Thinker · TH-0121
Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit was a British philosopher who spent his career at All Souls College, Oxford. In Reasons and Persons he argued that personal identity…
1942 – 2017 · Oxford
Traditions: Analytic
Derek Parfit was a British philosopher who spent his career at All Souls College, Oxford. In Reasons and Persons he argued that personal identity is not what matters in survival: what matters is Relation R, psychological connectedness and/or continuity with the right kind of cause. He transformed population ethics with the non-identity problem and the Repugnant Conclusion, and later argued that the major ethical theories converge.
Key ideas
- Identity is not what matters; what matters is psychological connectedness and continuity (Relation R).
- Puzzle cases such as fission show that identity can be indeterminate without loss of what matters.
- Choices that determine who will exist raise the non-identity problem and the Repugnant Conclusion.
- There are objective reasons, and Kantian, contractualist and consequentialist theories may converge.
Major works
- "Personal Identity" (1971)
- Reasons and Persons (1984)
- On What Matters (2011–2017)
In the conversation
- Debate Parfit was right: identity is not what matters in survival
- Question My son says our choices can’t harm people who don’t exist yet. What is the non-identity problem?
- Question What are the three kinds of theory of well-being that Parfit distinguished?
- Reading group Reading group: the chariot in the Milindapañha, read beside Hume’s “Of personal identity”