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Reasons and Persons is a 1984 book by the philosopher Derek Parfit, in which the author discusses ethics, rationality and personal identity.. It is divided into four parts, dedicated to self-defeating theories, rationality and time, personal identity and responsibility toward future generations.
If the moral ramifications of potential policies are considered in person-affecting terms, there is no reason to prefer a sound policy over an unsound one, provided that its effects are not felt by the next few generations. [23] Parfit eventually became convinced that personal identity is not relevant to ethics. [24]
Parfit takes a reductionist stance and argues against this further-fact view. As a result it is not clear whether a person has any reason to be worried about his or her future self in a special way that does not also apply to worrying about others: Parfit argues that it is plausible that "only the [implausible] deep further fact gives me a ...
The Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem described the same problem in the mid-twentieth century. He put it in writing in his philosophical text Dialogs in 1957. . Similarly, in Lem's Star Diaries ("Fourteenth Voyage") of 1957, the hero visits a planet and finds himself recreated from a backup record, after his death from a meteorite strike, which on this planet is a very commonplace proc
Derek Parfit is another philosopher who has challenged the idea of the existence of a continuous stream of consciousness over time. In his book Reasons and Persons, Parfit describes the teletransportation paradox thought experiment, which describes the difficulties in distinguishing one's future self from an entity that is merely a copy of ...
The mere addition paradox (also known as the repugnant conclusion) is a problem in ethics identified by Derek Parfit and discussed in his book Reasons and Persons (1984). The paradox identifies the mutual incompatibility of four intuitively compelling assertions about the relative value of populations.
The problem was described and explored by Derek Parfit in his 1987 book Reasons and Persons. [2] It is a challenge to person-affecting views, which are based on the intuition that "what is bad must be bad for someone". [3] An example proposed by Parfit involves thinking of two policies: "conservation" and "depletion".
The philosophy of self seeks to describe essential qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness or a person's essential being. There have been various approaches to defining these qualities. The self can be considered as the source of consciousness, the agent responsible for an individual's thoughts and actions, or the substantial nature of ...