from the asymmetry in our claims about the value of quantity. We placed a limit on quantity’s positive value, within some period, but we placed no limit on its negative value. To avoid the Absurd Conclusion we must abandon this asymmetry.
We cannot plausibly place a limit on quantity’s negative value. It is always bad if there is uncompensated suffering, and this badness never declines. We must therefore remove the limits on quantity’s positive value. When we remove this limit, we need a new way to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion.”
Parfit concludes, “because we can easily affect the identities of future people, we face the Non-Identity Problem. To solve this problem we need a new theory about beneficence. This theory must also avoid the Repugnant and the Absurd Conclusions, and solve the Mere Addition Paradox.
Since I have not yet found this theory, these conclusions are unwelcome. They undermine our beliefs about our obligations to future generations…. I believe that, though I have so far failed, I or others could find the principle we need…. But, before we have found solutions, we ought to regret this conclusion. With more unsolved problems, we are further away from the Unified Theory. We are further away from the theory that resolves our disagreements, and that, because it achieves this aim, might deserve to be called the truth.”
